Martin
Martin
Search Wikipedia
Search
Donate
Create account
Log in
Contents hide
(Top)
History
Origins
Mexican Revolution
World War I
Inter-war years
World War II
Postwar
Products
Aircraft
Aircraft engines
Missiles and rockets
Booster rockets
Automobile
See also
References
External links
Glenn L. Martin Company
Article
Talk
Read
Edit
View history
Tools
Appearance hide
Text
Small
Standard
Large
Width
Standard
Wide
Color (beta)
Automatic
Light
Dark
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Martin Aircraft" redirects here. For the current New Zealand Martin Aircraft
Company, its Jetpack, and designer Glenn Neal Martin, see Martin Jetpack.
Glenn L. Martin Company
Industry Aerospace
Founded 1917; 108 years ago
Founder Glenn L. Martin
Defunct 1961
Fate Merged with American-Marietta Corporation
later merged into Lockheed-Martin Corporation
Successor Martin Marietta
Headquarters Santa Ana, California[citation needed], United States
Products Aircraft
The Martin B-26 Marauder, a bomber produced by Martin during World War II
The Glenn L. Martin Company, also known as The Martin Company from 1917 to 1961,
was an American aircraft and aerospace manufacturing company founded by aviation
pioneer Glenn L. Martin. The Martin Company produced many important aircraft for
the defense of the US and allies, especially during World War II and the Cold War.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the Martin Company moved from the aircraft industry
into the guided missile, space exploration, and space utilization industries.
History
Origins
Glenn L. Martin Company was founded by aviation pioneer Glenn Luther Martin on
August 16, 1912.[3] He started the company building military training aircraft in
Santa Ana, California, and in September 1916, Martin accepted a merger offer from
the Wright Company, creating the Wright-Martin Aircraft Company.[1] This merger did
not function well, so Glenn Martin left to form a second Glenn L. Martin Company on
September 10, 1917. This new company was headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio.[3]
Mexican Revolution
The Sonora, a Martin Pusher single-seater, saw combat in the Mexican Revolution
(1913)
In 1913, Mexican insurgents from the northwestern state of Sonora bought a single-
seater Martin Pusher biplane in Los Angeles with the intention of attacking federal
naval forces that were attacking the port of Guaymas. The aircraft was shipped on
May 5, 1913, in five crates to Tucson, Arizona, via Wells Fargo Express, and then
moved through the border into Mexico to the town of Naco, Sonora. The aircraft,
named Sonora by the insurgents, was reassembled there and fitted with a second seat
for a bomber position.[citation needed]
The Sonora, armed with rudimentary 3-inch (76 mm) pipe bombs, performed the first
known air-to-naval bombing runs in history.[citation needed]
World War I
A Glenn Martin TT with Sergeant Broeckhuysen of the Royal Netherlands East Indies
Army Air Force seated in the middle with factory mechanics (1917)
For the Netherlands East Indies, several planes were delivered, with the first
flight on November 6, 1915. It involved two Type TEs, six Type TTs, and eight Type
Rs. Martin's first big success came during World War I with the MB-1 bomber,[4] a
large biplane design ordered by the United States Army on January 17, 1918. The MB-
1 entered service after the end of hostilities. A follow-up design, the MB-2,
proved successful;[4] 20 were ordered by the Army Air Service, the first five of
them under the company designation and the last 15 as the NBS-1 (Night Bomber,
Short range). Although the War Department ordered 110 more, it retained the
ownership rights of the design, and put the order out for bid. The production
orders were given to other companies that had bid lower, Curtiss (50), L.W.F.
Engineering (35), and Aeromarine (25).[5] The design was the only standard bomber
used by the Air Service until 1930, and was used by seven squadrons of the Air
Service/Air Corps: Four in Virginia, two in Hawaii, and one in the Philippines.
Inter-war years
In 1924, the Martin Company underbid Curtiss for the production of a Curtiss-
designed scout bomber, the SC-1, and ultimately Martin 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
Martin B-10 bomber for the Army.[6] The Martin Company also produced the noted
China Clipper flying boats used by Pan American Airways for its transpacific San
Francisco to the Philippines route.
World War II
During World War II, a few of Martin's most successful designs were the B-26
Marauder[7] and A-22 Maryland bombers, the PBM Mariner and JRM Mars[8][9] flying
boats, widely used for air-sea rescue, anti-submarine warfare and transport. The
1941 Office for Emergency Management film Bomber was filmed in the Martin facility
in Baltimore, and showed aspects of the production of the B-26.[10]
Martin ranked 14th among U.S. corporations in the value of wartime production
contracts.[11] The company built 1,585 B-26 Marauders and 531 Boeing B-29
Superfortresses at its new bomber plant in Nebraska, just south of Omaha at Offutt
Field. Among the B-29s manufactured there were all the Silverplate aircraft,
including Enola Gay and Bockscar, which dropped the two war-ending atomic bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.[12]
Postwar
The Vanguard rocket, designed and built by Martin for Project Vanguard, prepares to
launch Vanguard 1.
The Martin Company moved into the aerospace manufacturing business. It produced the
Vanguard rocket, used by the American space program as one of its first satellite
booster rockets as part of Project Vanguard. The Vanguard was the first American
space exploration rocket designed from scratch to be an orbital launch vehicle —
rather than being a modified ballistic missile (such as the U.S. Army's Juno I).
Martin also designed and manufactured the huge and heavily armed Titan I and LGM-
25C Titan II intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Martin Company of
Orlando, Florida, was the prime contractor for the US Army's Pershing missile.[14]
The Martin Company was one of two finalists for the command and service modules of
the Apollo Program. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
awarded the design and production contracts for these to the North American
Aviation Corporation.
The Martin Company went further in the production of larger booster rockets for
NASA and the U.S. Air Force with its Titan III series of over 100 rockets produced,
including the Titan IIIA, the more-important Titan IIIC, and the Titan IIIE.
Besides hundreds of Earth satellites, these rockets were essential for the sending
to outer space of the two space probes of the Voyager Project to the outer planets,
the two space probes of the Viking Project to Mars, and the two Helios probes into
low orbits around the Sun (closer, even, than Mercury).
Finally, the US Air Force required a booster rocket that could launch heavier
satellites than either the Titan IIIE or the Space Shuttle. The Martin Company
responded with its extremely large Titan IV series of rockets. When the Titan IV
came into service, it could carry a heavier payload to orbit than any other rocket
in production. Besides its use by the Air Force to launch its sequence of very
heavy reconnaissance satellites, one Titan IV, with a powerful Centaur rocket upper
stage, was used to launch the heavy Cassini space probe to the planet Saturn in
1997. The Cassini probe orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017, successfully returning
mountains of scientific data.
The Martin Company employed many of the founders and chief engineers of the
American aerospace industry, including:
Products
Aircraft
Martin P3M-2