Waco 10
The Waco 10 is a three-seat, open-cockpit biplane introduced in 1927 by the Advance Aircraft Company of Troy, Ohio, which renamed itself the Waco Aircraft Company during the type's production run. A refinement of the Waco 9 built around the plentiful war-surplus Curtiss OX-5, it became the firm's most widely produced design, sold in many engine variants under designations such as GXE, ASO and CTO. Vintage Aviation News counts 1,200 built by 1930 and more than 1,600 of the wider series by 1933. Operators used it for barnstorming, charter flying and instruction, and many examples survive in museums and private hands.
Why It Mattered
The Waco 10 appeared in 1927 as a refinement of the Waco 9 and became the most widely produced design its maker ever built. The Canada Aviation and Space Museum calls it one of the most popular aircraft of its class, the three-seat biplanes that epitomized late-1920s aviation in North America. Small commercial operators and private owners used it for barnstorming, charter trips and flight instruction, the everyday flying that introduced much of the continent to the aeroplane. It also introduced hydraulic shock-absorbing landing gear to the personal aircraft industry. Vintage Aviation News counts 1,200 of the type built between 1927 and 1930.
Design Notes
The 10 kept the Waco 9's formula of a steel-tube frame under fabric covering, on a larger span, with ailerons fitted to both wings and linked by struts. The front cockpit seated two passengers side by side beneath the upper wing, and the pilot sat behind them in a cockpit of his own. The design is credited to Charles Meyers. Power came at first from a 90 hp Curtiss OX-5 V-8, a war-surplus engine then in ready supply. The split-axle undercarriage rode on hydraulic shock absorbers, a refinement light aircraft did not usually have at the time. Later aircraft took a wide range of radial and V engines, and from 1928 three-letter designations recorded the engine and whether the wing was straight or tapered.
Operational History
The Waco 10 first flew in 1927 and entered production the same year. Vintage Aviation News counts 1,200 built from 1927 through 1930, a success that made a new, more efficient factory necessary. In the same period the Advance Aircraft Company renamed itself the Waco Aircraft Company. In 1928 the basic OX-5-powered model took the designation GXE under a new designation system. The 1928 Ford Reliability Tour, an efficiency contest run over 10,150 km (6,300 miles), was won by a derivative powered by a 200 hp Wright Whirlwind engine. The type was widely used for training and for charter work by small operators, and it spread flying through barnstorming and joyrides. Production of the wider series ran on to 1933, and Vintage Aviation News puts more than 1,600 aircraft completed across the full 1927–1933 run. Aerofiles, counting every designator ending in "O" in the family group, gives 1,623 various Model 10s produced over the same years.
Afterlife
Production ended in 1933, and the type's large production run left many survivors: Wikipedia's list records more than twenty examples in museums and private hands. The Canada Aviation and Space Museum's GXE was built in 1928 and rebuilt in 1977; it was flown to Rockcliffe airport in the summer of 2000 and is now held in the museum's reserve hangar. Restored examples are still traded: in 2026 Vintage Aviation News reported a restored 1929 CTO Taperwing offered for sale. In the 1990s an unrelated company in Forks, Washington marketed a homebuilt kit version of the ATO Taperwing.