Beechcraft

Beechcraft Corporation is an American manufacturer of general aviation and military aircraft, ranging from light single-engined aircraft to twin-engined turboprop transports, and military trainers. A brand of Textron Aviation since 2014, it has also been a division of Raytheon and later a brand of Hawker Beechcraft.

History

Beech Aircraft Company was founded in Wichita, Kansas, in 1932 by Walter Beech and his wife Olive Ann Beech. The company began operations in an idle Cessna factory. With designer Ted Wells, they developed the first aircraft under the Beechcraft name, the classic Model 17 Staggerwing, which first flew in November 1932. Over 750 Staggerwings were built, with 270 manufactured for the United States Army Air Forces during World War II.

Beechcraft was not Beech's first company, as he had previously formed Travel Air in 1924 and the design numbers used at Beechcraft followed the sequence started at Travel Air, and were then continued at Curtiss-Wright, after Travel Air had been absorbed into the much larger company in 1929. Beech became President of the Curtiss-Wright's airplane division and VP of sales, but became dissatisfied with being so far removed from aircraft production and quit to form Beechcraft, using the original Travel Air facilities and employing many of the same people. Model numbers prior to 11/11000 were built under the Travel Air name, while Curtiss-Wright built the CW-12, 14, 15 and 16 as well as previous successful Travel Air models (mostly the model 4).

Beechcraft Plainsman

The Beechcraft Plainsman was a car made in 1946 by the Beech Aircraft Company in Wichita, Kansas. The Plainsman was fitted with an air cooled four cylinder Franklin engine driving a generator, which in turn powered four electric motors, one for each wheel. It was fitted with fully independent air suspension. It also had an aluminum body. It weighed 2,200 pounds (1,000 kg), its top speed was 160 miles per hour (260 km/h), and could carry six passengers. Only two were built.

References

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/1946-beechcraft-plainsman-concept-car.htm

Beechcraft Bonanza

The Beechcraft Bonanza is an American general aviation aircraft introduced in 1947 by Beech Aircraft Corporation of Wichita, Kansas. The six-seater, single-engine aircraft is still being produced by Beechcraft and has been in continuous production longer than any other airplane in history. More than 17,000 Bonanzas of all variants have been built, produced in both distinctive V-tail as well as conventional tail configurations.

Design and development

At the end of World War II, two all-metal light aircraft emerged, the Model 35 Bonanza and the Cessna 195, that represented very different approaches to the premium-end of the postwar civil aviation market. With its high wing, seven-cylinder radial engine, fixed tailwheel undercarriage and roll-down side windows, the Cessna 195 was little more than a continuation of prewar technology; the 35 Bonanza, however, was more like the fighters developed during the war, featuring an easier-to-manage horizontally-opposed six cylinder engine, a rakishly streamlined shape, retractable nosewheel undercarriage (although the nosewheel initially was not steerable, but castering) and low-wing configuration.