De Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver
1947 utility aircraft family by de Havilland Canada
The de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver is a single-engined high-wing propeller-driven short takeoff and landing (STOL) aircraft developed and manufactured by de Havilland Canada. It has been primarily operated as a bush plane and has been used for a wide variety of utility roles, such as cargo and passenger hauling, aerial application (crop dusting and aerial topdressing), and civil aviation duties.
Shortly after the end of the Second World War, de Havilland Canada decided to orient itself towards civilian operators. Based on feedback from pilots, the company decided that the envisioned aircraft should have excellent STOL performance, all-metal construction, and accommodate many features sought by the operators of bush planes. On 16 August 1947, the maiden flight of the aircraft, which had received the designation DHC-2 Beaver, took place. In April 1948, the first production aircraft was delivered to the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests. A Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) Beaver played a supporting role in Sir Edmund Hillary's 1958 Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition to the South Pole.
In addition to its use in civilian operations, the Beaver has been widely adopted by armed forces as a utility aircraft. The United States Army purchased several hundred aircraft; nine DHC-2s are still in service with the U.S. Air Force Auxiliary (Civil Air Patrol) for search and rescue. By 1967, over 1,600 Beavers had been constructed prior to the closure of the original assembly line.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q291804. The Library of Congress control number is sh85012734. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1947, 1948, 1958 and 1967.
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