The Vultee Aircraft Corporation became an independent company in

1939 This year also marks the start of the Second World War, the largest and deadliest conflict in human history. Events Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix. January * January 1 ** Third Reich *** Jews are forbidden to ...

Los Angeles County, California Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the List of the most populous counties in the United States, most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, ...

. It had limited success before merging with the

Consolidated Aircraft Corporation The Consolidated Aircraft Corporation was founded in 1923 by Reuben H. Fleet in Buffalo, New York, the result of the Gallaudet Aircraft Company's liquidation and Fleet's purchase of designs from the Dayton-Wright Company as the subsidiary was ...

in 1943, to form the

Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation Convair, previously Consolidated Vultee, was an American aircraft manufacturing company that later expanded into rockets and spacecraft. The company was formed in 1943 by the merger of Consolidated Aircraft and Vultee Aircraft. In 1953, i ...

− or Convair.

History

Gerard "Jerry" Freebairn Vultee (1900–1938) and Vance Breese (1904–1973) started the Airplane Development Corporation in early 1932 after

American Airlines American Airlines is a major US-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, within the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It is the largest airline in the world when measured by fleet size, scheduled passengers carried, and revenue passeng ...

showed great interest in their six-passenger V-1 design. Soon after, Errett Lobban (E.L.) Cord bought all 500 shares of stock in the company and the Airplane Development Corporation became a Cord subsidiary.

AVCO subsidiary

Due to the Air Mail Act of 1934, AVCO established the Aviation Manufacturing Corporation (AMC) on November 30, 1934 through the acquisition of Cord's holdings, including Vultee's Airplane Development Corporation. AMC was liquidated on January 1, 1936 and Vultee Aircraft Division was formed as an autonomous subsidiary of AVCO. Jerry Vultee was named vice president and chief engineer.Yenne 2009, p. 17. Vultee acquired the assets of the defunct AMC, including

Lycoming Engines Lycoming Engines is a major American manufacturer of aircraft engines. With a factory in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, Lycoming produces a line of horizontally opposed, air-cooled, four, six and eight-cylinder engines including the only FAA-cer ...

and

Stinson Aircraft Company The Stinson Aircraft Company was an aircraft manufacturing company in the United States between the 1920s and the 1950s. History The Stinson Aircraft Company was founded in Dayton, Ohio, in 1920 by aviator Edward “Eddie” Stinson, the b ...

. Meanwhile, Vultee and Breese had redesigned the V-1 to meet American Airlines' needs and created the eight-passenger V-1A. American purchased 11 V-1As, but sales of the aircraft failed to materialize because regulations were introduced requiring that aircraft used on scheduled passenger routes have two engines, and the V-1 was of little interest to other operators and only 25 were built. Vultee then developed the

V-11 The V-11, code-named "Scorpio", is a miniprocessor chip set implementation of the VAX instruction set architecture (ISA) developed and fabricated by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). History The V-11 was Digital's first VAX microproces ...

attack aircraft using the wings and tail from the V-1, which received sizable orders, albeit almost all from foreign countries with 40 for Turkey, 30 for China, 26 for Brazil, and 4 for the Soviet Union, where an additional 31 were built under licence. Hoped for orders from the

United States Army Air Corps The United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) was the aerial warfare service component of the United States Army between 1926 and 1941. After World War I, as early aviation became an increasingly important part of modern warfare, a philosophical r ...

failed to materialize beyond test samples though, as the USAAC had made the decision to use only twin engine attack aircraft. This led to the development of the improved V-12, but aside from the prototype, all of these were sold to China, including three completed aircraft and 75 as knockdown kits of which at least 25 were assembled before Japanese troops overran the facility where they were being assembled. By 1937, Vultee headed his own factory in

Downey, California Downey is a city located in Southeast Los Angeles County, California, United States, southeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is considered part of the Gateway Cities. The city is the birthplace of the Apollo space program. It is also the home ...

, with more than a million dollars in orders for V-1s, V-1As, and V-11s. In 1938, before Vultee become independent again, Jerry Vultee and his wife Sylvia Parker, daughter of

Twentieth Century Fox 20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Dis ...

film director

Max Parker Max Parker (July 12, 1882 – July 8, 1964) was an American art director. He was nominated for an Academy Award in the category Best Art Direction for the film '' George Washington Slept Here''. He worked on 86 films between 1916 and 1947. He ...

, died in late January when the plane he was piloting crashed in a snowstorm near

Sedona, Arizona Sedona is a city that straddles the county line between Coconino and Yavapai counties in the northern Verde Valley region of the U.S. state of Arizona. As of the 2010 census, its population was 10,031. It is within the Coconino National F ...

. A bronze plaque memorializing the Vultees is located near the crash site at the end of Coconino Forestry and Vultee Arch Trails, where a natural rock arch named for them, the Vultee Arch, is located. Donald P. Smith, Vultee's close friend and vice president of Vultee Aircraft, wrote a letter to

TIME Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...

magazine about Vultee's death:

Sirs: ::'Gerard F. Vultee ("Jerry"), not Gerald, my close friend and business associate for many years, was killed when the cabin monoplane he was flying with Mrs. Vultee crashed on the flat top of Wilson Mountain IME, Feb. 7 ... Caught in a local snow-storm and blizzard with no training in blind or instrument flying, he was unable to find his way out. The fire occurred after the crash, not before''. ::::''DON P. SMITH Vice President'' ::::''Vultee Aircraft Los Angeles, Calif''.

AVCO hired Dick Palmer away from Howard Hughes to take Jerry Vultee's place, and Vultee Aircraft Division began to develop military designs. Dick Palmer created the BT-13, BT-15, and SNV Valiant trainers and oversaw other major production program such as the

V-72 Vengeance The Vultee A-31 Vengeance was an American dive bomber of World War II, built by Vultee Aircraft. A modified version was designated A-35. The Vengeance was not used operationally by the United States, but was operated as a front-line aircraft by ...

, serving in the USAAC as the A-31 and A-35.

Independent company

Vultee Aircraft was created in November 1939, when Vultee Aircraft Division of AVCO was reorganized as an independent company. The P-66 Vanguard was a 1941 fighter program that was intended for Sweden that was inherited by the USAAC, Great Britain and finally, China. The P-66 had a mediocre combat record in China and was out of service by 1943. The XP-54 fighter project was the last Vultee Aircraft design, but only two examples were built.Borth, Christy. ''Masters of Mass Production,'' p. 251, Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indianapolis, IN, 1945. Vultee was the first company to build aircraft on a powered assembly line, and the first to use women workers in production-line positions.

Merger

On March 17, 1943, Consolidated and Vultee merged, creating

, popularly known as Convair.Yenne 2009, p. 18. The Vultee management resigned.

Timeline

* 1929 Aviation Corporation (AVCO) holding company formed by multiple participants * 1932 Airplane Development Corporation formed by Gerard F. "Jerry" Vultee;

Errett Lobban Cord Errett Lobban "E. L." Cord (July 20, 1894 – January 2, 1974) was an American business executive. He was considered a leader in United States transport during the early and middle 20th century. Cord founded the Cord Corporation in 1929 as ...

soon takes it over * 1934 AVCO acquired the Airplane Development Corporation from Cord and formed the Aviation Manufacturing Corporation (AMC) * 1936 AMC liquidated to form the Vultee Aircraft Division, an autonomous subsidiary of AVCO * 1939 Vultee Aircraft Division of AVCO reorganized as an independent company known as Vultee Aircraft, Inc. * 1941 Consolidated Aircraft Corporation sold to AVCO * 1942 Vultee acquires Intercontinent Aircraft Corporation * 1943 Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation, generally known as Convair, formed by the merger of Consolidated Aircraft and Vultee Aircraft; still controlled by AVCO * 1947 Convair acquired by the Atlas Corporation * 1953 (or 1954) Convair acquired by

General Dynamics General Dynamics Corporation (GD) is an American publicly traded, aerospace and defense corporation headquartered in Reston, Virginia. As of 2020, it was the fifth-largest defense contractor in the world by arms sales, and 5th largest in the Uni ...

* 1985 General Dynamics formed the "Space Systems Division" from the Convair Space Program * 1993

Lockheed Corporation The Lockheed Corporation was an American aerospace manufacturer. Lockheed was founded in 1926 and later merged with Martin Marietta to form Lockheed Martin in 1995. Its founder, Allan Lockheed, had earlier founded the similarly named but ot ...

acquires General Dynamics' Fort Worth aircraft division, builder of the F-16 Fighting Falcon. * 1994 Space Systems Division sold to

Martin Marietta The Martin Marietta Corporation was an American company founded in 1961 through the merger of Glenn L. Martin Company and American-Marietta Corporation. In 1995, it merged with Lockheed Corporation to form Lockheed Martin. History Martin Mari ...

* 1994 Convair Aircraft Structures unit sold to

McDonnell Douglas McDonnell Douglas was a major American aerospace manufacturing corporation and defense contractor, formed by the merger of McDonnell Aircraft and the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1967. Between then and its own merger with Boeing in 1997, it ...

* 1997 McDonnell Douglas sold to

Boeing The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and ...

Aircraft

References

Notes

Bibliography

* McKillop, Jack
"Vultee SNV Valiant."
''Brown-Shoe Navy: U.S. Naval Aviation''. Retrieved: January 6, 2006. * Parker, Dana T. ''Building Victory: Aircraft Manufacturing in the Los Angeles Area in World War II,'' Cypress, CA, 2013. . * Rumerman, Joel

''US Centennial of Flight Commission,'' 2003. Retrieved: January 6, 2006. * Thompson, Jonathan. ''Vultee Aircraft 1932–1947''. Santa Ana, CA; Narkiewicz/Thompson, 1992. .

''Golden Age of Aviation E-column'', Retrieved: 6 January 2006. * Yenne, Bill. ''Convair Deltas from Sea Dart to Hustler.'' North Branch, MN: Specialty Press, 2009. .

External links

* ttp://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Textron-Lycoming-Turbine-Engine-Company-History.html Textron Lycoming Turbine Engine, a Company History of AVCO and Lycoming/Textronbr>Avco Financial Services, Inc. from the Lehman Brothers Collection – Twentieth Century Business Archives
* ttp://www.centennialofflight.net/essay/Aerospace/generaldynamics/Aero35.htm General Dynamics Corporation, U.S. Centennial of Flight Commissionbr>Central Manufacturing Co. of Connersville, Indiana, a history of Cord, AVCO, and others
{{Authority control Defunct aircraft manufacturers of the United States Companies based in Los Angeles County, California Downey, California American companies established in 1939 Manufacturing companies established in 1939 Manufacturing companies disestablished in 1943 1939 establishments in California 1943 disestablishments in California Defunct manufacturing companies based in Greater Los Angeles 1943 mergers and acquisitions