Everything about Glenn L Martin Company totally explained
The
Glenn L. Martin Company was an early
U.S. aircraft company founded by aviation pioneer
Glenn Luther Martin. The company went through a number of mergers over time and now exists as
Lockheed Martin.
History
Glenn L. Martin Company was founded by aviation pioneer Glenn Luther Martin on
August 16,
1912. Martin started out building military trainers in
Santa Ana,
California, and then in
1916, accepted a merger offer from the
Wright Company, creating the
Wright-Martin Aircraft Company in September. a large
biplane design ordered by the
US Army on
January 17,
1918. The MB-1 entered service after the end of hostilities, but a follow up design, the
MB-2, was also proved successful The design was the only standard bomber used by the Air Service until 1930 and was used by 7 squadrons of the Air Service/Air Corps: 4 in Virginia, 2 in Hawaii, and 1 in the Philippines.
In
1924, Martin underbid
Curtiss on production of a Curtiss-designed scout bomber SC-1, and ultimately produced 404 of these. In
1929, Martin sold the Cleveland plant and built a new one in
Middle River, Maryland, northeast of
Baltimore.
During the 1930s, Martin built flying boats for the
U.S. Navy, and the innovative
B-10 bomber for the Army. It also produced the famous
China Clipper flying boat used by
Pan American Airways for its
San Francisco to
Manila route.
During
World War II, a few of Martin's most successful designs were the
B-26 Marauder and
A-22 Maryland bombers, the
PBM Mariner and
JRM Mars flying boats, widely used for
air-sea rescue,
anti-submarine warfare and transport.
The company built the 531
B-29 Superfortresses and 1,585 B-26 Marauders at its
Omaha plant at Offutt Field (later known as
Offutt Air Force Base). Among the B-29's were the
Enola Gay and
Bockscar which dropped the war-ending atomic bombs on Japan.
Postwar efforts included unsuccessful prototype
XB-48 and
XB-51 bombers, the
B-57 Canberra night bombers, the
P5M Marlin flying boat, and the
Martin 4-0-4 twin-engine passenger plane.
Martin produced the
Vanguard rocket, which was used by the US space program as one of its first
launch vehicles as part of
Project Vanguard; the Vanguard was the first US rocket designed from scratch to be an orbital launch vehicle rather than a modified
sounding rocket (
Juno I) or
ICBM (
Redstone). This experience helped the later Martin Marietta and Lockheed Martin become the premier manufacturer of spacecraft for
NASA, producing elements of both
Apollo and the
Space Shuttle and (eventually) the entire
Orion spacecraft.
Martin merged with the
American-Marietta Corporation in
1961 to form the
Martin Marietta Corporation, which eventually merged with the
Lockheed Corporation in 1995 to form
Lockheed Martin.
The Martin Company employed many of the founders and chief engineers of the American aerospace industry, including
Dandridge M. Cole,
Donald Douglas,
Lawrence Bell,
James S. McDonnell,
J.H. "Dutch" Kindleberger (
North American Aviation),
Hans Multhopp, and C.A. Van Dusen (
Brewster Aeronautical Corporation). Martin also taught
William Boeing how to fly and sold him his first airplane.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Glenn L Martin Company'.
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