The electrician from the back of the shop

James Ling failed to graduate from his Jesuit high school, trained as an electrician at a US Navy school, and in 1947 started Ling Electric Company in Dallas, living in the rear of the shop. When he took the firm public in 1955, he sold the shares himself, door to door and from a booth at the State Fair of Texas. Then he started buying: L.M. Electronics in 1956, the speaker maker Altec in 1959 and the missile firm Temco Aircraft in 1960.

A hostile takeover of Chance Vought

In 1961, with money from the insurance man Troy Post and the oil baron D. Harold Byrd, Ling took over Chance Vought, the builder of the Corsair and the F-8 Crusader, in a hostile bid. The result was Ling-Temco-Vought. Vought kept designing aircraft and missiles, now as Vought Aeronautics and Vought Missiles and Space, while Ling worked out how to make the pieces look worth more than the whole. In 1964 he split the group into three listed subsidiaries, one of them LTV Aerospace, and used their shares to borrow more.

Meat packing, an airline and a steelworks

The shopping spree became legendary. In 1967 LTV took over Wilson and Company, twice its own size, which packed meat, made sporting goods and sold pharmaceuticals. In 1968 it bought Braniff International Airways, National Car Rental and the Jones and Laughlin steelworks. By 1969 LTV owned 33 companies, employed 29,000 people, sold 15,000 products and had $3.6 billion in sales. Then share prices fell, the government filed an antitrust suit, and in 1970 the board pushed Ling out.

The Corsair II

The aircraft business was the steady part. Vought’s A-7 Corsair II flew on 26 September 1965 and became the US Navy’s and the US Air Force’s workhorse light attack jet over Vietnam. 1,545 were built up to 1984. It served the US until 1991, after the Gulf War, Portugal until 1999 and Greece until 2014. LTV also flew the XC-142 tiltwing transport in 1964 and developed the Lance and ATACMS missiles.

The largest bankruptcy in America

The steel did the damage. In July 1986 LTV filed for Chapter 11 with $6.14 billion in assets, the largest bankruptcy in US history to that point. It stayed in court until 1993. In 1992 the aircraft business went to Northrop and the Carlyle Group as a revived Vought, and the missile division to Loral, today part of Lockheed Martin. What remained, LTV Steel, filed again in December 2000 and was dissolved on 18 December 2001.

People

• James Ling · founder (1922–2004) — Forced out by the board in 1970
• Paul Thayer · chief executive from 1970 — Renamed the group LTV Corporation
• Troy Post · insurance executive, backer — Helped fund the 1961 Chance Vought takeover

Records and firsts

• Largest US corporate bankruptcy to that date, July 1986
• One of the 40 largest US industrial corporations in 1969