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Republic Seabee: The Delightful Flying Boat Sports Plane With a Touch of Thunderbolt DNA

Republic Aviation is known for one of two iconic warplanes, the P-47 Thunderbolt of World War II fame, and its burley descendant, the A-10 Thunderbolt II, or the Warthog, as so many people lovingly call it.
Republic Seabee 8 photos
Photo: Wikimedia User: Kalle1 (Own Work)
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Most aviation enthusiasts aren't even aware the company built other models, let alone an amphibious flying boat. But as it turns out, life has a way of surprising us every once in a while.

From the makers of the Thunderbolt and the Warthog, this is the RC-3 Seabee. The plucky little sports flying boat with fighter plane DNA buried under layers and layers of civilian window dressing. The Seabee would have never materialized if it had not been for an eccentric and brilliant aeronautical engineer.

The man in question is Percival Hopkins "Spence" Spencer. Though not as well known or well celebrated as the Wright Brothers or Glenn H. Curtiss, Spence bumped shoulders with all these famous names plus some in his time designing airplanes. A hobby he'd excelled in since the age of 14 when he built his own mono-wing hang glider out of blueprints he found in an issue of Popular Mechanics magazine.

Spence even set a global light aircraft altitude record while piloting a Curtiss Robin monoplane of 18,571 feet (5,660 m) in 1929. Safe to say, he was practically born to build airplanes.

A point he would prove by joining forces with former Sikorsky engineer Victor A. Larsen to create the Spencer-Larsen Aircraft Corporation. Their first creation, the S-12 Air Car, would one day go on to be built by a company not owned by Spence himself. He just didn't know it yet.

Republic RC\-3 Seabee
Photo: Wikimedia User: Ahunt (Own Work)
Making its first flight on August 8th, 1941, the metal fuselage with canvas-covered wings bore a striking resemblance to the future Seabee. Of course, it'd be a few more years before this could take place, all thanks to the Second World War. By December 1941, Spence had formally joined the Republic Aviation team based out of Farmingdale on Long Island, New York.

During his time there, Spence tested over 130 freshly manufactured P-47 Thunderbolts before their shipment overseas to duke it out with Axis forces. By December 1943, Republic had purchased the rights to produce Spence's design. A new all-metal design was devised for the occasion, dubbed the RC-1. The prototype was displayed to the public for the first time in St Louis, Missouri, in 1944. By the end of the year, Republic received nearly 2000 orders.

Not only did orders fly in like nobody's business from the civilian market, but also the U.S. Army Air Corps (soon to be renamed the USAF) and the U.S. Navy, both of whom saw great potential for the RC-3 Seabee as a light attack and reconnaissance plane. Although the end of the war in the Pacific in September 1945 ensured the order would never be filled.

Even so, the first production RC-3, powered by a six-cylinder, air-cooled piston engine, took off from Republic Airport in Farmingdale on December 1st, 1945. With prices running from $3,000 to $6,000 in mid-1940s money, the Seabee situated itself nicely among the Piper Cubs, Beech Bonanzas, and Cessna 140s also getting their start in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.

Republic RC\-3 Seabee
Photo: Wikimedia User: Kalle1 (Own Work)
It was hoped that a slew of ex-U.S. and Canadian airmen returning from the war, many of whom flew the Seabee's big brother, the Thunderbolt, would take a vested interest in what Republic had to offer in the civilian market. The logic seemed sound on the face of it. But by the same token, it shouldn't come as a surprise that a majority of the hundreds of thousands of airmen returning home from combat wanted nothing to do with the hobby once they reached American or Canadian soil again.

It didn't matter if the RC-3 could cruise at over 100 miles per hour (161 kph) with three of your buddies in tow. After half a decade or more of dogfights and daylight bombing raids, most GIs had had enough. With this in mind, a total production figure of over 1000 airframes is still mighty impressive. In the end, the Seabee would indeed get to call itself a legit military airplane in service with the Air Forces of Paraguay and South Vietnam.

It saw further feeder airliner service in nations like Chile, Argentina, South Africa, England, Norway, Sweden, Fiji, and Peru. For such an unassuming little airplane, the Seabee sure did manage to have one heck of a cool story.

Check back soon for more from Sea Month here on autoevolution.
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