Glenn L. Martin Company
The Glenn L. Martin Company 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 sand and gravel mining company, forming Martin Marietta Corporation. In 1995, Martin Marietta merged with aerospace giant Lockheed to form the Lockheed Martin Corporation.
History
Origins
Glenn L. Martin Company was founded by aviation pioneer Glenn Luther Martin on August 16, 1912. Martin started building military trainers in Santa Ana, California, and in 1916, Martin accepted a merger offer from the Wright Company, creating the Wright-Martin Aircraft Company in September. This new company did not go well, and Glenn Martin left to form a second Glenn L. Martin Company on September 10, 1917; it was based in Cleveland, Ohio.Mexican Revolution
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 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.The "Sonora", armed with rudimentary 3-inch pipe bombs, performed the first known air to naval bombing runs in history.
World War I
For the Dutch East Indies a number of planes were delivered, with the first flight on November 6, 1915. It involved 2 types TE, 6 types TT and 8 types R. Martin's first big success came during World War I with the MB-1 bomber, 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; 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. 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, L.W.F. Engineering, and Aeromarine. 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. 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 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 US corporations in the value of wartime production contracts. The Martin Company built a total of 531 Boeing B-29 Superfortresses and 1,585 B-26 Marauders at its Omaha, Nebraska, plant 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.
Postwar
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, both the P5M Marlin and P6M SeaMaster seaplanes, and the Martin 4-0-4 twin-engine passenger airliner.
, 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 sounding rocket or a ballistic missile. Martin also designed and manufactured the huge and heavily armed Titan I and LGM-25C Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. 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. 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 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration 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.
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 3rd-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.
The Martin Company employed many of the founders and chief engineers of the American aerospace industry, including:
- Dandridge M. Cole – moved on as aerospace engineer at General Electric
- Donald Douglas – founder of Douglas Aircraft, later as McDonnell Douglas
- Lawrence Dale Bell – founded Bell Aircraft, now Bell Helicopter
- James S. McDonnell – founded McDonnell Aircraft, later as McDonnell Douglas
- J.H. "Dutch" Kindleberger – CEO and Chairman of North American Aviation
- Hans Multhopp – concepts used to create NASA's Space Shuttle
- C. A. Van Dusen – Brewster Aeronautical Corporation
Products
Aircraft
| Model name | First flight | Number built | Type |
| Martin MB-1 | 1918 | 20 | Twin piston engine biplane bomber |
| Martin NBS-1 | 1920 | 130 | Twin piston engine biplane bomber |
| Martin MS | 1923 | 6 | Single piston engine biplane scout |
| Martin N2M | 1924 | 1 | Prototype single piston engine biplane trainer |
| Martin MO | 1924 | 36 | Single piston engine monoplane observation airplane |
| Martin T3M | 1926 | 124 | Single piston engine biplane torpedo bomber |
| Martin T4M | 1927 | 103 | Single piston engine biplane torpedo bomber |
| Martin BM | 1929 | 33 | Single piston engine biplane torpedo bomber |
| Martin XT6M | 1930 | 1 | Prototype single piston engine biplane torpedo bomber |
| Martin PM | 1930 | 55 | Twin piston engine biplane flying boat patrol airplane |
| Martin XP2M | 1931 | 1 | Prototype three piston engine monoplane flying boat patrol bomber |
| Martin P3M | 1931 | 9 | Twin piston engine monoplane flying boat patrol bomber |
| Martin B-10 | 1932 | 348 | Twin piston engine monoplane bomber |
| Martin M-130 | 1934 | 3 | Four piston engine monoplane flying boat airliner |
| Martin 146 | 1935 | 1 | Prototype twin piston engine monoplane bomber |
| Martin M-156 | 1937 | 1 | Four piston engine monoplane flying boat airliner |
| Martin PBM Mariner | 1939 | 1,366 | Twin piston engine monoplane flying boat patrol bomber |
| Martin 167 Maryland | 1939 | 450 | Twin piston engine monoplane bomber |
| Martin B-26 Marauder | 1940 | 5,288 | Twin piston engine monoplane bomber |
| Martin 187 Baltimore | 1941 | 1,575 | Twin piston engine monoplane bomber |
| Martin JRM Mars | 1942 | 7 | Four piston engine monoplane flying boat transport |
| Martin B-29 Superfortress | 1944 | 536 | Four piston engine monoplane bomber |
| Martin AM Mauler | 1944 | 151 | Single piston engine monoplane attack airplane |
| Martin P4M Mercator | 1946 | 21 | Twin piston engine monoplane patrol bomber |
| Martin 2-0-2 | 1946 | 47 | Twin piston engine monoplane airliner |
| Martin XB-48 | 1947 | 2 | Prototype six jet engine monoplane bomber |
| Martin 3-0-3 | 1947 | 1 | Prototype twin piston engine monoplane airliner |
| Martin P5M Marlin | 1948 | 285 | Twin piston engine monoplane flying boat patrol bomber |
| Martin XB-51 | 1949 | 2 | Prototype three jet engine monoplane bomber |
| Martin 4-0-4 | 1950 | 103 | Twin piston engine monoplane airliner |
| Martin B-57 Canberra | 1953 | 403 | Twin jet engine monoplane bomber |
| Martin P6M SeaMaster | 1955 | 12 | Four jet engine monoplane flying boat patrol bomber |
| Martin/General Dynamics RB-57F Canberra | 1963 | 21 | Twin jet engine monoplane reconnaissance airplane |
| Martin M2O-1 | 3 | Single piston engine biplane floatplane observation airplane | |
| Martin XO-4 | Single piston engine biplane observation airplane | ||
| Martin 70 | ~2 | Single piston engine biplane mail plane | |
| Martin XNBL-2 | N/A | 0 | Unbuilt twin piston engine biplane bomber |
| Martin XLB-4 | N/A | 0 | Unbuilt twin piston engine biplane bomber |
| Martin XB-16 | N/A | 0 | Unbuilt four piston engine monoplane bomber |
| Martin XB-27 | N/A | 0 | Unbuilt twin piston engine monoplane bomber |
| Martin XB-33 Super Marauder | N/A | 0 | Unbuilt twin piston engine monoplane bomber |
| Martin XB-68 | N/A | 0 | Unbuilt twin jet engine monoplane bomber |
| Martin 193 | N/A | 0 | Unbuilt six piston engine monoplane flying boat transport |
| Martin P7M SubMaster | N/A | 0 | Combined four piston/twin jet engine flying boat anti-submarine airplane |
Aircraft engines
- Martin 333, a four-cylinder inverted in-line piston engine
Missiles and rockets
- AAM-N-4 Oriole
- ASM-N-5 Gorgon V
- MGM-1 Matador
- MGM-13 Mace
- MGM-18 Lacrosse
- Bold Orion
- Titan
- *SM-68 Titan
- *HGM-25A Titan I
- *LGM-25C Titan II
- Viking
[Booster rocket]s
- The four-stage Vanguard rocket
- Titan II GLV
- Titan III
- *Titan IIIB
- *Titan IIIC
- Titan IV
- 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.