Archaeology

Arts

Economy

Education

Historical Overviews

Science, & Technology

Sports & Recreation

Transportation

Wildlife & Natural Resources

Search:

Glenn L. Martin Co. workyards

Maryland Historical Society

Since 1928 the Martin Company and its successors have been major industries in Maryland, producing a variety of aerospace and "high-tech" products.

Glenn L. Martin (1886-1955), a pioneer aviator and manufacturer, was attracted to Baltimore by civic promoters of a new harbor-side airport in Dundalk (see Aviation Industry). His decision to relocate to Maryland from Cleveland, where he had been building planes since World War I, was front-page news. Martin ultimately rejected the Dundalk location in favor of a 1,240-acre tract he had assembled secretly at Middle River, ten miles from the city line.

Unfortunately for Martin, the stock market collapsed just as his new factory was completed, preventing him from capitalizing it through the sale of stock. Although the company's finances remained precarious throughout the 1930s, it possessed the most technologically advanced aircraft plant in the U.S. for the next ten years.

This was a period of outstanding technical innovation for the Martin Company. Among its designs was the Army Air Corps' first streamlined monoplane bomber, the B-10. Incorporating a long list of aeronautical innovations, it was faster than contemporary fighter planes. In 1933, Glenn Martin and his mother traveled to the White House to receive the Collier Trophy for the advancement of aviation technology.

Martin also made commercial aviation history. In 1934 the first of three Martin-130 "China Clippers" was rolled out. Powered by four piston engines these large flying boats were the first true intercontinental airliners, capable of flying passengers and freight over oceanic distances. The M-130's began service across the Pacific in 1935.

Flushed with success, Martin expanded the factory in 1937. The noted Detroit industrial architect Albert Kahn produced a masterpiece design for a huge assembly hall for giant flying boats. "B Building" at the Martin plant enclosed an enormous space, originally 300 ft. x 450 ft., flooded with light and unobstructed by columns, the structure stood 43 feet high. Huge steel bridge girders spanned the roof with glass-sided monitors and 60 percent of the walls and ceiling were glass. The building served as a direct influence on the 1950s and 1960s international-style school of architects.

Once again Martin's timing was bad. The recession of 1938 set in, Pan Am turned to Boeing for the next clipper design, and the Air Corps chose the same firm for its heavy bombers. The company managed on export sales of the B-10 and a Navy order for 21 PBM "Mariner" patrol seaplanes. Martin won the orders with an unusual tactic. He saved the cost of building a prototype and demonstrated the plane's advanced aerodynamics flight-testing a manned, 3/8-size scale model (preserved at the Baltimore Museum of Industry).

At the Munich Conference of September 1938, Adolf Hitler threatened France with his new air force. The French saw an immediate need for modern bombers. In February 1939, Martin drove a hard bargain for his Model 167, insisting that the French also pay to expand the factory. Working three shifts a day, builders erected the new "C Building," another steel-and-glass design by Albert Kahn, in only seventy-seven days.

The M-167s arrived too late to save France, but the British Royal Air Force took over their orders for nearly 500 planes, and follow-up orders for 1,575 of the somewhat larger Martin 187. The RAF dubbed the planes "Marylands" and "Baltimores" respectively.

Even larger orders soon came from the U.S. Army and Navy. The sleek and speedy B-26 "Marauder" medium bomber was the company's most famous product. To turn out more than 5,000 B-26s, the army paid for full-sized factories at Middle River and at Omaha. In addition to more than thirteen hundred more PBM Mariners the Navy ordered Martin's design for a "flying battleship," the giant "Mars" flying boat, largest plane in the world at its launch in 1941. The Mars proved more useful as a transport than a bomber and the Navy ordered six more in 1944-45.

Martin's wartime boom began in 1939, as its work force in Baltimore rose from 3,639 in December 1938, to 30,326 at the time of Pearl Harbor, to a wartime peak of 52,474 in December 1942. Roads to Middle River were jammed, leading to the construction of dual highways Eastern and Martin Boulevards, meeting in front of the plant in Maryland's first cloverleaf.

Although a small number of women and African American aircraft workers were hired in the fall of 1941, the company discriminated in favor of white males until the beginning of 1943. That meant drawing workers to Baltimore from throughout the U.S. and building worker neighborhoods in Middle River. Aero Acres and Stansbury Manor and Estates were built by the Martin Company, using "Cemesto" prefabricated panels. Victory Villa was built by the federal government, and several apartment complexes by private builders. The new suburb featured more than seventy aeronautical street names.

Eventually the Martin Company hired thousands of female and black workers, though the latter were assigned to segregated assembly lines set up in rented space in Canton. The Martin Company was a paternalistic employer, sponsoring a wide range of clubs and teams. In 1943, retirement and medical benefits were added. Nevertheless the United Auto Workers won a hotly contested union election that year, the largest single-plant election held to date.

After World War II the company's business gradually declined. Experimental jet bombers failed to win Air Force competitions, Martin 2-0-2 and 4-0-4 airliners had only modest sales, and the hoped-for market for giant transoceanic seaplanes never developed. After a government loan was denied in 1952, Glenn L. Martin was removed from management.

The Martin P6M "SeaMaster" jet flying boat was cancelled by the Navy in 1959, and in 1960 the company stopped building airplanes. Important space and missile work remained, but mostly this was done at branch factories in Orlando and Denver. In 1961 Martin merged with the conglomerate Marietta Corporation and in 1995 Martin-Marietta merged with its old competitor Lockheed to form the nation's largest defense contractor.

Lockheed Martin corporate headquarters is in Bethesda, and various high-tech subsidiaries operate around the state. At Middle River, the original factory, its dramatic steel-and-glass design obscured by aluminum siding, produces jet engine thrust reversers for General Electric and shipboard missile launchers for Lockheed Martin. Across Eastern Boulevard, Albert Kahn's B-26 plant retains its original appearance and is now a government storage depot. The Martin airfield is now the Martin State Airport, home base of the Maryland Air National Guard and the Glenn L. Martin Maryland Aviation Museum. Two giant Mars flying boats still fly as "water bombers" in Canada.

—John R. Breihan