After building more than seven thousand fighter aircrafts during the Second World War, the Beech Aircraft Corporation continued its quest for air supremacy in terms of aircraft design and performance but now its target is the flying and traveling civilian as its market. Confident with its capabilities to create unique and great designs, the Beechcraft engineers came up with a ground-breaking single engine aircraft with a V-tail configuration that greatly reduced the aircraft's weight without compromising its ease of control.

In design theory, the ingenious Bonanza V-tail utilizes only two surfaces in order to be able perform its true function compared to the three surfaces used in the traditional straight tail aircraft design prevalent during those days. Because of the reduction in contact surfaces, the effect would be tremendous drop in weight and drag and the possibility of tail buffeting caused by the wakes that are generated when there is huge wind pressure on the aircraft's canopy and wings. At the same time, the V-tail is so cheap to manufacture and so easy to replace when the need arises since only a few parts are required to make and assemble one compared to the components of the conventional straight tail design. Peace time was a good time to travel and that boosted the sales for the Beechcraft Bonanza 35 with over a thousand and four hundred advance orders even before the production of the very first model has begun. In 1947, the US Civil Aeronautics Authority issued the necessary certificate for the Bonanza and a full scale production immediately started. Already experts in mass aircraft production thanks to the recent war, Beech Aircraft came out with a thousand Beechcraft Bonanzas before the initial year of production was over and from then on, the aircraft earned a solid reputation of being a versatile personal and business plane that would soon be embraced by the non-flying demographics as well.

The Beech Aircraft decided to showcase the capabilities of the Beechcraft Bonanza by sponsoring William Odom's attempt to set a world record for the longest non-stop solo flight. The aircraft was modified to accommodate extra fuel and oil reserves which boosted the Beechcraft Bonanza's range to almost five hundred percent capacity allowing it to travel at least five thousand five hundred miles. Flying from Hawaii, the aircraft was aptly named Waikiki Beech and it flew from Hawaii to California and then made a cross country flight to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. William Odom made a new world record by finishing the entire flight in a little bit over thirty six hours and the Waikiki Beech Bonanza was donated to the Smithsonian Institute's Collection of historic aircraft.