The Grumman Story

ix, 401 pp. The Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation, later Grumman Aerospace Corporation, was a leading 20th century American producer of military and civilian aircraft. Founded on December 6, 1929, by Leroy Grumman and partners, it merged in 1994 with Northrop Corporation to form Northrop Grumman. Leroy Grumman worked for the Loening Aircraft Engineering Corporation beginning in 1920, and when it was bought by Keystone Aircraft Corporation and the operations were moved from New York City to Bristol, Pennsylvania, in 1929, Grumman and his partners, all ex-Leoning Aircraft employees,[1] (Edmund Ward Poor,[2] William Schwendler, Jake Swirbul, and Clint Towl) started their own company in an old Cox-Klemin Aircraft Co. factory in Baldwin on Long Island, New York. The company registered as a business on December 6, 1929, and officially opened on January 2, 1930. While maintaining the business by welding aluminum tubing for truck frames, the company eagerly pursued contracts with the US Navy.[1] Grumman designed the first practical floats with a retractable landing gear for the Navy, and this launched Grumman into the aviation market.[1] The first Grumman aircraft was also for the Navy, the Grumman FF-1, a biplane with retractable landing gear.[1] This was followed by a number of other successful designs.[1] During World War II, Grumman became known for its "Cats", Navy fighter aircraft, F4F Wildcat and F6F Hellcat, the less well known Grumman F7F Tigercat and Grumman F8F Bearcat,[3] and for its torpedo bomber TBF Avenger.[4] Grumman ranked 22nd among United States corporations in the value of wartime production contracts.[5] Grumman's first jet aircraft was the F9F Panther; it was followed by the upgraded F9F/F-9 Cougar, and the less well known F-11 Tiger in the 1950s. The company's big postwar successes came in the 1960s with the A-6 Intruder and E-2 Hawkeye and in the 1970s with the Grumman EA-6B Prowler and F-14 Tomcat. Grumman products were prominent in several feature movies including The Final Countdown in 1980,[6] Top Gun in 1986, as well as Flight of the Intruder in 1990.[7] The U.S. Navy still employs the Hawkeye as part of Carrier Air Wings on board aircraft carriers, while the U.S. Marine Corps, the last branch of service to fly the Prowler, retired it on March 8, 2019.[8] Grumman was the chief contractor on the Apollo Lunar Module, the first spacecraft to ever land humans on the Moon.[9] The firm received the contract on November 7, 1962, and built 13 lunar modules; six of which successfully landed on the Moon, with one serving as a lifeboat on Apollo 13, after an explosion crippled the main Apollo spacecraft. LM-2, a test article which never flew in space, is displayed permanently in the Smithsonian Institution.[10] As the Apollo program neared its end, Grumman was one of the main competitors for the contract to design and build the Space Shuttle, but lost to Rockwell International.[11]--Wikipedia