HISTORY
As a
teenager, Larry Bell saw his
first plane at an air show,
starting a lifelong
fascination with aviation.
Bell dropped out of high
school in 1912 to join his
brother in the burgeoning
aircraft industry at the
Glenn L. Martin Company,
where by 1914 he had become
shop superintendent. By 1920
Bell was vice president and
general manager of Martin,
by now based in Cleveland,
OH. Feeling that he deserved
part ownership, in late 1924
he presented Martin with an
ultimatum. Mr. Martin
refused, and Bell quit.
Bell
spent several years out of
the aviation industry, but
in 1928 was hired by Reuben
H. Fleet at Consolidated
Aircraft, in Buffalo, New
York where he was guaranteed
an interest in the company.
Before long, Bell became
general manager and business
was booming, but he still
wanted to be able to run his
own company. He knew that,
although he could raise
local capital, he would not
be able to compete with
either Consolidated or
Curtiss-Wright, the two
major aircraft builders also
based in Buffalo.
Serendipitously, in 1935
Fleet decided to move
Consolidated Aircraft to San
Diego, and Bell stayed
behind to establish his own
company, the Bell Aircraft
Company, on 10 July 1935,
headquartered in the former
Consolidated plant at 2050
Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo.
Incidentally, Bell was the
third major aircraft builder
to occupy the site. The
factory complex was
originally built in 1916 for
the Curtiss Aeroplane &
Motor Company,
and during World War I had
been considered the largest
airplane factory in the
world.
Bell's first military
contract followed in 1937
with the development of the
ill-fated YFM-1 Airacuda, an
unconventional
bomber-destroyer powered by
two Allison-powered pusher
propellers. The YFM-1
incorporated groundbreaking
technology for the time,
with gyro stabilized weapons
siting and a thermionic fire
control system. Including
the prototype, just 13
Airacudas were produced, and
these saw only limited
service with the USAAC
before being scrapped in
1942.
Bell
enjoyed much success the
following year with the
development of the single
engine
P-39
Airacobra, of which
9,588 were built. Putting
their previous experience
with Allison engines to good
use, the P-39 placed the
engine in the center of the
aircraft, with the propeller
driven by a long shaft
through which a 37mm cannon
was also mounted, firing
through the propeller's
spinner. Due to persistent
problems, the original
turbosupercharger was
deleted from production
models, instead using a
single-stage, single-speed
supercharger, as was
standard on all other
Allison-powered products,
with the exception of the
P-38.
The P-39 performed poorly at
high altitudes compared to
newer, late-war designs.
Most Allied forces thought
the Airacobra effective only
for ground attack roles, as
demonstrated by a few U.S.
Army Air Forces units that
flew P-39s, such as the
so-called
Cactus Air Force
on Guadalcanal in 1942-43.
However, the Soviet Air
Force used their Lend-Lease
P-39s primarily in the
air-to-air role, where they
found it to excel as a
front-line fighter against
some of the best pilots and
aircraft of the Luftwaffe.
Indeed, the Soviet P-39s
scored the highest number of
individual kills attributed
to any U.S. fighter type.
A
somewhat larger and more
powerful version of the P-39
was produced shortly before
the end of World War II.
Called the
P-63
Kingcobra, this
warplane addressed many of
the shortcomings of the
P-39, though it was produced
too late in the war to make
any contribution. 2,971
P-63's were built between
1943 and 1945, many
delivered to the Soviet
Union. Also, by that time,
the Army Air Forces already
had the superior P-47
Thunderbolt and P-38
Lightning
fighter-bombers.
In October 1942, The
Bell-built twin-jet
P-59 Airacomet was
the first American jet
aircraft to fly.
Unfortunately, performance
was below expectations,
roughly on par with
contemporaneous
propeller-driven aircraft,
an outcome generally
attributed to the extremely
short development timeframe
required by the USAAF, as
well as the intense secrecy
imposed on the project.
Design had begun in
September 1941, during which
time the Bell team was
guided mostly by theory, as
General Electric would not
finish and begin testing the
first engine until March
1942. Also, General Henry
"Hap" Arnold had forbidden
use of wind tunnels to test
and optimize the design, but
later relented somewhat,
only allowing the group to
use the low-speed tunnel at
Wright Field, Ohio. Bell
engineers could only guess
at the performance
characteristics. Originally
intended initially as a
production aircraft, the
P-59 nevertheless became an
important experimental
testbed for jet technology,
providing invaluable data
for development of later jet
airplanes.
During World War II, Bell
also built heavy bombers
under license from other
aircraft companies at a
factory near Marietta,
Georgia, just northwest of
Atlanta. Online by mid-1943,
the new plant produced
hundreds of Consolidated
B-24 Liberators and Boeing
B-29 Superfortress bombers.
In mid-1944, the production
of the B-24 was consolidated
from several different
companies (including some in
Texas) to two large
factories: the Consolidated
Aircraft Company in San
Diego and the Ford Motor
Company's spawling factory
in Willow Run, near Detroit,
Michigan, which had been
specially designed to
produce B-24s. For the rest
of the war, Bell's Marietta
plant concentrated on
producing B-29s, producing
668 of them by the time
contract expired in the fall
of 1945. Bell ranked 25th
among United States
corporations in the value of
wartime production
contracts.
After World War II
As the postwar defense
industry downsized, Bell
consolidated its operations
at the Wheatfield plant,
near Buffalo. The aircraft
factory in Marietta later
became the property of the
Lockheed Corporation, which
has used it for producing
C-130 Hercules, C-141
Starlifter, and C-5 Galaxy
transport planes. Although
Bell designed several more
fighter plane designs during
and after WW II, none of
these ever entered
mass-production.
The
XP-77 was a
small fighter using
non-strategic materials; it
was not successful. The
XP-83 was a
jet escort fighter similar
in layout to the P-59 that
was cancelled. The Bell
XF-109 was
a supersonic vertical
takeoff fighter that was
cancelled in 1961.
Perhaps Bell Aircraft's most
important contribution to
the history of fixed-wing
aircraft development would
be the design and building
of the experimental
Bell X-1
rocket plane, the world's
first airplane to break the
sound barrier, and its
follow-on, the
Bell
X-2. Note that in a
twist on the usual way of
designating American
aircraft, the following were
not different models of the
X-1, but rather they were
the successive (mostly
identical) units of the X-1
program: the X-1, X-1A,
X-1B, X-1C, X-1D, and X-1E.
Bell
went on to design and
produce several different
experimental aircraft during
the 1950s. These helped the
U.S. Air Force and the
National Advisory Committee
on Aeronautics (NACA)
explore the boundaries of
aircraft design, and paving
the way for the founding of
NASA and the exploration of
outer space. The X-2
Starbuster achieved Mach 3
(2,100 mph) and a height of
126,000 ft in 1955, blazing
a technological trail for
the development of
spacecraft.
Bell
played a crucial role in the
development of rocket
propulsion after WWII,
spearheaded by the likes of
some of the most brilliant
minds in rocket science like
Walter Dornberger
(ex-commander of the Nazi
germany Pennamunda rocket
base) and Wendell Moore.
Bell developed and fielded
the worlds first nuclear
tipped Air-to-Surface cruise
missile, the
GAM-63
RASCAL in 1957.
Wendell Moore developed the
Bell Rocket belt, utilizing
peroxide monopropellant
rocket engines. While the
rocket belt failed to be
commercially developed, the
rocket technology proved
invaluable in future Bell
programs. Bells crowning
achievement in the realm of
rocketry was the Agena
rocket engine. The Agena was
a 12,000 lbf bi-propellant
rocket that is considered to
this day to be one of the
most reliable rockets ever
built. 360 units were
produced starting in the
late 1950's and it was
responsible for inserting
into orbit most of the
satellites launched by the
United States in the 1960's.
Bell
Aerospace Textron continued
to play a significant role
in NASA's mission to land
men on the moon in the
1960s. Bell designed and
built the Reaction Control
system for Project Mercury's
Redstone command module and
a similar system was
incorporated into the North
American X-15 space plane.
NASA selected Bell to
develop and built the LLRV
Lunar Landing Research
Vehicle, three of which were
built in the early 1960's to
train the Apollo astronauts
to land on the moon. Bell
also designed the rocket
engine used in the Apollo
LEM Ascent Propulsion
System, which was
responsible for getting
NASA's astronauts off the
moon.
Helicopter Development
Helicopter development began
at Bell Aircraft in 1941
with the company's Bell
Model 30
first flying in 1943.
After World War II, Bell
Helicopters became the only
part of Bell Aircraft still
producing aircraft. In
1946 the Civail Aeronautics
Authority (CAA) awarded the
first helicopter certification to the
Model 47, the first Bell Helicopter type to enter production.
Later versions of the Model
47 saw significant service in the Korean War and other conflicts, and it became a highly successful commercial model, with some logging over five decades of service.
A series of
successful helicopter
designsfollowed and the
UH-1 Iroquois
became the most noted
helicopter of the War in
Vietnam.
Lawrence Bell died in 1956
and for several years
afterwards the company was
in financial difficulty.
Bell was purchased by the
Textron Corporation on 5
July 1960 and is known today
as
Bell Helicopter
Textron.
It
is headquarted in Hurst,
Texas, near Fort Worth.
Today,
Bell manufactures military
helicopter and tiltrotor
products in and around Fort
Worth, as well as in
Amarillo, Texas, and
commercial rotorcraft
products in Mirabel, Quebec,
Canada. Bell provides
training and support
services worldwide.
Source:
Wikipedia
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