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 '60s, the Martin Company moved from the aircraft industry into the guided missile, space exploration, and space utilization industries.
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 pipe bombs, performed the first known air-to-naval bombing runs in history.[citation needed]
For the Dutch 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-1bomber,[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.
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 halting of production of the Titan IV in 2004 brought to an end production of the last rocket able to carry a heavier payload than the Space Shuttle, which itself ended in 2011.
The Martin Company merged with the American-Marietta Corporation, a chemical-products and construction-materials manufacturer, in 1961, to form the Martin Marietta Corporation. In 1995, Martin Marietta, then the nation's third-largest defense contractor, merged with the Lockheed Corporation, then the nation's second-largest defense contractor, to form the Lockheed Martin Corporation, becoming the largest such company in the world.[2]
The Martin Company employed many of the founders and chief engineers of the American aerospace industry, including:
In addition, after the removal of 54 Titan IIs from alert status as ICBMs in the mid-1980s, about 50 of them were used as satellite launchers by the U.S. Air Force. The rest of them were either scrapped or used as museum pieces.
^Herman, Arthur. Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II, pp. 330–1, Random House, New York, NY. ISBN978-1-4000-6964-4.
^Jolliff, Elizabeth C. (20 May 1974). History of the Pershing Weapon System. Redstone Arsenal, Alabarrla 35809: U.S. Army Missile Command. p. 288.((cite book)): CS1 maint: location (link)
