Walter Beech — Wikipedia
Walter Herschel Beech ( – ) is an American pilot and industrialist in aeronautics. He is best known for having created the Beechcraft firm, which he directed from 1932 to 1950.
Son of Cornelius and Tommie (Hay) Beech, Walter Herschel Beech was born in Pulaski, Tennessee, the . Very young he demonstrates his skills for mechanics by performing repairs in local sawmills. He is also passionate about mechanical flight and made a glider composed of a wooden frame covered with sheets at the age of 14. If the attempt fails, it is not discouraged.
After the college, he was hired by a MINNEAPOLIS automotive factory and for two years as a salesperson. Back in Minneapolis, he acquired an old curtiss biplane with accidental propulsive engine, repairs it and, having only advice provided by the previous owner, manages to take off this device , thus making its first solo flight.
In 1917 he was admitted to the Aviation section of the US Army Signal Corps as a driver and mechanic expert. He is assigned as an instructor in Kelly Field, Texas. After having traveled the United States in all directions for a year as a stuntman pilot, performing as a meeting or giving baptisms of the air, he finally settled in 1921 in Wichita, a prosperous Kansas city, where Jacob Clelendick Offers the official Pilot Pilot of E M Laird Aviation Co Inc. Walter Beech is then known for his skills as a demonstration pilot and won his first trophies with a Laird Swallow.
When Emil Matthew Laird (in) and Jacob Mollendick separate into , the latter names Walter Beech Vice-President and Managing Director of the Swallow Airplane Manufacturing Company (in) . Quickly, two clans oppose: while Jacob Mollendick wishes to continue using wood to produce the Swallow, a small group of frames is more favorable to the use of metal. In , Walter Beech, Clyde Cessna, Lloyd Stearman and a few others prefer to leave Swallow Airplane and try to produce a metal structure device. A potential customer suggests the name of Travel Air For the future device, and the company created takes the name of Travel Airplane Manufacturing Co. The first achievement of the new company was a triplace two -seater biplane with open posts. The same year Travel Air produced the first closed cabin commercial monomotor built in the United States.
Walter H. Beech participates in many meetings to promote his first achievements and won in The Ford Commercial Airplane Reliabibility Tour with Brice Goldsborough, aboard a Biplane Travel Air equipped with Pioneer instruments. After this victory, won in front of 40 competitors, which demonstrated the possibility of flying to the instruments, he abandoned the management to devote himself to the development of the company. The Travel Air 5000 (in) is the first plane built in the United States to meet the needs of an airline. He is followed in of a first monoplane. Doped by the successes of the 5000 nicknamed Woolaroc In the Dole Race and the Travel Air Type R ” Mystery Ship ” (in) At the National Air Races, Travel Air produced 1,000 planes in .
Crisis of 1929 obliges, Travel Air was absorbed by Curtiss-Wright Corporation at the end of 1929. Walter Beech appointed president, as well as vice-president in charge of sales. The following year he married the one who has assisted him since 1925, Olive Ann Melor. Not accommodating to New York life and considering herself too far from the design office as well as production, Walter H. Beech resigns in , while the situation in the aeronautical industry is critical: that year, only 549 civil aircraft were sold on the US market. Yet the Beech couple returns to Wichita and, in , found the Beech Aircraft Corporation. Walter is president, Olive Ann Secretary, financial and administrative director. They are joined by some Travel Air collaborators, including Theodore Arthur Wells (in) , appointed vice-president and chief engineer.
The first realization of the Beech Aircraft Corporation is an elegant biplane whose lower plane is established in front of the upper plane. This aerodynamic provision rarely used allows the prototype of the Beech Model 17 to win in the Texaco Trophy Race in , a victory that ensures the future of the company. At the beginning of 1934, Beech Aircraft moved to the premises of the former Travel Air Corporation. On January 15, 1935 left the Wichita factory the prototype of Model 18, a twin -engine that will have an even more important success. H. C. Rankin, driving on a serial device with Walter Beech as a co -pilot, wins the McFadden Trophy Le , covering 1,740 km To 376 km/h on average.
First Beechcraft twin -engine, Model 18 and its wooden derivative Model 25 experienced remarkable success during the Second World War, but after the latter it took a lot of energy to Walter Beech to keep the business afloat. Convinced that the influx of surplus aircraft could not satisfy all of the customers, he claimed from Ted A. Wells and his collaborators a quadrip of modern Grand Tourism. With its characteristic look, the 35 Bonanza Model was an undeniable success. In line with this device, the Model 45 Mentor, which took the air on December 2, 1948, then the model 50 Twin Bonanza announced in Wear the brand of Walter Beech and ensured the recovery of Beechcraft. The first was ordered by the US Air Force then many allied countries and produced under license in Argentina, Canada and Japan. The second was adopted by the US Army and widely used in Korea.
Walter H Beech has suddenly died the , victim of a heart attack. Olive Ann Beech then took over, ensuring the presidency of Beechcraft until and general management to .
- A.J. Pelletier, Beech Aircraft and their predecessors . Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland (1995). (ISBN 1-55750-062-2 ) .
- and wixey, Images of Aviation: Beechcraft . Tempus Publishing Ltd, Brimbscombe port, Gloucestershire, UK (1999). (ISBN 0-7524-1617-0 )
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