Cessna O-1 Bird Dog

The Cessna O-1 Bird Dog is a liaison and observation aircraft that first flew on 14 December 1949 and entered service in 1950 as the L-19 during the Korean War. It was the first all-metal, fixed-wing aircraft ordered for and by the United States Army after the Army Air Forces separated from it in 1947, and it served in several branches of the American armed forces, in the Vietnam War and in other countries, with the last retired in the 1970s. The Navy and Marine Corps called it the OE-1 and OE-2, and it was redesignated the O-1 in the 1960s. The O-1E variant has a 213 horsepower Continental O-470-11 flat-six engine. Cessna produced 3,431 aircraft and Fuji built another 60 under license in Japan, and the type was developed into the turboprop SIAI-Marchetti SM.1019 in the 1970s.