A Staggerwing with less than 200 hours

NC80309 has the remarkable distinction of having flown fewer than 200 hours since it came off the Beech production line in August 1946 at Wichita.

Its saga began shortly after its first owner, Oles Envelope Corporation of Baltimore, Maryland, took delivery of it around October 1946. 

“The president of Oles Envelope Company’s son was flying home from Texas and stopped in Charleston, South Carolina, to refuel,” recounts Jim Francis of Winter Haven, Florida, who is a previous owner of the airplane. “As he walked to the administration building, he looked back at the airplane and the tail was on fire. It burned all the way up to the cabin doors. He had landed with a flat tailwheel and they surmised that sparks from the magnesium wheel started the fire, fueled by old grass clippings that had collected in the tail area during landings on sod strips. That was March 28, 1947, and the airplane was only six months old with roughly 75 hours’ total time.” 

Some 40 years later, Jim was excited by the prospect of owning a low-time G model Staggerwing, and wasn’t deterred by its fire-damaged and environmentally-ravaged condition. That’s because he knew just who he wanted to restore the airplane.

Enter Mike Stanko, president of Gemco Aviation Services of Youngstown, Ohio, which services a wide range of Beechcrafts and employs nine full-time mechanics. Mike has rebuilt 15 Staggerwings, and did a considerable amount of the hands-on work on NC80309. 

“This Staggerwing went through more than 14 different owners through the years,” says Mike. “In February 1987, Jim bought the aircraft and we hauled it on a flatbed trailer to Ohio from a cotton farm in Alabama. It was all covered in cotton and bird droppings, and I remember when I was unloading the aircraft into Jim’s hangar, his wife Doris had this look on her face like, ‘what is this that we’re getting into?’”

No wonder Doris had a quizzical look on her face — it just happened to be their wedding anniversary! 

Reaching back into his memory bank during a recent phone conversation, Jim said, “It was basically just the framework of the fuselage and I believe two wings out of the four, and the vertical and horizontal stabilizers. I think the forward fuselage tank came with it. Jim Younkin made some 49-gallon rear fuselage tanks for others and I swapped something for one of those original tanks. The inlet cowling was missing and, again, Jim Younkin came to the rescue because there was another guy out in the Denver area who was getting a Staggerwing rebuilt, and he wanted a new inlet cowling. So Jim, with his extensive sheet metal expertise, made one and I ended up buying the guy’s original to put on mine. Jim Younkin also made the oil tank for this airplane.” 

George York and Jim Gorman, who were involved in the early Staggerwing fly-ins, proved invaluable for finding parts. Jim bought as many new old stock parts from George as he could, including main landing gear parts and springs. He had the springs chrome plated, along with the latches on the cowling and hinges on the elevator and rudder.  

“It was a retirement project for Jim Francis, who was a United Airlines captain at the time,” Mike explains. “We built the airplane in various stages over a 10-year period. We built all new sheet metal, new cowlings, and every stick of wood and glue joint in the aircraft was brand new in the mid-1990s.”

Treasures from the Past

Jim scrounged for Staggerwing parts for years, and scored some interesting successes.

“The hardest things to trace down were the door and window handles and the rudder trim handle,” he recalls. “Those are out of a six-cylinder 1940 Hudson. That’s what Beech used that year for the G model.”

“The funny thing is the one year I was looking for those I was living up near Mike in Columbiana, Ohio, and the Hudson group was having its annual meeting in Youngstown,” Jim reminisces. “I couldn’t believe it — here they are, meeting right here, and I’m looking for Hudson door handles! So I was able to come up with the original handles.”

He found the new old stock nav lights at the fly market one year at Oshkosh.

“The retractable landing lights that are in the lower wings came from a guy out in California,” Jim recounts. “They were still packed in the original boxes, and sealed in tinfoil-type packages inside. I wanted to be there when Mike and his crew opened them to smell that 1945 air!”

“Jim Gorman clued me in on an overhauled prop up in Michigan, and I stored half of that prop in my living room and the other half in my dining room,” he continues. “When we moved to Columbiana to be closer to Mike’s shop, I kept the prop in a spare bedroom upstairs.” 

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Perseverance finally yielded Jim with contact information for the Oles Envelope Corporation’s pilot’s wife.

“She had picked out the colors for the airplane, and she gave me two Kodachrome slides of the Staggerwing that were taken at the original Baltimore airport around 1946. The controllers at that airport referred to the airplane as the ‘Green Hornet,‘” Jim remembers. “I also had an original side panel with the Beechcraft bird and Oles Envelope logo on it. It was scorched a little by the fire, but we polished it to preserve it.”

Those Kodachromes were enlarged to reveal color and details, and Mike took the prints, along with the original side panel, to his friend’s paint mixing company. After about 100 samples, a match was obtained for the original Spartan Green and Berry Red colors. 

Staggerwing Success

With a bit of strategic planning, NC80309 received its airworthiness certificate on Dec. 17, 1998 — the 95^th anniversary of the Wright brothers flight.

Jim already had tailwheel time in Luscombes, and was checked out in his beloved Staggerwing by American Airline pilot Steve Johnson. 

“Steve did the test flight in Ohio and delivered the airplane to me at Tullahoma, Tennessee, around February 1999, where I was living at the time. Mike had rebuilt Steve’s airplane right before mine,” recalls Jim. “Then Steve checked out Mike in it, and I thought, ‘he’s getting a checkout in my airplane?!’ Mike made three takeoffs and landings. He did a beautiful job flying it.”

“My original idea was to go out and fly it through all 48 lower states with the wife,” he continues. “But she came down sick, and couldn’t get up in the airplane after it was finished. I flew it for about 20 hours.” 

Jim created a mini-museum in his Tullahoma hangar to showcase NC80309.

“I had three easels set up with history boards on them, and people would come over and just ooh and ahh.”

“You know, you’ll never reap the money that you put into a restoration, but there’s the joy of getting it put together because it was one of only 20 G models ever made,” he reflects. “I was bound and determined that I was going to put that airplane together, and I did.”

Jim sold NC80309 to a new owner in 2006, and that summer, Jake Bartholow, who was part of the Gemco Aviation Services restoration team, flew it to AirVenture, where it received a Bronze Lindy. 

Fast Forward

In October 2019, Jimmy Cook flew the immaculately-restored airplane from San Antonio, Texas, to the Beech Party at Tullahoma, Tennessee.

Jimmy left the army as a helicopter pilot in 1977 and flew as a corporate pilot for 40 years. 

“I was checked out in the Staggerwing in 2006, and the next day was my first solo pilot flight into a dirt strip with my boss!” he says with a smile.

“It’s just one of those airplanes that speaks to me,” he says. “It’s a handful to fly and I just love it. I can get real teary-eyed when I talk about why I like to fly it. This Staggerwing allows me to truly experience the essence of flying which, to me, is the freedom of being one with the airplane.”