Word: cessna
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...works for the U.S. Army. The artillery, which now flies 130-m.p.h. spotters, wants a small plane fast enough to escape the radio-active blast from its long-range atomic cannon, and has asked several planemakers if they could handle a production order for such a plane. Leading candidate: Cessna's new, 400-m.p.h., T-37 twin-jet trainer (TIME, Aug. 9), now being produced for the Air Force...
Died. Clyde V. Cessna, 74, pioneer aviator, plane designer and manufacturer, founder (in 1927) of the Cessna Aircraft Co. in Rago, Kans. Cessna built his first wooden monoplane in 1911, launched his own business by designing and producing a cantilever monoplane which won every race it entered in 1928 and 1929. He retired in 1934, later saw the company become the nation's largest manufacturer of commercial light planes...
...World War II Cessna's twin-engined T-50 trainer was so successful that the U.S. Army Air Corps followed the R.C.A.F. with a flood of orders. During the war, Cessna built 5,360 of its twin-engined T-50s. Sales zoomed to $71 million in 1943, and profits...
Like the rest of the industry, Cessna had to cut back after V-J day, but it was soon able to step into a new market of flying executives and Sunday pilots. In short order President Wallace put out three models of a high-wing, single-engined Cessna monoplane that could fly at 120-140 m.p.h., watched sales climb back to $14 million in 1948. When Korea hit, Cessna's civilian planes became L19 artillery spotters. Observers used L-19s to spot camouflaged tanks hidden from 600-m.p.h. jets. Signal Corpsmen slung rolls of wire beside the wings, hedgehopped...
Today, peacetime flyers are finding Cessna's puddlejumpers just as useful. One California lumberman uses a Cessna 170 monoplane to check on his surveyor teams; a Texas undertaker even uses his Cessna as a flying hearse. With his new helicopters, jets and multi-engined transports, President Dwane Wallace takes a cheery view of the future. Says he: "In our business, it's early morning and the sun is shining...