Glenn L. Martin Company
| Glenn L. Martin Company
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|---|---|
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| legal form | |
| founding | August 16, 1912 |
| resolution | 1961 |
| Reason for dissolution | Merger to form the Martin Marietta Corporation |
| Seat | Baltimore , Maryland (USA) |
| Branch | Aircraft construction |
The Glenn L. Martin Company is a former American aircraft manufacturer that produced 11,000 copies of over 80 different models by 1960, mainly bombers and flying boats .
history
Beginnings
The company's founder Glenn Luther Martin (1886–1955) designed his first airplane in 1908 as a car dealer with his mechanics in Santa Ana , California . In 1909 he flew for the first time and on August 16, 1912, Martin founded the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company in Santa Ana with 14 employees.
The first own series machine was the Martin T , a four-seater double - decker that was built six times in 1913. From that time on, most of the aircraft went to the United States Armed Forces , whose fledgling Air Force unit used various Martin models in World War I, including training aircraft (TA, TT) and reconnaissance aircraft (S, R).
In September 1916, Martin accepted a merger offer from the Wright Company , creating the Wright-Martin Aircraft Company . The connection lasted only a year, however, on September 10, 1917, Martin went into business again as the Glenn L. Martin Company , this time in Cleveland , Ohio .
First successes
Martin's first major success came in 1918 with the design of the MB-1 , a biplane bomber for the US Army, which came too late for use in World War I and was therefore only built twenty times instead of the hundred as planned. The improved successor model MB-2 was so convincing from 1920 that the army ordered another 110 after the first 20 machines - but three competing companies finally received the production order because they had submitted cheaper offers.
In April 1922 the US Navy ordered all-metal monoplane as observation aircraft (MO-1), which Martin developed with the help of the German engineer Georg Madelung . Madelung had previously worked for Junkers and so the 36 MO-1s built received a number of structural elements from the Junkers J4 to J10 .
From 1924 Martin produced the CS-1 naval reconnaissance aircraft and bomber developed by Curtiss as the SC-1 and its successors SC-2, T3M and T4M in over 300 copies, which was a successful compensation for the MB-2 that had escaped four years earlier. Production was felt.
Martin bombers and flying boats
In 1928, Martin sold the Cleveland facility to Detroit Aircraft and built a new one in Middle River north of Baltimore , Maryland , which opened on October 7, 1929. During the 1930s, the company manufactured flying boats for the US Navy (PM), the advanced B-10 bomber for the US Army Air Forces, and the China Clipper flying boat that Pan American World Airways used on the San Francisco - Manila - Hong Kong flew.
At the time of the Second World War, the B-26 Marauder bomber and the PBM Mariner flying boat, used for sea rescue and anti-submarine combat, were particularly successful models. The huge JRM Mars was used to supply the troops in the Pacific. Because of the high demand for Boeing B-29 bombers, Martin was also used for production. The new plant on Offutt Field near Bellevue (Nebraska) produced besides 1585 Marauders a total of 531 of the more than 3900 B-29s built, including the two Enola Gay and Bockscar machines , which dropped atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945.
After the war, the XB-48 and XB-51 bombers did not get beyond the experimental stage, and from 1951 the B-57 Canberra bomber and reconnaissance aircraft developed by the British English Electric was licensed for the US Air Force . The series production of the four-engined Martin P6M flying boat was stopped by the US Navy shortly after the call for cost reasons. In the civil sector, the twin-engine passenger aircraft Martin 2-0-2 and Martin 4-0-4 were manufactured from 1947 to 1953 .
fusion
In 1961, the Glenn L. Martin Company merged with the American-Marietta Corporation to form the Martin Marietta Corporation , which in turn merged with the Lockheed Corporation in 1995 to form Lockheed Martin .
Martin employed a few engineers who later started their own aircraft company, including William E. Boeing , Donald Wills Douglas , Lawrence Bell, and James Smith McDonnell . Other prominent contributors were James Howard Kindelberger (later North American Aviation ) and Charles A. Van Dusen ( Brewster Aeronautical Corporation ).
gallery
MB-1 Glenn Martin bomber
Martin B-10
Martin PM-1
Martin P6M Seamaster
Martin PBM Mariner
Martin B-26 Marauder
Martin JRM "Mars" flying boat
Martin AM Mauler
Martin 202
Martin B-57 Canberra
Martin 404
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