Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation

A Convair B-58 in flight

The Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation (from 1954 Convair ) was an American aircraft and missile manufacturer. The company, created by the merger of Vultee Aircraft and Consolidated Aircraft , existed from 1943 to 1996. It was not until 1954 that Convair , which had been used as a slang acronym, was used as the official name. The company gained importance in the development of military aircraft and in space technology.

history

RB-36D under construction at Convair

Consolidated Vultee came into being in March 1943 when the aircraft manufacturers Vultee and Consolidated Aircraft merged. The reason was the requirement to manufacture a new long-range bomber that was to be deployed from US bases against Japan and Germany. The Convair B-36 Peacemaker emerged from this project .

In April 1954, Consolidated Vultee joined the General Dynamics Group and has since acted as the Convair Division of General Dynamics . At that time, Convair had manufacturing facilities in San Diego , Pomona and Fort Worth .

In 1994 Convair was sold to McDonnell Douglas and incorporated into the group in 1996.

Convair CV-990 Coronado

Atlas Centaur with Pioneer 10 on launch pad 36 (1972)

Products

Planes

Convair was particularly competitive in the military sector. With the XF-92 and F-102 , the company developed the USAF's first delta-wing aircraft with jet propulsion. The subsequent B-58 was the world's first supersonic bomber. In the civil sector, Convair became the most successful manufacturer of this size class with the CV-240 , CV-340 and CV-440 models after the end of the Second World War . These were twin-engine short- and medium-haul airliners with the piston-engine propeller drive, which was still up-to-date in civil aircraft at the time . Some of these were developed into turboprop aircraft in the 1960s .

With the beginning of the present age at the end of the 1950s, Convair developed the four-engine types CV-880 and CV-990 designed for medium and long-haul traffic . However, these could not stand up to the already established competition from Boeing and Douglas . They were designed for particularly high cruising speeds, but with their very narrow fuselage and correspondingly low passenger capacity, they did not meet the wishes of most airlines. As a result of this bad planning, Convair ran into financial difficulties in the 1960s. The losses from the design and manufacture of the CV-880 and 990 came to a total of 425 million US dollars . In relation to the year 1963, the end of CV-990 production, this corresponds to a current value of 3,500,000,000 US dollars, including inflation . To date, this represents the biggest failure an aircraft manufacturer has survived without going bankrupt .

Convair aircraft production ended in 1965. After that, the company only supplied parts for the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 and McDonnell Douglas MD-11 and concentrated on building rockets and as a supplier to the aerospace industry.

Missiles

As early as 1951, Convair was commissioned to develop an ICBM for the use of nuclear weapons. The result was the Atlas launcher , which took off for the first time on December 18, 1958. With such an advanced rocket, John Glenn became the first American astronaut to orbit the earth in 1962. Together with the Centaur stage , also developed by Convair , the Atlas rocket became the Americans' most important means of putting satellites into orbit for about thirty years.

As a component supplier, the company built sections for the space shuttle and was involved in the Tomahawk missile program.

Flying car Convaircar

In 1947 there were 118 attempts with a flying car with the Model . The body was made of fiberglass . A Crosley Motors engine provided propulsion on the road and a Lycoming engine provided propulsion in the air. After successfully completing three flights, there was a crash due to a lack of petrol. The project was then abandoned.

literature

• Ulrich Stulle: The Convair story . In: Flieger-Revue extra . No. 3, Möller Buch- und Zeitschriftenverlag, Berlin 2003, pp. 80-99, ISSN  0941-889X .

Web links

Commons : Convair  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Harald H. Linz, Halwart Schrader : The International Automobile Encyclopedia . United Soft Media Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-8032-9876-8 , chapter Convaircar.
2. ↑ George Nick Georgano (Editor-in-Chief): The Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, Chicago 2001, ISBN 1-57958-293-1 , p. 332 (English).
3. ↑ Allcarindex Retrieved on March 4, 2017 (English).