Glenn L. Martin

Maryland Historical Society

Glenn L. Martin was the chief executive and principal owner of three aircraft-manufacturing companies that bore his name, in California, Cleveland, and (after 1928) Baltimore.

Born in Iowa and raised in Kansas, Martin was part of the Midwestern exodus to California early in the twentieth century. Martin's father Clarence and mother Minta moved to Santa Ana in 1904. Always precocious in the field of technology, Glenn opened a car dealership at age 18. He saw his first flying machine at the great Los Angeles Air Meet of January 1910. Within a year he had built his own plane based on Glenn Curtiss's design, and taught himself to fly it.

For the next several years Martin lived the life of a "pioneer birdman," defying death at air meets and county fairs. In 1912 he set a new over-water record by flying to Catalina Island?a bicycle inner tube around his neck was his only survival gear.

Even as he pursued the amusement business, Martin looked forward to being an aircraft manufacturer. He first sold planes to fellow barnstormers but eventually won more lucrative contracts from the U.S. Army.

America's entry into World War I resulted in an amalgamation of the aircraft industry, merging the Martin Company with Wright Aeronautical. Not satisfied with being a vice-president, Martin launched a new company in Cleveland in 1920. There he built the MB-2 bombers used by Billy Mitchell in his famous bombing demonstrations, sinking an anchored battleship in the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Martin also built the first carrier-based bombers for the U.S. Navy.

In 1928, Martin was lured to Baltimore by promises of a new municipal airport, ice-free water for seaplanes, and union-free labor, so Baltimore was where he founded his third company, Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company. Martin enjoyed the life of a wealthy Marylander, with stately houses in Baltimore and the Eastern Shore, and a company yacht to carry him back and forth. He was a founder of Ducks Unlimited and donated 4,400 acres on Smith Island as a National Wildlife Refuge.

Martin was a paternalistic employer, enthusiastically (and personally) supporting sports teams, musical groups, and company picnics for thousands of his workers during World War II. He also sponsored the construction of worker housing during the war, including the famous "Aero Acres" subdivision.

Not an engineer himself (he studied business for two years in Kansas), Martin had a keen eye for aeronautical talent. Martin executives Donald Douglas, Lawrence Bell, and James McDonnell founded aircraft companies of their own. His name lives on in the name of the Lockheed-Martin Corporation and the Glenn L. Martin School of Technology at the University of Maryland.

Although he came to be the "grand old man" of the American aircraft industry, the only manufacturer to build planes for both World Wars, Martin eventually lost control of his company in 1952. He died (of a cerebral hemorrhage) just three years later, at the comparatively young age of 69. He never smoked, drank, or married, living all his life with his formidable mother, Minta, who died in 1953.

Breihan, John R., "When Did Glenn Martin First Fly?" Journal of the American Aviation Historical Society, 44 (1999): 148-54.

_____. "From Amusements to Weapons: The Glenn L. Martin Company of California, 1910-1918." Journal of the West, 36 (July 1997): 29-38.

Harwood, William. Raise Heaven and Earth: The Story of Martin-Marietta People and Their Pioneering Achievements. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993.