HISTORY
The Alco
Hydro-Aeroplane Company was
established in 1912 by the brothers
Allan and Malcolm Loughead. This
company was renamed the Loughead
Aircraft Manufacturing Company and
located in Santa Barbara,
California.
In
1926, following the failure of
Loughead, Allan Loughead formed the
Lockheed Aircraft Company
(the spelling was changed to match
its phonetic pronunciation) in
Hollywood. In 1929, Lockheed sold
out to Detroit Aircraft Corporation.
The Great
Depression ruined the aircraft
market, and Detroit Aircraft went
bankrupt. A group of investors
headed by brothers Robert and
Courtland Gross, and Walter Varney,
bought the company out of
receivership in 1932. The syndicate
bought the company for a mere
$40,000 ($660,000 in 2011).
Ironically, Allan Loughead himself
had planned to bid for his own
company, but had raised "only"
$50,000 ($824,000), which he felt
was too small a sum for a serious
bid.
In
1934, Robert E. Gross was named
chairman of the new company, the
Lockheed Corporation,
which was headquartered at the
airport in Burbank, California. His
brother Courtlandt S. Gross was a
co-founder and executive, succeeding
Robert as Chairman following his
death in 1961. In 1995,Lockheed
merged with Martin Marietta to form
Lockheed Martin.
The first
successful construction that was
built in any number (141 aircraft)
was the Vega, best known for its use
to several first- and record setting
flights by, among others, Amelia
Earhart, Wiley Post and George
Hubert Wilkins.
In the
1930s, Lockheed spent $139,400
($2.29 million) to develop the Model
10 Electra, a small twin-engine
transport. The company sold forty in
the first year of production. Amelia
Earhart and her navigator, Fred
Noonan, flew this plane on their
failed attempt to circumnavigate the
world in 1937. Follow-on designs,
the Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior
and the Lockheed Model 14 Super
Electra expanded their market.
The
Lockheed Model 14 formed the basis
for the Hudson bomber, which was
supplied to both the British Royal
Air Force and the United States
military before and during World War
II. Its primary role was submarine
hunting. The Model 14 Super Electra
were sold abroad, and more than 100
were license-built in Japan for use
by the Imperial Japanese Army.
Lockheed was delivering airplanes to
Japan until May 1939.
At the
beginning of World War II, Lockheed
– under the guidance of Clarence
(Kelly) Johnson, who is considered
one of the best known American
aircraft designers – answered a
specification for an interceptor by
submitting the P-38 Lightning
fighter plane, a somewhat unorthodox
twin-engine, twin-boom design. The
P-38 was the only American fighter
aircraft in production throughout
American involvement in the war,
from Pearl Harbor to Victory over
Japan Day. It filled ground attack,
air-to-air, and even strategic
bombing roles in all theaters of the
war in which the United States
operated. The P-38 was responsible
for shooting down more Japanese
aircraft than any other U.S. Army
Air Forces type during the war; and
is particularly famous for being the
airplane that shot down Japanese
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's airplane.
The Lockheed
Vega factory was located next to
Burbank's Union Airport which it had
purchased in 1940. During the war,
the entire area was camouflaged to
fool enemy aerial reconnaissance.
The factory was hidden beneath a
huge burlap tarp painted to depict a
peaceful semi-rural neighborhood,
replete with rubber automobiles.
Hundreds of fake trees, shrubs,
buildings and even fire hydrants
were positioned to give a three
dimensional appearance. The trees
and shrubs were created from chicken
wire treated with an adhesive and
covered with feathers to provide a
leafy texture.
All
told, Lockheed and its subsidiary
Vega produced 19,278 aircraft during
World War II, representing six
percent of those produced in the
war. This included 2,600 Venturas,
2,750 B-17 Flying Fortresses (built
under license from Boeing), 2,900
Hudsons, and 9,000 Lightnings.
During World
War II, Lockheed, in cooperation
with Trans-World Airlines (TWA), had
developed the L-049 Constellation, a
radical new airliner capable of
flying 43 passengers between New
York and London at a speed of 300
mph (480 km/h) in 13 hours. Once the
Constellation (affectionately called
"Connie") went into the production,
the military received the first
production models. After the war,
the airlines received their original
orders of Constellations. This gave
Lockheed more than a year's
head-start over other aircraft
manufacturers in what was easily
foreseen as the post-war
modernisation of civilian air
travel. The Constellations'
performance set new standards which
transformed the civilian
transportation market. Its signature
tri-tail was the result of many
initial customers not having hangars
tall enough for a conventional tail.
In
1943, Lockheed began, in secrecy,
development of a new jet fighter at
its Burbank facility. This fighter,
the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star,
became the first American jet
fighter to score a kill. It also
recorded the first jet-to-jet aerial
kill, downing a MiG-15 in Korea,
although by this time the F-80 (as
it came to be known in June 1948)
was already considered obsolete.
Starting
with the P-80, Lockheed's secret
development work was conducted by
its Advanced Development Division,
more commonly known as the Skunk
Works. The name was taken from Al
Capp's comic strip Li'l Abner. This
organization has become famous and
has spawned many successful Lockheed
designs, including the U-2 (late
1950s), SR-71 Blackbird (1962) and
F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter
(1978). The Skunk Works often
created high quality designs in a
short time and sometimes with
limited resources.
In 1954, the
Lockheed C-130 Hercules, a durable
four-engined transport, flew for the
first time. The type remains in
production to present day.
In 1956,
Lockheed received a contract for the
development of the Polaris Submarine
Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM),
this would be followed by the
Poseidon and Trident nuclear
missiles.
Lockheed
developed the F-104 Starfighter in
late 1950s, the world's first Mach 2
fighter jet. In the early 1960s, the
company introduced the C-141
Starlifter four-engine jet
transport.
During
the 1960s, Lockheed began
development for two large aircraft:
the C-5 Galaxy military transport
and the L-1011 TriStar
wide-body
civil airliner. Both projects
encountered delays and cost
overruns. The C-5 was built to
unclear initial requirements and
suffered from structural weaknesses,
which Lockheed was forced to correct
at its own expense. The Tristar
competed for the same market as the
Douglas DC-10; delays in Rolls-Royce
engine development caused the
Tristar to fall behind the DC-10.
The C-5 and L-1011 projects, along
with the (canceled) U.S. Army AH-56
Cheyenne Helicopter program and
embroiled shipbuilding contracts,
caused Lockheed to lose large sums
of money during the 1970s.
Drowning in debt, in 1971 Lockheed
(then the largest US defense
contractor) asked the US Government
for a loan guarantee, to avoid
insolvency. The measure was hotly
debated in the US Senate. The chief
antagonist was Senator William
Proxmire (D-Wis), the nemesis of
Lockheed and its chairman, Daniel J.
Haughton. Following a fierce debate,
Vice President Spiro T. Agnew cast a
tie-breaking vote in favor of the
measure. Lockheed finished paying
off the $1.4 billion loan in 1977,
along with about $112.22 million in
loan guarantee fees.
In 1995,
Lockheed merged with Martin Marietta
to form Lockheed Martin.
Source:
Wikipedia
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