Page 22 - Volume 12 Number 1

Beechcraft’s First Light Twin
Impressed by the success of Piper’s PA-23 Apache and Cessna’s Model 310, in 1956 Beech Aircraft Corporation entered the emerging light twin-engine market with its Model 95 Travel Air.
by Edward H. Phillips
In postwar America, general aviation’s “Golden Age” was born in the late 1940s and by the early 1950s was maturing rapidly, attracting thousands of would-be aviators yearning to fly. In the nation’s “Air Capital of the World,” Wichita, Kansas, airframe manufacturers such as Beech Aircraft Corporation and the Cessna Aircraft Company were thriving, reaping the benefits of a commercial market that had not been so vibrant since the end of the “Roarin’ Twenties.”
A look at records from Beech Aircraft Corporation for the year 1953 reflects the public’s growing interest in aviation. That year the company introduced the D35 Bonanza – the latest edition of its highly successful, single-engine Model 35, and the much larger Model B50 Twin Bonanza. The latter filled a gap in the product line between the Bonanza and the venerable Model 18 (nearly 1,000 of the stalwart “Twin Beech” had been built for feeder airlines and executive transport since 1945), and President Olive Ann Beech anticipated that
worldwide commercial and military sales for 1954 would exceed $80 million.1
Beech Aircraft, however, was not the only airframe manufacturer reaping the benefits of America’s resurgent love affair with flying. Across town, the Cessna Aircraft Company had built more than 1,800 new monoplanes in 1953, and overall sales had increased 55 percent by comparison with 1952. The nation’s third major light airplane builder, Piper Aircraft Corporation, based in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, reported a 48 percent increase in sales, thanks in part to expanding use of aircraft expressly for business flying. Company officials
The Model 95 Badger lightweight twin was renamed “Travel Air” when it was introduced in 1956, chiefly to avoid confusion with the Russian TU-16 bomber code-named “Badger” by the U.S. Air Force. The Model 95 not only filled a gap in the Beechcraft product line between the Model 35 Bonanza and the Model 50 Twin Bonanza, it offered Beechcraft customers an alternative to the Piper Apache and the Cessna Model 310. (WICHITA STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES)
20 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
JANUARY 2018