Page 28 - July24

IN HISTORY
An L-23F was caught in its element on a photographic mission. Compared to earlier versions of the Seminole, the new airplane’s chief attributes were its larger cabin, extended wingspan and more powerful engines. A total of 71 airplanes were delivered to the U.S. Army. (Special Collections and University Archives, Wichita State University Libraries)
The Last Seminole
In the late 1950s, the U.S. Army’s inventory of the versatile L-23/U-8 Seminole series of light military transports ended with introduction of the L-23F – the versatile Beechcraft that set a new standard for fixed-wing Army aviation.
by Edward Phillips
Thirteen years after the end of the bloodiest conflict on earth known as World War II, Americans were riding the crest of a major postwar economic wave that put a car in every garage and Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Oval Office. It was a time like no other. Consider just a few of the distant memories from that generation: Detroit’s General Motors Corp, Ford and Chrysler went wild with tailfins, loads of chrome and gas-guzzling V-8 power. Drive-in theaters dotted the landscape, Wonder® Bread was in every kid’s lunchbox, Elvis was swinging his hips (but not on national TV!); nuclear fallout shelters were all the rage, pretty girls on roller skates served food to cool guys in “hot rods,” and color television was the technological marvel of the day.
In addition, the “Atomic Age” ushered in by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 had slowly given way to the “Space Age,” with the United States and the Soviet Union vying to put elementary
satellites into earth orbit while quietly racing to see who would be first to successfully launch a man into outer space. It was also an uncertain time when the Cold War between the two nuclear superpowers was heating
26 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
JULY 2024