Page 27 - Volume 12, Number 7

Cessna Aircraft Company built and sold only 240 airplanes. His friends Walter Beech and Lloyd Stearman also suffered losses. The Travel Air factory was locked up tight, and Beech was relegated to a desk job with the Curtiss-Wright Corporation in New York City. Stearman would be forced out of his own company in 1932 and return to California to become president of the resurrected Lockheed Aircraft Company.
Just when all seemed lost, in 1933 Dwane Wallace and his brother Dwight, with help from their uncle Clyde, would wrest control of the Cessna Aircraft Company from the stockholders and design a new, much improved version of the venerable Model AW that would put new wings on Wichita. KA
NOTES:
1. During the 1928 Republican National Convention held in Kansas City during August, the Model AS was put to work transporting daily newsreel footage to St. Louis for distribution by the Pathe’ News agency.
2. Only22DC-6Aand22DC-6Bwerebuilt before production ended in 1930. It is interesting to note that when Walter and Olive Ann Beech leased part of the defunct Cessna factory in 1932 to build the first Beechcraft, unused, welded fuselages for the Model AW, DC-6A and DC-6B were stored in the overhead rafters.
Ed Phillips, now retired and living in the South, has researched and written eight books on the unique and rich aviation history that belongs to Wichita, Kan. His writings have focused on
the evolution of the airplanes, companies and people that have made Wichita the “Air Capital of the World” for more than 80 years.
Clyde Vernon Cessna always believed the monoplanes were the only type of airplane worth building, although he did own a “New Swallow” biplane that introduced his nephew,
Dwane Wallace, to aviation. (EDWARD H. PHILLIPS COLLECTION)
JULY 2018 KING AIR MAGAZINE • 25