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thedrifter
05-10-04, 09:28 AM
Issue Date: May 10, 2004

The Lore of the Corps
‘Bug smasher’ was a hit among Marine aviators

By Robert F. Dorr
Special to the Times

For decades, a few Marine aviators enjoyed the opportunity to fly a slow, twin-engine propeller plane that never won any beauty contests but earned plenty of affection.
The Model 18 Twin Beech was known in official jargon as the SNB when used as a trainer or as the JRB when pulling transport duty. But pilots called it the “slow Navy Beechcraft” or the “bug smasher” — suggesting that it could fly barely fast enough to accumulate insects on the windshield.

The SNB trainer officially was the Kansan and the JRB transport was the Expeditor, but it’s unlikely any Marine used these names.

“I don’t remember calling it anything at all,” said former Sgt. Kent Smith, who maintained an SNB at Cherry Point, N.C., in the 1950s. “It didn’t need a fancy name. It was just a reliable flying machine that was always there.”

Retired Navy Cmdr. Dewey “Jack” Ferrell, who piloted the Twin Beech intermittently while serving as an attack pilot in the 1950s, recalled it as a “joy to fly,” though not everyone was comfortable with a tail-wheeled propeller plane. “It was a test of a good pilot to land it, but otherwise it was completely without flaws,” Ferrell said.

The Wichita, Kan., aircraft company founded by Walter Beech still was in its infancy on Jan. 15, 1937, when pilot Jack Thornburg took the first Model 18 on its initial flight.

World War II interrupted production of the civilian model, but the armed forces became eager customers for the Twin Beech.

The first of more than 1,500 of these aircraft operated by the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard were delivered in 1940. They were used initially as directors for radio-controlled target aircraft and as gunnery trainers.

Most SNBs and JRBs were pulled through the sky by twin, 450-horsepower Pratt & Whitney R-985 radial piston engines with two-bladed propellers, giving the Twin Beech a maximum speed of 225 miles per hour.

Before pinning on their wings, thousands of Marine aviators learned multiengined flying on the SNB in Navy training squadrons.

Former Aviation Photographer’s Mate 3rd Class Dudley Stouch remembers an unusual mission the SNB performed in the early 1950s — training Navy photographers.

“The training base at Pensacola, Fla., had a cadre of crusty old Marine enlisted pilots who had been flying since World War II,” he said. “They drew the job of hauling us around with our cameras and teaching us air-to-air and air-to-ground photography. Some of them were staff sergeants, but they were better pilots than a lot of Navy commanders I knew.”

In the postwar era, Twin Beeches were returned to the factory for new wing spars and other upgrades. They became SNB-4 and SNB-5 models, and they stayed on duty into the 1960s. In 1962, when the Pentagon’s system for naming aircraft was overhauled, every plane in the SNB and JRB series became a C-45.

Student naval aviators, including Marines, continued to train on the TC-45J (the former SNB-5) until the late 1950s.

Many Twin Beech aircraft still fly today — some in restored military markings. According to James D’Angina of the not-yet-open National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Va., the Marines have two of these aircraft for museum display.

One is a JRB-4 model, currently on loan to a museum at Floyd Bennett Field, N.Y.

Robert F. Dorr, an Air Force veteran, lives in Oakton, Va. He is the author of numerous books, including “Air Force One.” E-mail him at robertdorr@aol.com.

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=0-MARINEPAPER-2859999.php


Ellie