Waco B

Thanks to a famous online sales and auction website, a lot of unbuilt projects, sometimes unknown even to the historians of their respective companies, have emerged in the form of company blueprints or reports. These rare documents were very often salvaged by some employees, and when they are no more, their families sell their collections, bringing to light a lot of gems that would have fallen into permanent oblivion otherwise.

Among these I was fortunate to come across the photos of an original Waco blueprint someone was selling. It was a type I had never seen before, a low-wing monoplane, which was absolutely not typical of that company. The photos were not very good, but the design begged to be redrawn!

Developed in 1939, it was not only the company's first cabin monoplane, it was also in the same league with other great designs of the time such as the Spartan Executive, the Kinner Aister or the Clark GA-46, to name but a few.

Designations found in different places refer to the three-place cabin project as the RFB or the SFB. In typical Waco fashion, these codes indicate two possible engines: a 110 hp Warner Scarab or a 300 hp Pratt & Whitney Wasp Jr. The latter version was planned for both mail and passenger use, but with the war's outbreak and the post-war surplus or military types, the project was abandoned.

Now thanks in part to this three-view arrangement, it will no longer risk being forgotten!