Budd RB-1 Conestoga

The Budd RB-1 Conestoga was a twin-engine, high-wing cargo aircraft built mainly of stainless steel by the Budd Company of Philadelphia for the United States Navy during World War II. Budd, the developer of the shotweld technique for joining stainless steel, built it at a time of fear about an aluminum shortage, and the Navy ordered 200 as the RB-1 while the Army Air Forces ordered 600 as the C-93. It had two 1,200 horsepower Pratt and Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp radial engines, tricycle landing gear, a nearly hemispherical nose holding the flight deck and a rear loading ramp that let cargo be loaded at truck-bed height. The prototype first flew on 31 October 1943, but by then aluminum supply had recovered and other transports were in mass production, so the Army cancelled its order and the Navy cut its order to 25, of which 17 were delivered. The RB-1 never entered Navy squadron service; surplus aircraft were sold in 1945 to the company that became the Flying Tiger Line, and one is displayed at the Pima Air and Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona.