During 1943-1944, the “Peerless Princess of the Prairie” became the epicenter of Boeing’s struggle to give General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold the Superfortress bombers he needed to inflict horrific destruction upon the homeland of Japan. The Imperial Japanese Navy’s surprise attack on the United States military base at Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, on December…
During World War II, the prairie city became a major contributor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Arsenal of Democracy” that helped to crush the Axis powers into submission. By 1939, the United States was slowly emerging from the Great Depression that had decimated the national economy for nearly 10 years. Job growth was increasing each…
The financial debacle that struck Wall Street in October 1929 not only set America on a downward path to economic ruin, but threatened to swiftly clip the wings of Wichita’s thriving aircraft industry. As the “Roarin’ Twenties” came to a close, the United States was riding what appeared to be an unstoppable wave of prosperity.…
By the early 1930s, the Great Depression had decimated Wichita’s once booming aircraft industry, but a few courageous entrepreneurs were willing to gamble everything to put new wings on their dreams. As the wave of economic devastation continued its sweep across America in 1931, sales of new commercial airplanes remained in a tailspin. Every airframe,…
The stock market crash in October 1929 thrust a knife into the heart of America’s economy and put Wichita’s thriving aviation industry into an unrecoverable tailspin. The ramifications of Wall Street’s disaster were both cruel and inevitable. Across the United States, banks began to fail as people rushed to take out their money and borrowers…
“Lucky Lindy’s” transatlantic flight in May 1927 electrified the world. In the wake of that epic crossing, Wichita’s airframe builders feasted on fat order books for two years until famine struck Wall Street and drove a stake into the heart of the nation’s economy. As the “Roarin’ Twenties” continued to roar into 1928 and 1929,…
In the wake of E.M. Laird’s departure from Wichita, Walter H. Beech, Lloyd C. Stearman and Clyde V. Cessna joined forces to create the city’s first major airframe manufacturer – the Travel Air Company When Billy Burke resigned from the E.M. Laird Company Partnership in 1920, Matty Laird lost a key mediator between himself and…
A year after the end of World War I, a talented aircraft designer from Chicago and a roustabout from the oil fields of Kansas transformed a sleepy city on the Plains into the epicenter of America’s general aviation aircraft industry The question has often been asked, “Why Wichita?” What has made that city, long hailed…
During more than 30 years of production, the Beechcraft Model 18 series distinguished itself in peacetime and in war, emerging as one of the most successful small, twin-engine transports in aviation history. Beech Aircraft Corporation test pilot H.C. “Ding” Rankin eased both throttles forward as the latest version of Ted Wells’ Model 18 accelerated down…
In 1937, the Beech Aircraft Company introduced its first multi-engine, cabin-class transport that would become the undisputed icon of business aviation and the grand patriarch of the legendary Beechcraft King Air. It had been five years since the dreadful “Black Thursday” of October 1929 had inaugurated the worst collapse of prosperity in American history. Millions…