Aviation History
Courtesy of Denham S. Scott who wrote an article for North American Aviation Retirees' Bulletin [date unknown].
Edited by David Barth 23 April 2013.
MARTIN [and later, MARTIN MARIETTA; LOCKHEED MARTIN]
In 1910, the Martin company got its start in an abandoned California church when Glenn L. Martin, with his mother, Minta Martin, and their mechanic, Roy Beal, constructed a fragile biplane that Glenn used to teach himself to fly.
Glenn Martin built the plane in a vacant church, before he moved to a vacant apricot cannery in Santa Ana. He was a showman and he traveled the county fair and air meet circuit as an exhibition aviator. From his exhibition proceeds, Glenn was able to pay his factory workers and purchase the necessary wood, linen and wire to manufacture aircraft.
His mother, Minta, and two men ran the factory while Glenn traveled around the country. One of his workers was 22-year old Donald Douglas who was the sole engineer. A Santa Monica youngster named Larry Bell, who later founded Bell Aircraft which became Bell Helicopter Textron, ran the shop.
After WWI, Wall Street investors gained control of the Wright Brother's company in Dayton, Ohio and the Martin Company in Los Angeles and combined them as the Wright-Martin Company.
Wright-Martin began building an obsolete biplane design with a foreign Hispano-Suiza engine. Angered because he had been out maneuvered by the Wall Street investors, Martin walked out, taking Larry Bell and other key employees with him.
From the deep wallet of a wealthy baseball mogul, Martin was able to establish a new factory. Later, aviation legend Donald Douglas was persuaded by Glenn to join his team.
The Martin MB-1 quickly emerged from the company's efforts and became the Martin Bomber. Although too late to enter WWI, the Martin Bomber showed its superiority when Billy Mitchell used it to sink several captured German battleships and cruisers to prove the value of air power. Mitchell was later court martialed for his effort.
DOUGLAS [and later, MCDONNELL DOUGLAS; BOEING]
Douglas Aircraft started operations in 1920 in a barbershop backroom in LOS Angeles on Pico Boulevard. As of the time of the author's writing, the barber-shop was still operating.
After working for the Glenn L. Martin company and saving $60,000, Donald Douglas returned to Los Angeles and to rent the barbershop room and loft space in a carpenter's shop, nearby. There he constructed a classic passenger airplane called the Douglas Cloudster.
In 1922, Donald Douglas won a contract from the Navy to build several torpedo-carrying aircraft. While driving through Santa Monica, which was then a wilderness, Douglas noticed an abandoned, barn-like movie studio. He stopped his roadster and prowled around. That abandoned studio became Douglas Aircraft's first real factory. With the $120,000 Navy contract in hand, Donald Douglas could afford to hire one or two more engineers. The author's brother, Gordon Scott, had been schooled in the little known science of aviation at England's Fairey Aviation, and Douglas hired him.
The author's first association with the early aviation pioneers occurred when he paid a visit to his brother, Gordon, at his new work place at Douglas. Gordon was outside on a ladder washing windows. He was the youngest engineer and the windows were dirty. Douglas Aircraft Company had no money to hire janitors.
Gordon introduced the author to a towheaded guy called Jack Northrop, and another chap named Jerry Vultee (of Vultee fame which became Consolidated Vultee and Convair). Jack Northrop had moved to Douglas from Lockheed Aircraft to work on Douglas Aircraft's world cruiser designs.
The author said he had the distinct pleasure of spending time with Ed Heinemann who, at Douglas, designed the AD, A3D and A4D. He told the author how the author's father would fly out to Palmdale with an experimental aircraft they were both working on. They would take it aloft for a hop and come up with some fixes. After having airframe changes fabricated in a nearby machine shop, they would hop it again to see if they had gotten the desired results. If it worked out, Mr. Heinemann would incorporate the changes on the aircraft's assembly line. No money swapped hands!
RYAN
In 1922, Claude Ryan, a 24 year old military reserve pilot, was getting his hair cut in San Diego, when the barber mentioned that the "town's aviator" was in jail for smuggling Chinese illegals into the U.S. from Mexico. Claude found out that if he replaced the pilot who was sitting in jail, he would be able to lease the town's airfield for $50 a month as long as he agreed to fly North and East, but not South.
A couple of years after Douglas built the Cloudster, Claude Ryan bought a Clouster and used it to make daily flights between San Diego and Los Angeles. This gave Ryan the distinction of being the first owner-operator of Douglas transports.
Claude Ryan later custom-built Charles Lindbergh's "ride" to fame in the flying fuel tank christened "The Spirit of St. Louis" that Lindbergh used to fly solo across the Atlantic in May 1927. Lindbergh flew from New York to Paris and triggered a bedlam where everyone was trying to fly everywhere.
LOCKHEED [and later, LOCKHEED MARTIN]
The Lockheed Company built the first of their Vega aircraft in 1927 inside a building which, at the time of the author's article, was being used by Victory Cleaners at 1040 Sycamore in Hollywood.
While working in his home after work and on weekends, Jack Northrop designed a wonderfully advanced, streamlined airplane. When Allan Loughead [Lockheed] found a wealthy investor willing to finance Northrop's new airplane, he linked up with Allan and together, they leased a Hollywood workshop where they constructed the Lockheed Vega. It turned out to be sensational with its clean lines and high performance. Soon Amelia Earhart and others flew the Vega and broke many of aviation's world records.
Before the first Lockheed Vega was built, William Randolph Hearst had already paid for it and had it entered in an air race from the California Coast to Honolulu. In June 1927, the author's brother, Gordon, left Douglas Aircraft to become Jack Northrop's assistant at Lockheed. While there, he managed to get himself hired as the navigator on Hearst's Vega. The race was a disaster and ten lives were lost. The Vega and Gordon vanished. A black cloud hung heavily over the little Lockheed shop.
However, Hubert Wilkins, later to become Sir Hubert Wilkins, took Vega number 2 and made a successful polar flight from Alaska to Norway. A string of successful flights after that placed Lockheed in aviation's forefront. The author went to work for Lockheed as it 26th employee, shortly after the Hearst Vega disaster, and worked on the Vega line. It was made almost entirely of wood and the author said he quickly become a half-assed carpenter.
NORTHROP [and later, NORTHROP-GRUMMAN]
[After designing the Lockheed Vega, Jack Northrop started his own company which built a succession of famous aircraft including the B2 stealth bomber]. The original factory location was an obscure southern California hotel. It was available because the police had raided the hotel and found that its steady residents were money-minded gals entertaining transitory male hotel guests.
BOEING
Other parts of Glenn Martin's business were a flying school that had several planes based at Griffith Park and a seaplane operation on the edge of Watts, a Los Angeles suburb, where his instructors taught a rich young man named Bill Boeing to
fly.
Later, Boeing bought one of Glenn Martin's seaplanes and had it shipped back to his home in Seattle. At the same time, Bill Boeing hired away Glenn's personal mechanic. Later, after Boeing's seaplane crashed in Puget Sound, he placed an order to Martin for replacement parts.
Still chafing from having his best mechanic swiped, a trick Martin later often used himself, Martin decided to take his sweet time and allowed Bill Boeing to stew for a while. Bill Boeing wasn't patient, so he began fabricating his own aircraft parts, an activity that morphed into constructing entire airplanes and eventually became the Boeing Company.
A former small shipyard nicknamed 'Red Barn' became Boeing Aircraft's first home in Seattle. Soon, a couple of airplanes were built, each of them possessing a remarkable resemblance to Glenn Martin's and Glenn Curtiss' airplanes.
A few years later, when the Great depression intervened and Boeing couldn't sell enough airplanes to pay his bills, he diversified into custom-built speed boats and furniture for his wealthy friends.
NORTH AMERICAN
In Cleveland, a young fellow called "Dutch" Kindelberger joined Martin as an engineer. Later, Dutch became the head of North American Aviation.
Eventually, General Motors acquired North American consisting of Fokker Aircraft, Pitcairn Aviation [later Eastern Airlines], and Sperry Gyroscope and hired Dutch Kindelberger away from Douglas to run the company. Dutch moved the entire operation to Los Angeles where Dutch and his engineers came up with the P-51 Mustang, one of the greatest fighter aircraft of WWII.
THE AVIATION PIONEERS
Just a handful of young men played roles affecting the lives of all Americans. They initiated the southern California metamorphosis, taking it from a semi-desert with orange groves and celluloid, into a dynamic complex, supporting millions.
Although this technological explosion had startling humble beginnings, taking root as acorns in a barber shop's back room, a vacant church, and an abandoned cannery.