Stinson L-13

The Stinson L-13, known like other aircraft of its type as the Grasshopper, was a United States military utility aircraft that first flew in 1945. It was designed at Stinson, then a subsidiary of Consolidated-Vultee, in response to an Army Air Force request for a light observation and liaison aircraft, and the first two prototypes were built at the Stinson plant in Michigan. When Convair restructured its units in 1948 and negotiated the sale of Stinson to Piper Aircraft, the L-13 project was specifically left out of the sale, so Convair carried on building it in-house and produced 300 units as the Convair L-13. It was a conventional high-wing tailwheel monoplane with a large greenhouse canopy for observation, used for liaison and air ambulance work, and the production L-13A had a 250 hp Franklin O-425-9 flat-six engine. Surplus aircraft were later converted for civil bush flying, among them the Acme Centaur, the Caribbean Traders Husky and the Servicair Loadmaster, and several survive in museums, some of them airworthy.