The Beech D17 Staggerwing was Walter Beech’s brainchild. Its first sketch dates back to 1933: the 650 hp Beech A17. A veritable cartoon plane, its features were refined with each successive version until the D17, the best known, appeared in 1938. At the time, it sold for a staggering $18,100 without a radio, the equivalent of three luxury detached houses. In 1945, it cost two and a half times as much as the Bonanza for identical performance.
During the war, the ‘Stagger’, as it was known, served as a liaison aircraft for admirals and generals.
In June 2024, the Staggerwing, F-AZJP, will celebrate its 80th birthday. Built in June 1944 for the US Navy, it did not survive the war and was stored at a Navy base in California. Sold to private owners in 1945, it spent around twenty years in Mexico in the hands of pilots who flew for wealthy businessmen. In the 1960s, it returned to Los Angeles for restoration. For the next twenty-five years, it was flown by a TWA pilot, Verne Hongola.

Jean-Philippe Chivot, a young pilot instructor and Aviasport contributor at the time, had contributed an article on the only European Staggerwing flying in Switzerland at the time, owned by Heinz Peier. Fascinated by this aircraft, he vowed to own one.
In 1991, he put a friend of his, who was then based in Washington, on the hunt. He had the idea of contacting the Staggerwing club, where a dozen aircraft were for sale.

He chose the most promising one and, without even seeing it, had it put into a container by a local specialist.
The aircraft was shipped back in a container by Maersk via the Panama Canal. A special scrap metal frame was built to stabilise it in the crate.
The 1944 flight manual already provided for this dismantling.

Now operated by the Ham and Jam association, which keeps it in perfect flying condition, the Staggerwing F-AZJP takes part in public and private events, both in flight and on the ground.