Page 26 - Volume 15 Number 7

IN HISTORY
Bigger and Better – The Model 100
In its ongoing quest to develop improved versions of the highly successful King Air platform, Beech Aircraft Corporation once again dipped into its “recipe” book and blended the best of the Model 90 and the Model 99 to create the Model 100 – flagship of the Beechcraft fleet.
by Edward H. Phillips
24 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
JULY 2021
By the late 1960s, Olive Ann Beech had come But the Kansas girl hired by Clyde V. Cessna
a long way from the “Roarin’ Twenties” of the Travel Air Company. In those halcyon days, the open-cockpit biplane was state-
of-the-art and no respectable lady could go “aviating” without a leather helmet, bearskin flying suit and a pair of goggles. “Mr. Beech’s idea of flying was to take me up and turn the airplane upside down,” Mrs. Beech once remarked to the author with a wry grin. She enjoyed flying but never harbored a desire to become an aviatrix in her own right – she left that to the likes of Amelia Earhart, Ruth Elder and Louise McPhetridge von Thaden.
It was, in fact, Ms. Thaden who in 1936 was encouraged by Mrs. Beech to compete in the prestigious Bendix race from New York to Los Angeles – an all-out speed event that had been dominated by male pilots until women were allowed to compete that year. Flying with co- pilot Blanche Noyes in a nearly stock Model C17R powered by an aging Wright radial engine, the two ladies beat the best that men (and other women pilots) had to offer and collected a handsome sum for their efforts, much to the delight of Mrs. Beech.
in 1925 to run Travel Air’s front office had, over the previous 40 years, witnessed the constant evolution of aviation from barnstorming to a billion-dollar business that held tremendous potential for future growth.
One may be asking, “What does all of that have to do with the Model 100 King Air?” Although the venerable C17R pales in comparison to the modern, sleek and comfortable King Air, the story serves to underscore the inevitable quest of one aircraft company to build the best business airplanes money could buy. Olive Ann Beech believed in that creed with the same gusto as that of her husband, Walter H. Beech. Working together with a few hand-picked associates from the Depression-wrecked Travel Air Company, early in 1932 they co-founded the Beech Aircraft Company in a vacant building leased from the equally defunct Cessna Aircraft Company once led by Walter’s longtime friend, Clyde Cessna. Always choosing his words carefully, Mr. Cessna once told the press that, “Speed is the only reason for flying.” He was, of course, correct and that mandate remained at the forefront of business