@ Santa Maria, CA
October 2024
First flown in 1949, the Twin Bonanza executive transport was developed to fill a gap in Beechcraft’s product line between the single-engined Model 35 Bonanza and the larger Model 18. Despite its name, the Twin Bonanza is a substantially larger and heavier aircraft that is mostly dissimilar to the single-engined Bonanza; the only major shared parts are the front fuselage sides and windows, and on early models, the main cabin door. One crashed during an demonstration flight for the Army, with soldiers and sandbags onboard. Everyone on board walked away from the crash. The Army was impressed enough with the structural strength to procure 216 of the 994 examples produced. Twin Bonanza production ended in 1963 while the King Air was being developed.