In July 1931 the factory sold the last build to the Italian Government.
It received in Italy serial MM185.
The only information concerning the color is that the stripes would be black.
Is there any one who can tell me how and in which colors this aeroplane was painted?
I contacted the Beech museum but received no answerd.
An other question, if some one knows more about the history in Italy and if ??some on has pictures about and during the Italian period is that also welcome
Thanks
Jan
By: J Boyle - 2nd November 2012 at 16:28
The “Italian Job” (as it was known around the factory) was the final Travel Air built in their soon to be closed factory in Wichita. By 1931, the few ramaining orders for Travel Airs were being built in the Curtiss-Wright factory in St. Louis.
In his book, “Travel Air – Wings over the Prairie“, Edward H. Phillips mentions the paint scheme being similar to the Frank Hawks Texaco “R”.
No photos of that airframe are in the book. Perhaps being built for another county (as opposed to a commercial customer like the other “R”s) they were contracturally prohibited. You might look in the same author’s “Mystery Ship” book I mentioned in reply to your last post.
The Texaco/Hawks aircraft was white with broad red stripes, if you say the Italian ship had black stripes, then that’s probably your answer.
Here’s a photo of the Texaco aircraft today:http://www.google.com/imgres?q=travel+air+r&start=79&hl=en&sa=X&qscrl=1&rlz=1T4ADRA_enUS410US410&biw=1723&bih=878&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=2Wa3ydp8VergOM:&imgrefurl=http://www.abpic.co.uk/photo/1286353/&docid=9uFxLnFjt1FA_M&imgurl=http://www.abpic.co.uk/images/images/1286353M.jpg&w=550&h=381&ei=QfWTUKetB4bYigLj64CwBQ&zoom=1&iact=rc&dur=409&sig=116768855462154609274&page=3&tbnh=131&tbnw=198&ndsp=43&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:100,i:4&tx=100&ty=86
The aircraft was started in June 1931 and first flew on July 19.
Trvael Air test pilots, put 9.7 hours on the airframe before it was disassembled and crated in two boxes (one for the fuselage, another for the wings) and sent to Italy.
The overall cost was about $23,000 and the order was supervised by the Italian Air Attache Paulo Sbernadori.
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November 2, 2012 at 3:50 pm