Page 24 - Volume 14 Number 7

Hedrick’s statement was bold and to a great extent, true – but the company founded by Walter and Olive Ann Beech in 1932 was only one of many that helped put wings on the world. Hedrick, who already had extensive experience in sales when he went to work at Beech Aircraft in 1940, arrived on the scene when the company was undergoing an extensive expansion of its manufacturing capabilities to meet military contracts for training airplanes. Facing an uphill struggle to meet demand, in July 1940 the decision had been made to terminate production of commercial airplanes, except for priority orders already on hand.
As 1941 approached, Beech Aircraft, along with the Cessna Aircraft Company and the Wichita Division of the Boeing Airplane Company, were hiring massive numbers of workers to build President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Arsenal of Democracy” aimed at supplying Great Britain with the weapons it needed to fight Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime. Included in that arsenal was the goal of manufacturing 50,000 military aircraft. Such seemingly impossible targets would require a workforce of millions, and Americans quickly signed up and went to work. For example, at Beech Aircraft in November 1940, there were 1,935 men and women toiling on the production lines to build the AT-11-, C-45-, SNB- and GB-series aircraft for the United States War Department. By contrast, by June 1945 employment had peaked at more than 14,000. As the war neared its end in 1945, Hedrick had already been heavily
Sales of the postwar Model D18S were also affected by the economic slump, but by 1950 orders regained momentum. (Edward H. Phillips Collection)
22 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
JULY 2020