Learning Center Our Enshrinees

Clayton John Brukner

• Helped form the DBJ Aeroplane Company in 1919. After many name changes, it became known as the Waco Aircraft Company in 1929.
• Created the Model 9 in 1925 which was the first plane to be manufactured on an assembly line in the U.S. and the first Waco to use blueprints in construction.
• Produced the Waco Taperwing which was so popular, that Charles Lindbergh personally delivered one to Waco distributor and pilot, Tex La Grone and it became the standard acrobatic plane of the commercial field.
• Waco produced the UPF-7 trainer first for the Army Air Forces and later was produced in large quantities for the CAA War Training Service Program.
• In the spring of 1941, Army Air Forces asked Waco to design and develop several large troop and cargo-carrying gliders. This was the start of Waco’s famous glider contributions to the United States’ war efforts. Waco employed more than twenty-six-hundred workers during the “glider years” and built nearly eleven-hundred military gliders. In all, almost fourteen-thousand Waco designed and contracted gliders were constructed.
• Famously said “I made my money in Troy and I am going to give all of it back.” He was a pillar of the Troy, Ohio community and well known for his philanthropy.