Компания Гленна Л. Мартина: История американского авиастроения (1917-1961)

Defunct American aerospace manufacturer (1917 61)

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. In 1961, the Martin Company merged with American Marietta Corporation, a large industrial conglomerate, forming the Martin Marietta corporation. In turn, Martin Marietta in 1995 merged with aerospace giant Lockheed Corporation to form the Lockheed Martin corporation.

Glenn L. Martin Company was founded by aviation pioneer Glenn Luther Martin on August 16, 1912. 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. 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; 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.

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. 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.

During World War II, a few of Martin's most successful designs were the B 26 Marauder and A 22 Maryland bombers, the PBM Mariner and JRM Mars 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. Martin ranked 14th among U. S. corporations in the value of wartime production contracts. 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.

On April 22, 1957, the company name was changed to the Martin Company. Postwar efforts in aeronautics by the Martin Company included two unsuccessful prototype bombers, the XB 48 and the XB 51, the marginally successful AM Mauler, the successful B 57 Canberra tactical bombers, the P5M Marlin and P6M SeaMaster seaplanes, and the Martin 4 0 4 twin engined passenger airliner. 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. 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 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.