HISTORY
Early history
Leroy Grumman and others worked for
the Loening Aircraft Engineering
Corporation in the 1920s, but when
it was bought by Keystone Aircraft
Corporation and the operations moved
from New York City to Bristol,
Pennsylvania, Grumman and his
partners (Edmund Ward Poor, William
Schwendler, Jake Swirbul, and Clint
Towl) started their own company in
an old Cox-Klemin Aircraft Co.
factory in Baldwin on Long Island,
New York. All of the early Grumman
employees were former Loening
employees. The company was
named for Grumman because he was its
largest investor.
The
company filed as a business on
December 5, 1929, and opened its
doors on January 2, 1930. Keeping
busy by welding aluminum tubing for
truck frames, the company eagerly
pursued contracts with the US Navy.
Grumman designed the first practical
floats with a retractable landing
gear for the Navy, and this launched
Grumman into the aviation market.
The first Grumman aircraft was also
for the Navy, the Grumman FF-1, a
biplane with retractable landing
gear.
This was followed by a number of
other successful designs.
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Navy contracts
During
World War II, Grumman became known
for its "Cats", Navy fighter
aircraft, F4F Wildcat and F6F
Hellcat, and the less well known
Grumman F7F Tigercat and Grumman F8F
Bearcat (neither of which saw combat
during World War II), and for its
torpedo bomber
TBF
Avenger. Grumman's first jet
aircraft was the F9F Panther; it was
followed by the upgraded F9F/F-9
Cougar, and the less well known F-11
Tiger in the 1950s. The company's
big postwar successes came in the
1960s with the A-6 Intruder and E-2
Hawkeye and in the 1970s with the
Grumman EA-6B Prowler and F-14
Tomcat. Grumman products were
prominent in the film
Top Gun
and numerous World War II naval and
Marine Corps aviation films. The
U.S. Navy still employs the Prowler
and the Hawkeye as part of Carrier
Air Wings on board aircraft carriers
as of 2012.
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Manned Spacecraft
Grumman was
the chief contractor on the Apollo
Lunar Module that landed men on the
moon. They received the contract on
November 7, 1962, and built 13 lunar
modules. As the Apollo program
neared its end, Grumman was one of
the main competitors for the
contract to design and build the
Space Shuttle, but lost to Rockwell
International. The company ended up
involved in the shuttle program
nonetheless, as a subcontractor to
Rockwell, providing the wings and
vertical stabilizer sections.
In
1969 the company changed its name to
Grumman Aerospace Corporation,
and in 1978 it sold the
Grumman-American Division to
Gulfstream Aerospace. The company
built the Grumman Long Life Vehicle
(LLV), a light transport mail truck
designed for and used by the United
States Postal Service. The LLV
entered service in 1986
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Long Island location
For
much of the Cold War period Grumman
was the largest corporate employer
on Long Island.
Grumman's products were considered
so reliable and ruggedly built that
the company was often referred to as
the "Grumman
Iron Works".
As the
company grew, it moved to Valley
Stream, New York, then Farmingdale,
New York, finally to Bethpage, New
York, with the testing and final
assembly at the 6,000-acre (24 km2)
Naval Weapons Station in Calverton,
New York, all located on Long
Island. At its peak in 1986 it
employed 23,000 people on Long
Island
and occupied 6,000,000 square feet
(560,000 m2) in
structures on 105 acres (0.42 km2)
it leased from the U.S. Navy in
Bethpage.
The
end of the Cold War, at the
beginning of the 1990s, the reduced
need for defense spending led to a
wave of mergers as aerospace
companies shrank in number; in 1994
Northrop bought Grumman for $2.1
billion to form Northrop Grumman,
after Northrop topped a $1.9 billion
offer from Martin Marietta.
The new
company closed almost all of its
facilities on Long Island with the
Bethpage plant being converted to a
residential and office complex (with
its headquarters at 1111 Stewart
Avenue becoming the corporate
headquarters for Cablevision) and
the Calverton plant being turned
into an airport that is being
developed by Riverhead, New York. A
portion of the airport property has
been used for the Grumman Memorial
Park. Northrop Grumman's remaining
business at the Bethpage campus is
the Battle Management and Engagement
Systems Division, which employs
around 2,000 people.
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