I AM NOT SELLING A KIT only a new, full-size copy of the Berkeley deHavilland BEAVER kit PLANS & parts patterns for a 48" UC / FF / RC model.

In 1960 a nice true-scale 48" span kit of the renowned Canadian bush plane the deHavilland BEAVER was produced while Pop was in the U.S. Army flight school.  It called for a 1/2A engine and was for free flight, UC or RC. I have here an excellent personal copy of this great true-scale plan plus a full sheet of parts patterns and scale documentation.

The first photo was taken of Pop getting into his BEAVER. In 1960 they started out with cotton flight suits and as Vietnam heated up they were issued flame retardant treated Nomex 2-piece suits.

The Army bought hundreds of these planes to use as Instrument Trainers and as light cargo planes in wartime (it would carry 1,000 pounds inside or shackled under the wings for dropping the crates). It was dubbed the L-20 and later the U-6. That's Pop in the pictures standing beside their unit's Beaver after finishing flight school. 

Pop shared this amazing experience:

“It was our cross-country training plane in the U.S. Army's Advanced Instrument Phase of flight school. I was in OFWAC 60-7, which meant I started flight school in the L-19 in April, 1960, and finished in February, 1961, in the BEAVER. Since I became a transition instructor pilot in the wonderful BEAVER, it was my favorite of all the 26 different airplanes I flew.  

But one flight I shall never forget. 60 years ago, on April 20, 1961, I took off in an L-20 BEAVER from Cairnes Field at Fort Rucker, AL, and flew an 8 hour 35 minute round trip flight to Miami International to pick up a Flight Surgeon. When I landed about noon in Miami, the Border Patrol came up and asked, "Lt., how would you like to make $20,000?" I said, "What would I have to do?" "Well," the agent replied, there are two Cuban exiles here who will give you $10,000 each to fly them over Cuba and let them bail out to join the revolution!" Fortunately, I chose not to make the flight. If I had, we would have been shot down. Unknown to me at the time, the invasion had already failed on the previous day, April 19th.

When I got back to Ft. Rucker and went to the chow hall for supper, word came around that our classmate, Captain Tom "Pete" Ray, had been shot down during an invasion of Cuba the day before and was presumed dead!!! The fiasco came to be called the "BAY OF PIGS". It was one of our nation's most embarrassing failures.

Tom Ray was an Air Force Air Guard pilot who, for reasons unknown to the rest of us then and now, entered our Army flight class for the entire nine months. He was in my plane in the instrument phase. He and I ended up in the same Beaver on a number of flights together and are pictured together in the OFWAC Class 60-7 photo. He was older than the rest of us Army Lieutenants, so we called him "Pappy." A nicer guy you could not have known.   

Word also went out that another member of our class, a National Guard aviator from California, had been recruited by the CIA for a super-secret mission. The California Guardsman backed out, so we heard, and probably lived a normal life. Tom's disappearance was not explained. I seem to remember that we pilots contributed money between us to send flowers to Tom's widow in Birmingham, AL.

Tom's daughter was 6 years old at the time, April 19, 1961, when her dad's B-26 bomber crashed. He was tracked down and shot by a Cuban militiaman. Castro kept his body literally on ice for 18 years before he released it for Tom's family to finally have a funeral. It was 39 years before it was finally revealed what happened to cause the failure of the "Bay of Pigs" invasion. It had been planned under President Eisenhower, but when John F. Kennedy became President, he called off all of the Navy close air support for the invaders and, thus, Tom and 3 other Birmingham Air Guard pilots were killed on that fateful day.

For 50 years I have been unable to get anyone to tell me why Tom, an Air Force Captain, was in our Army flight school. The leader of the unit was quoted in the Birmingham News as saying that everyone was given some kind of "cover" so no one, especially their families, would know they were in the same unit or where they were. All their mail sent back home was first sent to places like Alaska to be deposited in the mail so the postmark would disguise where they actually were.

Recently, while in church, I thought of a reason why Tom may have been in our deHavilland Beavers "learning" to fly instruments. After all he was a jet pilot and a B-26 bomber pilot and already had his wings. It suddenly occurred to me that this may be the reason. Tom had been flying most recently the advanced avionics of the Air Force such as DME (Distance Measuring Equipment) which meant that his instrument approaches in the soup were more fully automated so far as time and distance calculations were concerned. But we in the Army had to use a stop watch and figure out our time and distances in our heads. The old World War II and Korean War B-26s probably did not have the advanced navigation equipment. So, maybe, just maybe, Tom was put in with us to learn to slow down his thinking from fast jet approaches in the clouds to slow and easy approaches using #2 pencils, a stopwatch and our noodles. 

I have since found that Tom was actually on a short-tour with us in Army Instrument Flight School because his employer, Hayes International (a major military aircraft overhaul facility in Birmingham, AL) had been forced to lay off all their test pilots, Tom included. Thus, Tom, when we knew him, was not yet employed by the CIA. It was later in the year that he became a soldier of fortune.

Some lessons I learned from all of this are that, yes, our nation does undertake clandestine missions many times and, yes, it does disavow any knowledge of the participants---should they unfortunately get killed. But this tragic failure and loss of life led to so many changes in the way missions are planned and executed today. And, as sad as this whole event was and is to their families and to our nation, it is very comforting to know that people like Tom "Pete" Ray volunteer to serve our country---even if it means they may not come home again. And I think as long as you and I may live there will always be heroic Americans doing this to preserve the freedoms we enjoy in this the greatest nation on earth.”

~Lester H. Hollans Lt. Col., Senior Army Aviator (Ret)

I have included a couple of pictures from Dan Stewart of Sherman, Texas, showing his scratch-built model. He said that his plastic cowl was made from the bottom of a 2-liter iced tea pitcher that he bought at his local grocery store. He uses electric power.

YOU ARE PURCHASING A NICE, CLEAN, WHITE, FULL-SIZE COPY OF THE ORIGINAL PLAN, A SHEET OF PARTS PATTERNS & SCALE DOCUMENTATION OF THE L-20 BEAVER, FOLDED AND IN A MANILA ENVELOPE.

“An excellent source for model aircraft plans, I highly recommend this site to anyone seeking vintage plans. The vintage Berkeley Beaver plans arrived and are as good, or better, than new. Plus, the seller communication is the best! Now all I need to do is find the time to build this bird!” Henry B. Springfield, OR