Beech Aircraft Corporation

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Beech Aircraft Corporation

logo
legal form Subsidiary of Textron
founding 1932
Seat Wichita , United States
Branch Aircraft construction
Website www.beechcraft.com

The Beechcraft Corporation , often also called Beechcraft or simply Beech , is an American aircraft manufacturer of smaller models for both civil and military aviation.

history

Beech Aircraft Corporation was founded in 1932 by Walter Beech and his wife Olive Ann Beech in Wichita, Kansas . Originally only civil transport aircraft were to be developed and built, but soon training aircraft were also included in the range. The military also discovered the capabilities of some Beech models, for example the Beech T-34 Mentor has been used for pilot training in many countries for many years until today.

The first model was the Beech Staggerwing Model 17R, of which several units were also used in the US Army . The Bonanza model was developed in 1948 and is still in production today.

On February 8, 1980, the company was bought by Raytheon . In 1994, Beech Aircraft formed Raytheon Aircraft with Hawker, which Raytheon had acquired from British Aerospace a year earlier . Since the separation from the parent company in 2007, this company has been called Hawker Beechcraft , which went bankrupt in 2012 . As a result, Beechcraft was taken over by Textron .

Beech models

Civil

Beechcraft Starship
Beech D.17S Staggerwing (1943)

Military

Automobile production

In 1946 the company made two prototypes of a passenger car . The Beechcraft Plainsman was a four-door, six-seat sedan with an aluminum body . An air-cooled four-cylinder engine of Franklin drive a generator, which the four -wheel motors supplied with current. Each of the electric motors produced around 25 hp .

Web links

Commons : Beech Aircraft Corporation  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. George Nick Georgano (Editor-in-Chief): The Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, Chicago 2001, ISBN 1-57958-293-1 , p. 141. (English)
  2. a b c d Ron Kowalke: Standard Catalog of American Cars 1946–1975. Krause Publications, Iola 1997, ISBN 0-87341-521-3 , p. 806. (English)
  3. Harald H. Linz, Halwart Schrader : The International Automobile Encyclopedia . United Soft Media Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-8032-9876-8 , Chapter Beech; Beechcraft Plainsman.