Transport: Kites to Bombers

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Early Days. In the early, rough-&-tumble days of flying Glenn Martin was an incongruous figure. Solemn as a preacher, he dressed in black with a tall white collar, wore a businesslike helmet when he flew. Other pinfeather fliers, who turned their checkered caps backward when they climbed into their planes, called him "The Dude."

But while most of the other fliers just flew, Glenn Martin barnstormed to find out how to make better flying machines. Almost as soon as he learned to fly he began manufacturing planes in Santa Ana. He opened a factory in Los Angeles in 1912, from which he sold planes to the U. S. Army, still one of his best customers. For seven years, sobersided Martin, half pilot, half industrialist, whizzed around the country, flying to finance manufacturing.

One summer he barnstormed through the West carrying a woman parachute jumper in pink tights, to be let out over county fairs. He even set a few records, an altitude mark for hydroplanes (4,400 feet) in 1912, the longest overwater hop (from Newport Beach, Calif. 28 miles to Catalina Island) in the same year. Because aviators were few, the return was handsome. Most of it went into the factory. Because publicity for Martin—and he got plenty—was publicity for Martin planes, the business flourished. Even Father Martin (who died in 1935) admitted that Glenn had been on the right track all along.

One of his early passengers was Minta Martin, whom he took ,up precariously perched on the leading edge of the lower wing. Another was Cinemactress Mary Pickford, for whom he played the villain in The Girl of Yesterday, renting himself and his plane for $700 a day. Still another was Musicomedienne Valeska Suratt, who planted three kisses on his cheek after he landed her in front of a crowd in Los Angeles. Blushing Martin ran away, later told newsmen soberly "her air conduct was good."

By 1917, Glenn L. Martin Co. was in Cleveland and its president had virtually quit flying. From that plant came the first Martin bomber, a huge, two-engined biplane. Built too late to get into the War, the first Martin bomber went to the Air Service. A great cranelike thing that drifted in stodgily to its landings, it was the standard bombardment plane of the service until the middle '20s.

To Baltimore. Adding designers, draftsmen, withdrawing more & more from designing to administer the business, Martin turned out better & better models in rapid succession. He swapped little information with other manufacturers, became known as a sombre lone wolf. From the Cleveland plant came the first plane built specifically for mail service, the first metal American monoplane, of which the Navy bought 36, the first bomber with an alloy-steel fuselage, of which the Navy bought 103.

By 1925 it was time to expand again, and this time Builder Martin decided to have plenty of room. From unsuspecting holders of tidewater property above Baltimore, options were cautiously obtained by agents who represented themselves as acting for a New York sportsmen's club. When they were all in, Glenn L. Martin Co. had options on 1,243 acres of land, was ready to build a plant.