A flight to Catalina

On 10 May 1912 a young barnstormer took off from Newport Bay in a seaplane he had built himself, flew 37 minutes across the channel to Avalon on Catalina Island, picked up a bag of mail and flew back. It was the longest over-water flight yet made in America, longer than Blériot’s crossing of the English Channel. The pilot was Glenn L. Martin, and three months later, on 16 August 1912, he founded the company that bore his name. Among his early pupils was a man named William Boeing, to whom Martin also sold his first aeroplane.

The church that became a factory

Martin had grown up in Kansas making kites in his mother’s kitchen, and his first aircraft, copied from the Curtiss June Bug, broke up on its first test. His factory was an old Methodist church in Los Angeles, and he paid for it with stunt flying and even a part in a 1915 Mary Pickford film. A 1916 merger with the Wright Company did not work, and in September 1917 he started again in Cleveland. In 1913 Mexican rebels bought one of his pushers, fitted it with pipe bombs and used it in some of the earliest air attacks on warships.

The bomber faster than fighters

Martin’s MB-1 bomber was ordered in January 1918 and the MB-2 that followed became the Army’s standard bomber until 1930. In 1929 he moved to a new plant at Middle River, near Baltimore. There his team, under Peyton Magruder, produced the B-10, first flown on 16 February 1932: an all-metal monoplane with turrets, enclosed cockpits and retractable gear. It was the first mass-produced bomber faster than the Army’s own fighters, it made every existing bomber obsolete, and it won Martin the Collier Trophy. Then came the M-130, Pan Am’s China Clipper, which opened transpacific airline service in 1935.

Marauders and the Enola Gay

The Second World War made Martin a giant, 14th among US corporations by contract value. Its B-26 Marauder, first flown on 25 November 1940, was a fast medium bomber, and 5,288 were built. The Maryland and Baltimore, first ordered by France, served with the RAF, and the PBM Mariner flying boat served until 1964. At its new plant near Omaha, Martin also built 531 Boeing B-29s, including every Silverplate aircraft: Enola Gay and Bockscar, which dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, came off Martin’s line. Its huge JRM Mars flying boats later fought forest fires in Canada until 2016.

Seaplanes, rockets and a merger

Martin’s later aircraft were mixed: the XB-48 and XB-51 bombers failed, while the licence-built B-57 Canberra succeeded, and the P6M SeaMaster jet flying boat was cancelled after 16 were built. The company’s future was in rockets: the Vanguard satellite launcher, the Titan ICBMs and the Pershing. Glenn Martin died in 1955. The company became the Martin Company in 1957 and in 1961 merged with American-Marietta to form Martin Marietta, which merged with Lockheed in 1995. Martin’s alumni included Donald Douglas, Lawrence Bell, James McDonnell and Dutch Kindleberger of North American.

Továrny

• Los Angeles church factory · Los Angeles, California — First factory, in a former Methodist church, 1912
• Cleveland plant · Cleveland, Ohio — Headquarters 1917–1929
• Middle River plant · Middle River, near Baltimore, Maryland — Main plant from 1929; Plant No. 2 on the National Register since 2023
• Omaha bomber plant · Offutt Field, Nebraska — Built B-26s and 531 B-29s including Enola Gay and Bockscar

Lidé

• Glenn L. Martin · founder — 1886–1955; pioneer aviator and record holder
• Peyton M. Magruder · designer — Designed the B-10
• Donald Douglas · engineer — Designed the MB-1; later founded Douglas Aircraft
• William Boeing · pupil and customer — Learned to fly with Martin and bought his first aircraft from him
• Lawrence Dale Bell · executive — Later founded Bell Aircraft
• James S. McDonnell · engineer — Later founded McDonnell Aircraft

Rekordy a prvenství

• Longest American over-water flight of its day, Newport Bay to Catalina and back, 10 May 1912
• 1932 Collier Trophy for the XB-10