Page 33 - Volume 20 No. 6

Citation
When it began selling Citations in late 1971, of the renamed “Citation” jet took to the air, with Milton
D. Sills and James LeSueur at the controls.
Transport-category certification for the C-500 was achieved under FAR Part 25 on September 10, 1971; Cessna’s intentions to the contrary, two pilots were required, per FAA rules at the time. It took until 1984 for Part 25 airplanes to finally be given single-pilot exemptions, with special training and equipment requirements. Prior to that time, the Citation I SP (501, certified on January 15, 1977) and II SP (551), as 1977 and 1978 models, had been certified in Normal Category under Part 23 as “small aircraft”, so single-pilot approval could be obtained.
The Little Plane That Could
Early on, detractors were harsh with criticism of Cessna’s little bizjet. It only flew at 400 mph, it couldn’t operate higher than 35,000 feet, and range was limited to 500 miles or so with a full cabin. But the whole point of Dwane Wallace’s vision was to serve a market that was unserved; the businessman who wanted to go faster than a turboprop and operate in and out of 3,000-foot runways. The Citation’s niche was to go places other jets couldn’t, simply and safely. The airplane had no gimmicks, just pulley-and-cable controls, an 80-knot stall speed, simple systems and a fat, straight wing.
In reality, what Cessna had built was a semi-turboprop, sans the propellers. Two-thirds of the JT-15D engine’s thrust is produced by the fan, one-third by the jet. The
Cessna had already been in the jet-building
business for a very long time. Almost twenty years earlier, back in December 1952, the U.S. Air Force announced that little Cessna Aircraft Company had been awarded a contract to develop a new model 318 twin-jet trainer, to be called the T-37. The first XT-37 flew on October 12, 1953 and the production T-37A entered service in June, 1956. The T-37 served as the Air Force’s primary jet trainer for over 50 years, until mid-2009.
Drawing on the T-37’s success, Cessna president Dwane Wallace proposed a military-utility and civilian version of the aircraft; a wooden mockup of a four-seat model 407 was unveiled in 1959. Although the airplane was never built, the mockup, with a realistic interior, still existed on April 27, 1961, when I encountered it sitting in the back of a hangar at Wichita Municipal airport.
Some 1,272 T-37s were built from 1954 to 1977, providing valuable experience in how to, and how not to, produce a light jet airplane. The T-37’s little Turbomeca/Continental J-69 turbojets were noisy and inefficient, and it was obvious that a fanjet engine would be needed for civilian use. Most importantly, the airplane would have to provide utility in a way that would appeal to businessman-pilots and small companies. In October, 1968, a mockup of the new Cessna Fanjet 500 business jet was shown for the first time, designed to use Pratt &Whitney-Canada JT15D-1 engines of 2,200-lb. thrust. A short 11 months later, on the promised date of September 15, 1969, the prototype
JUNE 2016
TWIN & TURBINE • 31