The Fish and Wildlife pilots tried the stubby L-15s on wheels and skis, but the agency decided to standardize on more traditional airframes.

Fish and Wildlife Service, where they monitored herds and chased down poachers in the early 1950s. Economy of purchase may also have been a factor in the decision that limited the L-15 to a pair of prototypes and 10 service-test examples.Īfter the dust settled, the short run of L-15s was transferred to the U.S.

Keith said perhaps the Army believed pilots could transition to the L-19 more easily than to the L-15. The unorthodoxy of the L-15 was countered in Cessna’s more mainstream L-19, which incorporated aspects of the civilian Cessna Model 170. At that slow speed, Keith said it sometimes feels like “I’m gonna die.” He added that it’s short-coupled and tricky in a crosswind. At only 20 mph indicated, with one pilot on board, Keith says the L-15 will get airborne. Owner Keith Brunquist of Wasilla, Alaska, says the plane has a power-on stall speed of 18 miles an hour, and it achieves its best angle of climb at 37 miles per hour. The L-15’s wing uses full-span flaperons with interconnected bucket-type spoilers. Its truncated fuselage featured wraparound visibility for the back-seat observer, who could swivel to face aft. That same game-changing grasp of aerodynamics and audacity would show up on the company’s successful sweptwing B-47 Stratojet bomber, and later on the 707 jetliner.īut the unorthodox L-15 may have been a reach too far in 1946. Boeing had, on several prior occasions, produced game-changing designs, ranging from its Model 40 mail plane to the then-radical four-engine Flying Fortress of 1935. In a competition that ultimately went to Cessna’s L-19, Boeing quickly designed its competing L-15. Army went looking for a new light observation aircraft.

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