|
The Alco Hydro-Aeroplane
Company was established in San Francisco in 1912 by the brothers
Allan and Malcolm Loughead. In 1916, the company was renamed
the Loughead Aircraft Manufacturing Company and relocated to
Santa Barbara, California, the same year Santa Barbara native
Jack Northrop (aged 20) took his first job in aviation working
as a draftsman for Loughead Aircraft. The company proceeded to
design and construct the Model F-1 flying boat, which debuted
on March 29, 1918, and set the American non-stop record for seaplane
flight by flying from Santa Barbara to San Diego. Following the
Model F-1, the company invested heavily in the design and development
of a revolutionary monocoque aircraft called the Model S-1. However,
the asking price of $2500 could not compete in a market that
was saturated with post World War 1 $350 Curtiss JN-4s and De
Haviland trainers. The Loughead Aircraft Manufacturing Company
closed its doors in 1921.
In 1926, Allan Loughead, Jack
Northrop, and Kenneth Jay secured funding to form the Lockheed
Aircraft Company in Hollywood (the spelling was changed phonetically
to prevent mispronunciation). This new company utilized some
of the same technology originally developed for the Model S-1
to design the Vega Model. In March 1928, the company relocated
to Burbank, California, and by year's end reported sales exceeding
one million dollars. From 1926-28 the company produced over 80
aircraft and employed more than 300 workers who by April 1929
were building five aircraft per week. In July 1929, majority
shareholder Fred Keeler sold 87% of the Lockheed Aircraft Company
to Detroit Aircraft Corporation. In August 1929, Allan Lockheed
resigned. 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 Lockheed 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. The first successful
construction that was built in any number (141 aircraft) was
the Vega first built in 1927, best known for its 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-engined transport. The company sold 40 in the first
year of production. Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan,
flew it in their failed attempt to circumnavigate the world in
1937. Subsequent designs, the Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior
and the Lockheed Model 14 Super Electra expanded their market |
