Компания Ryan Aeronautical: История и Разработки

American aeronautics company

The Ryan Aeronautical Company was founded by T. Claude Ryan in San Diego, California, in 1934. It became part of Teledyne in 1969, and of Northrop Grumman when the latter company purchased Ryan in 1999. Ryan built several historically and technically significant aircraft, including four innovative V/STOL designs, but its most successful production aircraft was the Ryan Firebee line of unmanned drones used as target drones and unmanned air vehicles.

In 1922, T. C. Ryan founded a flying service in San Diego that would lead to several aviation ventures bearing the Ryan name, including Ryan Airline Company founded in 1925. T. C. Ryan, whose previous companies were best known for building Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic Spirit of St. Louis, actually had no part in building the famous aircraft. Ryan had been owner or partner in several previous companies, one of which also bore the name Ryan Aeronautical. The Spirit of St. Louis was not built by the final Ryan Aeronautical entity. The new company's first aircraft was the S T Sport Trainer, a low wing tandem seat monoplane with a Menasco B 4 Pirate straight 4 engine. Five were built before production switched to the Ryan ST A Aerobatic with a more powerful Menasco C 4 in 1935. This aircraft now had enough power for aerobatic display, and it won the 1937 International Aerobatic Championships. A further improved ST A Special was built in 1936, with a supercharged Menasco C 4S. In 1937 and 1938, a second civilian aircraft model was introduced, the S C Sport Coupe, or SC W with a Warner Super Scarab radial engine. The SC W was a larger three seater aircraft with a sliding canopy and side by side front seating. The prototype SC M was originally powered by a Menasco C 4 inline engine, however testing revealed that more power was needed. Thirteen examples of the SC W were built, although the last one was assembled from surplus parts decades after the initial production run was finished.

Interest from the United States Army Air Corps followed. The Menasco engines proved unreliable, and instead Kinner radial engines were fitted. Aircraft were produced as the PT 16 (15 built); PT 20 (30 built); PT 21 (100 USAAF, 100 USN); and finally as the definitive PT 22 Recruit (1,048 built) ordered in 1941 as pilot training began its rapid expansion. Ryan also pioneered STOL techniques in its YO 51 Dragonfly liaison and observation craft, but only three.

In the immediate postwar years, Ryan bought the rights to the Navion light aircraft from North American Aviation, selling it to both military and civilian customers. In the 1950s, Ryan was a pioneer in jet vertical flight with the X 13 Vertijet, a tail sitting jet with a delta wing which was not used in production designs. In the early 1960s, Ryan built the XV 5 Vertifan for the U. S. Army, which used wing and nose mounted lift vanes for V/STOL vertical flight. Other Ryan V/STOL designs included the VZ 3 Vertiplane. Ryan developed the highly accurate radar system used on the Apollo Lunar Module. In 1968, the company was acquired by Teledyne for $128 million and a year later became a wholly owned subsidiary of that company as Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical Company. Northrop Grumman purchased Teledyne Ryan in 1999, with the products continuing to form the core of that firm's unmanned aerial vehicle efforts.