Page 27 - Volume 15 Number 2

During the winter of 1940, western Europe was quiet. Poland had fallen to the Nazis, part of Finland was under Soviet control and a brief but tranquil three-month period known as the “Phony War” settled over the continent. Earlier that year when Germany had conquered Denmark, Norway and the Low Countries, the ugly reality of America’s involvement in the conflict began to look like a real possibility – only France and England stood between Adolph Hitler and the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.
In Wichita, Kansas, the board of directors at the Cessna Aircraft Company came to the same realization that if the United States was left to face Hitler alone, she was woefully unprepared for the fight to come. Fortunately, there were 3,000 miles of Atlantic Ocean between
America and Europe that stood as a major obstacle to any invading German force. If Uncle Sam had to take up the sword, then he would need airplanes, thousands of them, from single-engine primary trainers to four-engine heavy bombers and everything in between.
FEBRUARY 2021
KING AIR MAGAZINE • 25
Cessna Aircraft Company’s experimental C-106, P-7 and P-10 were designed and developed amidst the fury of World War II but failed to progress beyond the prototype stage.
by Edward H. Phillips