Can anyone identify this aircraft?

plane

I’ve already asked Burl, our resident expert on aviation history, via email. Of course, his main area of specialization is military (I think), and this really looks civilian to me. But he probably knows, and I’m awaiting a reply.

Anyway, Lanier Jones of ADCO had this framed picture (sorry about the reflection of me in the image; the picture doesn’t have non-reflective glass), and was curious as to what sort of aircraft it was. (I’d have taken it out and scanned it, but I think he just had if framed.)

I told him it looked like an early airliner. I can think of no other reason for the windows. General shape is like a DC-3 (the civilian version of the C-47), but it seems much too small to be one of those.

Anyone?

 

6 thoughts on “Can anyone identify this aircraft?”

  2. Juan Caruso

    Brad, from the obfuscating view it might also be a smaller Beach AT-7, which also saw service in and after WW2.

    A retired aviation engineer will probably know for certain when he returns from his vacation.

  3. Brad Warthen Post author

    Jim Foster, a former fellow editor at The State and later press guy for several state superintendents of education, writes to tell me this:

    Definitely a twin Beach. My dad flew TBMs in the South Pacific during WWII, but after the war, in the Naval Reserve, he flew the twin Beach in the Naval Reserve. He was still flying them after I was born in 1953, and I can remember my mom taking me to the Spartanburg airport to pick him up and watching him taxi that twin Beach right up to the fence where we were waiting.

    I asked whether it was used to transport VIPs — with those windows, making it look like a small airliner, I couldn’t imagine another use — he replied, “If memory serves, yes, it was a way to ferry senior officers around the country more cheaply than in C47s.”

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