THE LAST STEARMAN FLIES AGAIN
Expensive and time-consuming, the restoration of vintage aircraft is usually focused on classics that are either famous or aesthetically attractive—preferably both, if one happens to own, say, a Supermarine Spitfire. A few restorers, however, prefer to direct their efforts toward the odd or obscure. Keith Brunquist’s Boeing YL-15 falls squarely into the latter two categories.
The YL-15 was designed in 1946, when Boeing was the largest and most technologically advanced aircraft manufacturer in the country, if not the world. Besides such big, complex piston-engine aircraft as the B-29 and B-50 bombers and the Model 377 Stratocruiser airliner, the company was working toward the
