Cessna AT-17 Bobcat
The Cessna AT-17 Bobcat was the military form of Cessna's Model T-50, a five-seat twin-engine light transport introduced to the civil market in 1939. The United States Army took it as the AT-8 and AT-17 multi-engine trainer and, from 1942, as the UC-78 light transport; the U.S. Navy flew it as the JRC-1 and the Royal Canadian Air Force as the Crane. Built largely of wood, it earned the nickname "Bamboo Bomber" in Army service. Cessna built 5,399 aircraft of the type for civil and military use, and cheap war-surplus examples afterwards gave it a long second career in civil hands.
Why It Mattered
Cessna's T-50 gave the United States and Canada an inexpensive twin-engine trainer just as war created a vast need for multi-engine pilots. Cessna introduced the five-seat type to the civil market in 1939, and a year later the Army Air Forces ordered it as the AT-8 and, with a different engine, the AT-17 for training multi-engine pilots. Canada selected it the same year as the Crane for British Commonwealth Air Training Plan schools. The Canada Aviation and Space Museum judges that the Crane was not an ideal trainer, with poor single-engine performance and load-carrying ability, yet adequately filled the training needs of its time. Cessna built 5,399 aircraft of the type in all, for civil and military use.
Design Notes
The T-50 was a low-wing cantilever monoplane with retractable main landing gear and trailing-edge wing flaps, built around a wing of laminated spruce spars with truss-style spruce and plywood ribs. Its wings and tail were wooden, its fuselage a welded steel tube, and the whole airframe was fabric-covered, a mixture the American Heritage Museum notes made the aircraft relatively light for its size. Power came from two Jacobs radial engines — 245-horsepower R-755-9s in the AT-17 — driving a cabin arranged for a crew of two with three passengers. The type was also a first for its maker: Cessna's first twin-engine aeroplane, and its first with a retractable undercarriage.
Operational History
The prototype T-50 first flew on 26 March 1939. On 19 July 1940 the United States Army Air Corps ordered 33 AT-8 trainers based on the T-50, and in late 1941 the Army ordered a further 450 AT-17s, the new designation reflecting a change in equipment and engines. In 1942 the Army Air Forces took the type as the C-78 light transport, redesignated UC-78 on 1 January 1943, and by the end of the war Cessna had produced more than 4,600 Bobcats for the U.S. Army. The U.S. Navy purchased 63 as JRC-1s and used them as light personnel transports. The Royal Canadian Air Force received 826 Cranes, all flown as pilot trainers in Western Canada under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, and kept the type in service until 1947. Many bomber pilots trained on the type before going on to B-17s or B-24s. The name Bobcat came from a contest Cessna ran in its factory; in Army service the type instead picked up the nickname "Bamboo Bomber", for its wooden construction. Few Bobcats were still in service when the United States Air Force was formed in September 1947, and the type was declared obsolete in 1949.
Afterlife
After the war, surplus AT-17s and UC-78s could be converted back to civil standard with approved kits, and cheap war-surplus T-50s went back to work as civil transports with small airlines, charter and bush operators, and private pilots. Some commuter airlines used the type successfully, and in Canada many former Cranes were sold to private operators. A T-50 also appeared in the popular television series Sky King in the early-to-mid 1950s before being replaced by the all-metal Cessna 310. The wooden structure aged badly: the American Heritage Museum records that many aircraft simply rotted away where they sat at the outer edges of airports, and by the 1970s the number still airworthy had dwindled. Enthusiasts have since restored several, and museums preserve others — Pima Air & Space Museum displays a UC-78B in the U.S. Navy JRC-1 markings of Naval Air Station Alameda in 1943, and the Canada Aviation and Space Museum's Crane was transferred to it in 1965.