  Location within Tennessee | |
Former name | Staggerwing Museum |
|---|---|
| Established | October 1973 |
| Location | Tullahoma, Tennessee |
| Coordinates | 35°22′20″N86°14′40″W / 35.372180°N 86.244569°W |
| Type | Aviation museum |
| Founder |
|
| President | Charles Parish |
| Curator | Kirby Totty |
| Website | beechcrafthm |
The Beechcraft Heritage Museum is an aviation museum at the Tullahoma Regional Airport in Tullahoma, Tennessee. It is focused on the history of the Beech Aircraft Corporation.
The museum was founded by Carolyn and Richard Perry, Louise Thaden, W. C. Yarbrough, John Parrish, Sr., Jim Gorman and Glenn McNabb in October 1973 as the Staggerwing Museum Foundation. [1] [2] [3] [4] The museum opened to the public in June 1975. [5] The Beech Center, which acts as an entrance and lobby, was dedicated in 1995. [6] [7] It broke ground on the first phase of the Cianchette Hangar in 1998. [4] It became the Beechcraft Heritage Museum in 2007. [8] The museum dedicated a 36,000 sq ft (3,300 m2) expansion to the Bonanza/Baron hangar and renamed it the Bost Hangar in October 2017. [9]
The museum holds an annual fly-in called the "Beech Party". [36]
Beechcraft is an American brand of civil aviation and military aircraft owned by Textron Aviation since 2014, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas. Originally, it was a brand of Beech Aircraft Corporation, an American manufacturer of general aviation, commercial, and military aircraft, ranging from light single-engined aircraft to twin-engined turboprop transports, business jets, and military trainers. Beech later became a division of Raytheon and then Hawker Beechcraft before a bankruptcy sale turned its assets over to Textron. It remains a brand of Textron Aviation.
Iris Louise McPhetridge Thaden was an American aviation pioneer, holder of numerous aviation records, and the first woman to win the Bendix trophy, alongside Blanche Noyes. She was inducted into the Arkansas Aviation Historical Society's Hall of Fame in 1980.
The Beechcraft Bonanza is an American general aviation aircraft introduced in 1947 by Beech Aircraft Corporation of Wichita, Kansas. The six-seater, single-engined aircraft is still being produced by Beechcraft and has been in continuous production longer than any other aircraft in history. More than 17,000 Bonanzas of all variants have been built, produced in both distinctive V-tail and conventional tail configurations; early conventional-tail versions were marketed as the Debonair.
The Beechcraft Travel Air was a twin-engine development of the Beechcraft Bonanza. It was designed to fill the gap between the single engine Model 35 Bonanza and the much larger Model 50 Twin Bonanza, and ultimately served as the basis for its replacement, the Baron.
The Beechcraft T-34 Mentor is an American propeller-driven, single-engined, military trainer aircraft derived from the Beechcraft Model 35 Bonanza. The earlier versions of the T-34, dating from around the late 1940s to the 1950s, were piston-engined. These were eventually succeeded by the upgraded T-34C Turbo-Mentor, powered by a turboprop engine. The T-34 remains in service more than seven decades after it was first designed.
The Beechcraft Model 50 Twin Bonanza is a small twin-engined aircraft designed by Beechcraft as an executive transport for the business market. It was developed to fill a gap in Beechcraft's product line between the single-engined Model 35 Bonanza and the larger Model 18. The Twin Bonanza is dissimilar to the Bonanza, being much larger and heavier and using more powerful engines, while in its earliest form having only half the passenger capacity of the Model 18.
Beginning in the late 1950s the United States aircraft company Bay Aviation produced nine twin-engine conversions of the Beechcraft Bonanza called the Super "V" Bonanza. After production was shifted to Canada in 1962, five more aircraft were built for a total production run of fourteen. The basis of the conversion was the early Model 35 Bonanza with the original small V-tail surfaces. The Super-V competed with Beechcraft's own Travel Air twin-engine Bonanza derivative.
The Beechcraft Model 17 Staggerwing is an American biplane with an atypical negative wing stagger. It first flew in 1932.
The Pratt & Whitney R-985 Wasp Junior is a series of nine-cylinder, air-cooled, radial aircraft engines built by the Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Company from the 1930s to the 1950s. These engines have a displacement of 985 in3 (16 L); initial versions produced 300 hp (220 kW), while the most widely used versions produce 450 hp (340 kW).
The Beechcraft Model 76 Duchess is an American twin-engined monoplane built by Beechcraft intended partly as a low cost introduction to twin-engine aircraft.
The Beechcraft Model 18 is a 6- to 11-seat, twin-engined, low-wing, tailwheel light aircraft manufactured by the Beech Aircraft Corporation of Wichita, Kansas. Continuously produced from 1937 to November 1969, over 9,000 were built, making it one of the world's most widely used light aircraft. Sold worldwide as a civilian executive, utility, cargo aircraft, and passenger airliner on tailwheels, nosewheels, skis, or floats, it was also used as a military aircraft.
The Mid-America Air Museum is an aerospace and aircraft museum located at the Liberal Mid-America Regional Airport in Liberal, Kansas, United States.
Walter Herschel Beech was an American aviator and early aviation entrepreneur who co-founded the Beech Aircraft Company in 1932 with his wife, Olive Ann Beech, and a team of three others.
Olive Ann Beech was an American aerospace businesswoman who was the co-founder, president, and chairwoman of the Beech Aircraft Corporation. She founded the company in 1932 with her husband, Walter Beech, and a team of three others. She earned more awards, honorary appointments, and special citations than any other woman in aviation history and was often referred to as the “First Lady of Aviation”.
Schaumburg Regional Airport is a public use airport located 22 nautical miles northwest of Chicago in the village of Schaumburg in Cook and DuPage counties, Illinois, United States. The airport is owned by the Village of Schaumburg and is just south of the Schaumburg Municipal Helistop.
Le Roy Airport is a public use airport in Genesee County, New York, United States. It is located two nautical miles (3.7 km) east of the central business district of the Le Roy, a village in the Town of Le Roy. According to the FAA's National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2007–2011, it is categorized as a reliever airport.
Alton E. (Chuck) Cianchette was an American businessperson and politician from Maine.
Edward H. Phillips is an American writer/historian, aviation industry reporter, and aviator who has specialized in the general aviation industry of the central United States—with particular emphasis on the aviation history of Wichita, Kansas and its aircraft manufacturers.
The Historic Flight Foundation (HFF) is an aviation museum located at Felts Field in Spokane, Washington. The museum collects, restores, and flies historic aircraft from the period between Charles Lindbergh's solo Atlantic crossing in 1927 and the first commercial flight of the Boeing 707 in 1957, a 30-year period when airplanes evolved from relatively simple wood and fabric biplanes to commercial jets. The museum was previously located at Paine Field in Mukilteo, Washington, but was relocated to Spokane during the spring of 2020 due to the presence of commercial air service at Paine Field.
