Waco Aircraft Company
| Waco Aircraft Company
|
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|---|---|
 |
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| legal form | Company |
| founding | 1919 |
| resolution | 1947 |
| Seat | Troy , Ohio |
| Branch | Aircraft construction |
The Waco Aircraft Company was an aircraft manufacturer based in Troy , Ohio , which primarily produced civilian biplane aircraft between 1919 and 1947 . In the 28 years of its existence, the company produced 62 different models under different names.
history
DBJ Airplane Company
Before the end of the First World War, during their time at Curtiss in Buffalo , friends Clayton J. Brukner, Elwood "Sam" Junkin, Harold C. Deuther, Charles W. Meyers and George E. "Buck" Weaver dealt with the development of a single-seat flying boat. By the end of the war Curtiss was facing economic ruin. While Brukner, Junkin and Deuther stayed in Buffalo to finish the flying boat, Meyers and Weaver went to Lorain, Ohio . Both founded the Ohio Aviation School there on Woodruff Field and invited the other three to follow them. Deuther, Brukner and Junkin then brought their completed flying boat to Lorain in August 1919 in order to further test it there. However, the flying boat was probably not able to take off from the water. In August, the three of them rented a large room there, where they designed two new aircraft and founded the DBJ Airplane Company . The first draft was the DBJ Scout , a small single-seat double-decker with a 15-horsepower engine. The Scout was successfully flown, but suffered so much damage in an accident that it was not rebuilt. The second design was a slightly larger two-seater flying boat, which, like the first flying boat design, was also unable to take off from the water. A third prototype could not be completed for financial reasons. Then the three DBJ founders joined Meyers and Weaver again in order to be able to use the proceeds from barnstorming to build aircraft again.
Weaver Aircraft Company
In November 1919, the assets of the DBJ Airplane Company were transferred to the new Weaver Aircaft Company . The location was next Lorain, Ohio. The first construction was named Cootie and was a high-wing aircraft with a 28 hp engine. In February 1920, Buck Weaver flew the Cootie for the first time. Weaver was injured on landing and the aircraft was badly damaged. Then began in April 1920 the construction of a second copy of the Cootie , this time as a double-decker. Although the aircraft showed good flight characteristics, a buyer could not be found for the machine.
September 1920, when the company went public, is seen as the official start of WACO. In April 1921, Weaver left Lorain to work on the new Swallow biplane for his friend Emil Laird in Wichita, Kansas . In the same year Deuther sold his shares and left the company. Junkin designed the Waco Model 4, a new double-decker model that was completed in December 1921. After very good test evaluations of the Waco 4, Weaver decided at the end of December 1921 to return to "his" company.
Advance Aircraft Company
In April 1922 the Weaver Aircraft Company moves to Medina, Ohio . Here some Curtiss JN-4 (Canuck) are equipped with new wings, which were then given the designation Waco Model 5 . Overall, however, the order situation remained poor, so that Weaver decided in December 1922 to leave the company and work as a pilot. In the spring, Brukner was able to convince businessman Alden Sampson to invest the funds to take over another company. Sampson agreed to buy up all assets for $ 5,000, for which Brukner promised to employ his son Alden Sampson II in the company. Advance Aircraft Company was agreed as the name for the new company . Junkin decided that the name WACO should continue to appear on the aircraft.
To be closer to the center of the US aviation industry, the company then moved to Troy, Ohio near Dayton in March 1923. In the same month all assets were transferred to the Advance Aircraft Company and the Weaver Aircraft Company was deleted in December 1923. George Weaver died in Chicago in July 1924 after a long illness. His widow then married Elwood Junkin. By then, two new models, the Waco Model 7 and Model 8, had also been developed. Twelve copies of the Model 7 were sold, but only one Model 8 (an eight-seater double-decker cabin) found a buyer. On July 7, 1925, Brukner and Junkin bought Alden Sampson from the company, making the two major owners of Advance Aircraft.
Junkin began work on a new model, the Waco 9 , in mid-1925 . The Waco 9 was the first commercial success and the first model to receive a type certificate (ATC # 11). About 280 Waco 9s were sold between 1925 and 1927. In 1927 the Waco 10 went into series production, with 1623 pieces it became the most widely produced Waco aircraft.
Waco Aircraft Company
In 1928, the Advance Aircraft Company at Troy built three completely new manufacturing facilities, each 18 meters wide and 98 meters long. Since the aircraft continued to be marketed as Wacos even after the Weaver Aircraft Company was dissolved, Brukner changed the company's name to Waco Aircraft Company in June 1929 . Even after the stock market crash in October 1929, Waco managed to find a market for its products. This was the first to be the Waco F , which appeared in 1930 and was manufactured in many engine variants. In 1931, Waco also designed a school glider with the Waco NAZ , similar to the German Grunau 9 . In the same year, the first double-decker cabin, the Waco QDC, was built . The Model F saw some improvements between 1932 and 1937, resulting in the designations F-2 (1932), F-3 (1933), F-5 (1935) and F-7 (1937 or 1939?). A new open biplane with adjacent seats in 1932 with the Waco A presented. New cabin double-deckers appeared in 1935 ( Waco C ) and 1937 ( Waco N ). The latter had a nose wheel landing gear for the first time at Waco .
During the Second World War, Waco sold over 600 copies of the UPF-7 to the USAAC , which used the biplane as a training aircraft ( Waco PT-14 ) and for the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP). In addition, it was mainly cargo gliders who made full use of the production capacities. Thus, not only 1607 examples of the Waco CG-3 , Waco CG-4 , Waco CG-13 and Waco CG-15 were built by Waco itself, but a further 13,403 were manufactured by other companies. After the war, another copy of the new Waco W was made. However, series production was no longer possible because the production costs were too high and, on the other hand, cheap former military aircraft flooded the market.
Although there were plans in the late 1960s to start license production of French ( SOCATA Rallye ) and Italian ( SA-202 and SF-260 ) models, very few examples were produced.
Web links
literature
- Donald M. Pattillo: A history in the making - 80 turbulent years in the american general aviation industry , McGraw-Hill, 1998, ISBN 0-07-049448-7 , p. 5, p. 38