Beechcraft Monitor brochure

This is NOT an imaginary aircraft design, that's why it is not featured in the American section of the site. The Beechcraft Model 46 was ordered by the U.S. Air Force as the T-36, a twin-engine trainer-transport for which Beechcraft built a full-scale mockup, a flyable prototype and even a static test prototype (though the latter may not have been completed).

The project soon became a joint venture with Canadair and by January 1953 the latest details were fixed to start full-scale production. Canadair's US$100 million contract called for 227 aircraft, Beechcraft's contract was for 193 aircraft (not including the 2 prototypes), for a planned total of 420 production aircraft. 

Why, you say, have we never heard of that aircraft if prototypes were built? Simply because the T-36 program was cancelled by the U.S.A.F. in June 1953 on grounds that it was "not essential to the Air Force pilot, navigator, and bombardier's training program" — only hours before the first prototype was ready to fly.

Overnight, half of Beechcraft's order backlog was lost, and the employment level of 13,000 was also reduced by half. Beechcraft was supposed to complete two aircraft, but this never came to be. Both prototypes were destroyed and all documents pertaining to the program along with them (actually this sounds just like a "what if" story, which proves that reality sometimes is stranger than fiction!). Retaliation? We may never know.

As a tribute to that fascinating and unfortunate program, I took one of the very few images of the T-36 that have survived, and created this imaginary company document for it, recycling several genuine Beechcraft visual elements for it.

Beechcraft always gave names to their aircraft... and so, since the company's intended name for the Model 46 is not known (and likely never will be), I elected to christen it the Monitor, both as a recognition of the aircraft's training role and a fitting echo of the name they gave to their contemporary primary trainer, the Model 45 Mentor.