The Glenn L. Martin Company was an American aircraft and aerospace
manufacturing company that was founded by the aviation pioneer Glenn L. Martin.
The Martin Company produced many important aircraft for the defense of
the United States and its allies, especially during World War II and the
Cold War. Also, during the 1950s and 60s, the Martin Company moved gradually
out of the aircraft industry and into the guided missile, space exploration,
and space utilization industries. In 1961, the Martin Company merged with
the American-Marietta Corporation, a large sand and gravel mining company,
forming the Martin Marietta Corporation. Then, 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 out building military trainers in Santa Ana,
California, and then 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 it to form a second Glenn L.
Martin Company on September 10, 1917. This time it was based in Cleveland,
Ohio. = World War I =
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, but a follow up design,
the MB-2, was also proved successful and 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 to the design and put the order out for bid. Unfortunately for
Martin, 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 United States 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 formally 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. The Martin Company moved forward into
the aerospace manufacturing business, and it produced the Vanguard rocket,
which was 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 U.S. Army's
Pershing missile. The Martin Company was also one of two
finalists for the Command and Service Modules of the Apollo Program.
Unfortunately for Martin, NASA awarded the design and production contracts for
these to the North American Aviation Corporation.
The Martin Company went further in the production of even 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 U.S. 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 "except" for NASA's Saturn V rocket — which was no longer in
production and thus was a machine from history. 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 has
been in orbit around Saturn since 2004, 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 Martin also taught William Boeing how to
fly and also sold him his first airplane.
Products = Training aircraft =
Martin T Martin S
Martin N2M = Bombers and Attack aircraft =
Martin MB-1 Martin NBS-1
Martin XNBL-2 Martin T3M
Martin T4M Martin XLB-4
Martin XT6M Martin B-10XB-13O-15/O-45
Martin BM-1 Martin BM-2
Martin 146 Martin XB-16
Martin 167 Maryland Martin B-26 Marauder
Martin B-29 Superfortress Martin XB-27
Martin 187 Baltimore Martin XB-33 Super Marauder
Martin B-35A Martin AM Mauler
Martin P4M Mercator Martin XB-48
Martin XB-51 Martin B-57 under license from English
Electric Martin RB-57D Canberra
Martin/General Dynamics RB-57F Canberra Martin 316/XB-68
= Reconnaissance and observation aircraft =
Martin S Martin MS
Martin MO Martin M2O-1
Martin XO-4 = Military seaplanes =
Martin PM-1 Martin XP2M
Martin P3M Martin PM-2
Martin PBM Mariner Martin JRM Mars
Martin PBB-1 Martin P5M Marlin
Martin P6M SeaMaster Martin P7M SubMaster
= Civil aviation airliners = Martin 70
Martin M-130 China Clipper Martin M-156
Martin 2-0-2 Martin 3-0-3
Martin SeaMistress Martin 4-0-4
= Other types of aircraft = Naval Aircraft Factory NO
= 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 rockets =
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, such
as at the Kansas Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, Kansas.
See also Martin State Airport
References External links
Glenn L Martin Maryland Aviation Museum Historic American Engineering Record No.
MD-136, "Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company Plant No. 2, 2800 Eastern
Boulevard, Middle River, Baltimore County, MD", 3 photos, 5 data pages, 1
photo caption page HAER No. MD-136-A, "Glenn L. Martin
Aircraft Company Plant No. 2, Administration Building", 3 photos, 1
photo caption page HAER No. MD-136-B, "Glenn L. Martin
Aircraft Company Plant No. 2, Assembly Building", 10 photos, 2 photo caption
pages HAER No. MD-136-C, "Glenn L. Martin
Aircraft Company Plant No. 2, Drop Hammer Building", 2 photos, 1 photo
caption page HAER No. MD-136-D, "Glenn L. Martin
Aircraft Company Plant No. 2, Paint Shop", 1 photo, 1 photo caption page