Beechcraft CT-134 Musketeer

The Beechcraft CT-134 Musketeer was a military training version of the Beechcraft Musketeer built for the Canadian Armed Forces, a single-engine, low-wing, four-seat light aircraft with fixed landing gear and limited aerobatic capability. The Royal Canadian Air Force needed an elementary trainer after removing the de Havilland Chipmunk from service, and a hasty purchase of twenty-four B23 Musketeers in 1971 produced the first CT-134s, modified with a cowling strake, a horizontal stabilizer strake and a ventral fin to improve spin recovery and powered by a 180 horsepower Lycoming O-360-A4G engine. A second batch of twenty-four 1982 model C23 Sundowners, designated CT-134A Musketeer II, replaced the first in late 1981. Both batches served at Portage la Prairie and Winnipeg until Slingsby Fireflys replaced them in 1992, after training about 5,000 military pilot graduates at one school alone, and pilots nicknamed the aircraft the Muskrat. Retired airframes were not sold for flying because of structural problems from years of aerobatics; they went to museums or maintenance training, and some stand as monuments.