Photo: Platinum Fighter Sales
Let us paint the scene for you. The year is 1944, and you're fresh back at home in the U.S. after a tour in the Pacific theater of World War II as an F4F Wildcat pilot during the Battles of the Coral Sea and Guadalcanal. Lucky enough not to come home in a pine box draped in the stars and stripes, you wind up spending some of the money you'd saved up before the war to buy into a group of investors who'll give you stick time in the very same Beech D-17S Staggerwing we see before us now.
That's only a plausible hypothetical for this classic biplane's backstory, but the plane itself is all real and for sale via Platinum Fighter Sales of Redondo Beach, California. With a slick red paint job with contrasting black decal stripes across the length of the fuselage, this old Staggerwing calls to us in the same way a classic Italian sports car does with the same color scheme. In the days before private jets, the Model 17 was one of the first single-engine private passenger planes that well-to-do eccentric, wealthy aviators drooled over.
In truth, all Beech D17s were built as military-spec models after 1941. But you'd never know that looking at how it sits now. With its Pratt & Whitney R-985 Wasp Junior freshly overhauled and its interior trimmed in tasteful tan cloth with plush vinyl accents, this is the kind of classic bird you wouldn't mind spending a good, long six-hour jumper flight inside. With 450 horsepower to work with and a top speed in the low 210 mph (327.9 kph) vicinity, the D17 variant, particularly, was pretty spry for a platform that first flew in November 1932.
With seating for five people, including a pilot and all the luggage, it's easy to trace the lineage of these early executive leisure airplanes right up to the first private jets in the 1960s, like the Lockheed Jetstar and the early Learjets. Like private jets, the only way a recently G.I.-billed Navy jockey was going to fly this future classic was to be a part of a team of investors who bought one as their pilot. Because this model was built to be a military transport plane, we bet those fat military personnel transport paychecks were pretty sweet.
Today, this D17 looks fantastic thanks to a full engine-out restoration by Rare Aircraft Ltd in Faribault, Minnesota. Best known for their quality work with vintage Stinson and Waco airframes, the company was well suited to bringing the flashiest private plane of the mid-40s into the 2020s with a flair that only vintage metal from the period can bring you. Cheers to another 80 years in the sky.
In truth, all Beech D17s were built as military-spec models after 1941. But you'd never know that looking at how it sits now. With its Pratt & Whitney R-985 Wasp Junior freshly overhauled and its interior trimmed in tasteful tan cloth with plush vinyl accents, this is the kind of classic bird you wouldn't mind spending a good, long six-hour jumper flight inside. With 450 horsepower to work with and a top speed in the low 210 mph (327.9 kph) vicinity, the D17 variant, particularly, was pretty spry for a platform that first flew in November 1932.
With seating for five people, including a pilot and all the luggage, it's easy to trace the lineage of these early executive leisure airplanes right up to the first private jets in the 1960s, like the Lockheed Jetstar and the early Learjets. Like private jets, the only way a recently G.I.-billed Navy jockey was going to fly this future classic was to be a part of a team of investors who bought one as their pilot. Because this model was built to be a military transport plane, we bet those fat military personnel transport paychecks were pretty sweet.
Today, this D17 looks fantastic thanks to a full engine-out restoration by Rare Aircraft Ltd in Faribault, Minnesota. Best known for their quality work with vintage Stinson and Waco airframes, the company was well suited to bringing the flashiest private plane of the mid-40s into the 2020s with a flair that only vintage metal from the period can bring you. Cheers to another 80 years in the sky.
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