I put a great deal of effort into collecting information and photos of B17Ls. I soon found out that there were many changes in the construction of the Staggerwing as the B model evolved into the C model.

There are five B17Ls in California.

• Serial number 8: Owned by Bobby Graham at Redlands
• Serial number 12: My project at Livermore
• Serial number 32 and 45: Owned by Ken McBride at San Martin. Both previously owned by Joe Cruces at Chico CA
• Serial number 58: Owner by John Krueger of Redlands. Previously owned by the Beechcraft Heritage Museum.

I have examined and taken detail photos of all the B17Ls in California. It seem that when I start studying the photos, I always need a few more at different angles etc.

Other B17Ls still in existence are:

• Serial number 30 owned by Clay Haring of Lincoln KS. The aircraft is airworthy. It was restored by Thomas R. Rench of Racine WI in the 70s.
• Serial number 3: Currently Owned by Beechcraft and on display at Wichita, KS. This aircraft was the prototype for the B models. It was previously owned by Hub Johnson of Red Bluff CA. Restored in the early 80s by Richard Perry & Richard Hansen of Batavia IL.
• Serial number 21: Restored by John Collins of Newark CA. The aircraft was donated to the Staggerwing Museum Foundation in 1999.
• Serial number 25 is also on FAA's registration, but I do not have any information on it.

Other B model (other than B17Ls) that I am aware of are:

• Serial number 70 B17R N15815, Roger L. James, New Carlisle Rd, OH Wright R-975
• Serial number 38 B17R N14413, Central Air Service Lewistown, Montana P&W R-985
• Serial number 49 B17E N14458, Chris Galloway, Cave Junction Oregon Wright R-760 E2

While I was at the Beech Party in 2015, I did a detailed study of serial number 21. The Museum allowed me to take inspection covers off to examine the interior workings. This aircraft is an important source of information for my project, as it was the last Staggerwing to have a number of feature that my aircraft had. It was the last Staggerwing to have a fabric tail cone and fabric forward of the door. Staggerwings after serial number 21 had a single piece aluminum tail cone and sheet metal panels forward of the door. The fabric tail cone is formed by the wood fuselage stringers coming to a point. There is a curved triangular sheet metal cover on the top of the tail cone. When my aircraft was restored in 1950, the fabric tail cone was removed, and a modern aluminum tail cone was installed.

Serial number 32 is also a good source of information, as it has never been restored. What you see is the way it was when it left the factory.

The Staggerwing club had about 60 drawings of B models. I recently found out that the NASM have a number of rolls of microfilm. It is my understanding that these were scanned from CAA files. I borrowed the first roll from Stan York and had it scanned to digital images. There were a total of 639 images scanned from microfilm. There were 174 B and C model drawings plus a large number of miscellaneous documents.