Page 26 - Volume 10 Number 7

24 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
The Cessna Aircraft Company’s primary product during the war years was
the versatile Model T-50 twin engine monoplane that trained multi-engine pilots. It served America and her allies, particularly the Royal Canadian Air Force. Cessna workers built more than 5,300 twin-engine trainers during the war. (KANSAS AVIATION MUSEUM)
In September 1940 the War Department dropped another “bomb” on Wichita when it handed out a $6.9-million contract to Stearman for hundreds of PT-13 and PT-17 primary trainers that were sorely needed by the Army Air Corps. Hot on the heels of that award came a large contract from the RCAF to manufacture 180 Crane I – a military version of the commercial, twin-engine Cessna T-50. The United States War Department also ordered 33 multi- engine trainer versions of the T-50 designated AT-8. The company was scheduled to fly the first production Crane I by Christmas and deliver the first AT-8 to the Army Air Corps before the end of the year.
about 8,700 and production floor space would surge to more than 1.5-million square feet.6
By December 1941 even the most pessimistic, isolationist American began to realize that the escalating war in Europe, coupled with Japan’s increasing aggression against China and its military buildup in the Western Pacific Ocean was threatening to entangle America in another world war. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese Imperial Navy’s surprise attack on the United States Pacific fleet at anchor in Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, erased any hope of peace and galvanized America’s will to fight.
Although America’s capacity to manufacture the weapons of war had expanded by 400 percent during 1939-1941, the nation’s industrial might would experience explosive growth after December 7. The Stearman factory had already delivered 2,000 PT-13/PT-17 primary trainers to the Army Air Corps and the United States Navy, but the pressing pace of the war effort left no time for celebration. During the months ahead the 3,000th, 4,000th, 5,000th and 6,000th biplane rolled off the assembly lines in rapid succession, followed by the 7,000th in April 1943.7
In addition, Beech Aircraft
Corporation had received contracts
worth $9.3 million for C/UC-43
military versions of the Beechcraft
Model D17S, as well as AT-11 and C/
UC-45 versions of the prewar Model
C18S. In total, the three major
airframe manufacturers in Wichita
were scrambling to build $40 million-
worth of aircraft, and America was
not at war! By the end of 1940,
these three companies employed
3,800 workers. Walter Beech, Julius
Schaefer and Dwane Wallace later
estimated that by January 1941,
that number would increase to a global war on two fronts. According
Despite the enormous challenge and seemingly insurmountable ob- stacles, the thousands of Stearman trainers taught many more thousands of fledglings how to fly before they were shipped out to fight
JULY 2016