North American Aircraft Industry Timelines

[Cvairwerks]

Small problem in there Noah... Consolidated became Consolidated Vultee, which morphed into Convair, which became part of General Dynamics. The Fort Worth aircraft production operations were sold to Lockheed, including all production assets and staff, in 1992.

[Noha307]

Small problem in there Noah... Consolidated became Consolidated Vultee, which morphed into Convair, which became part of General Dynamics. The Fort Worth aircraft production operations were sold to Lockheed, including all production assets and staff, in 1992.

Thanks for the insight. I always appreciate corrections.

Convair was a difficult one to parse out because it wasn't bought wholesale by a single company, but was sort of bought piecemeal by various other defense contractors who took the parts they wanted. It was complicated enough that when I made the timeline I had it with the simplistic bought by McDonnell Douglas and never went back to fix it. (I did somewhat try to address it with the footnote, though.) I don't remember my exact reasoning for this decision, but it was probably based on the fact that: a) it was the last remaining portion of Convair to be sold, b) out of all the pre-1992 divestiture business units it seems to have retained the amount of association with the Convair identity, c) it was closest to the company's traditional (i.e. pre-1945) airframe manufacturing business, which was a closer relationship to the focus of the timeline than say missiles or satellites, and d) it was located in Convair's original home of San Diego. The other issue was that the limitations of the timeline format make it difficult to illustrate the portions that went to other companies that did become part of Boeing. I had the same problems with Stinson, as well as Hiller in the Fairchild chart. However, you're correct that this is an imperfect description of the situation and I need to update it.

Basically, as far as I can tell, the breakdown was:

• 1992: Air Defense Systems Division and unmanned strike systems, Convair Division --> Hughes Missile Systems Company, Hughes Aircraft, General Motors Corporation[1]
• 1993: Fort Worth Division, General Dynamics (F-16) --> Lockheed
  
  • The sale was announced in December 1992, but apparently only became official in March 1993.[2][3]
  • After acquisition, it was briefly known as "Lockheed Fort Worth Company".[4] However, according to the byline on the division newsletter, by January 1996 it had become Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems.[5]
• 1994: Space Systems Division --> Martin Marietta
  
  • Sale announced in December 1993.[6]
• 1996: Convair Aircraft Structures --> Closed
  
  • Upon further review, it seems that Convair Aircraft Structures was not so much sold to McDonnell Douglas as shut down. However, this is one of those situations where it's difficult to tell. Operations at the San Diego plant apparently ended in 1996, but "manufacturing responsibility [for the MD-11 fuselage was] transferred to McDonnell Douglas".[7] The question is: What exactly was part of that transfer?

Regarding the last point above, this is where the subject really starts to enter the realm of philosophy. When should the identity of a company be considered to have changed hands? What confers the right to claim that one is the legitimate successor of another? (In aviation, this usually most evidence in who gets to put their name in front of the designation. For more on this, see a post in the Reproduction vs. Replica thread.) Same employees? (e.g. Walter Beech worked for Curtiss-Wright after it purchased Travel Air) Facilities? (e.g. North American used the former Berliner Joyce plant in New Jersey.) Branding? (e.g. The rights to the Pan Am logo went to a railroad.) Intellectual property? (e.g. Boeing builds helicopters design by Vertol.) A lineage unbroken by bankruptcy or closure? (e.g. Douglas, Lockheed, Martin, McDonnell, Mooney, Northrop, Ryan, and Stearman all started companies that went defunct, but were reconstituted years later.) Do you need two or more of these categories together?

As an aside, what I have found helps with this type of research is access to company annual reports, because they often have organization charts that can reveal the names and relationships of subsidiaries. The Portal to Texas History has a bunch of General Dynamics reports, but unfortunately the most recent one is 1992. They also have a collection of Convair/General Dynamics Newsletters and a search of that produced this timeline:

(Source: The Portal to Texas History)

To address your original statement, it seems like the most accurate statement is that Convair went defunct in 1996 and it has very little connection to Boeing. However, until the exact details of the final arrangements with McDonnell Douglas become clear, this could change. Do you know any more that could help fill in the details?

Last edited by Noha307 on Mon Mar 10, 2025 11:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[Cvairwerks]

Noah: It might be the easiest to have a block set aside for Consolidated from the end of WW2 to it's complete breakup and dissolution by GD. Show the parts split off and where they went, since it fractured and was sold to numerous companies.

[Noha307]

Recovered posts accidentally deleted by database update:

The discussion about company legacies and aircraft names in the recent Martlet thread reminded me of a number of timelines of North American aircraft manufacturers I put together a while back in a section of my Wikipedia sandbox and I thought they would be relevant. However, I didn't want to take that thread off topic any more than it already was, so I figured I'd start a new one.

Timeline of Bendix to 2000

(Source: Imgur)

Timeline of Boeing to 2000

(Source: Imgur)

Timeline of Curtiss-Wright to 2000

(Source: Imgur)

Timeline of Fairchild Aircraft to 2000

(Source: Imgur)

Timeline of Lockheed Martin to 2000

(Source: Imgur)

Timeline of Northrop Grumman to 2000

(Source: Imgur)

Timeline of Textron Aviation to 2000

(Source: Imgur)

Timeline of Textron Aviation from 2000

(Source: Imgur)

Timeline of United Technologies to 2000

(Source: Imgur)

Timeline of United Technologies from 2000

(Source: Imgur)

Timeline of Raytheon to 2000

(Source: Imgur)

Timeline of Raytheon from 2000

(Source: Imgur)

Timeline of Vought to 2000

(Source: Imgur)

Timeline of Vought from 2000

(Source: Imgur)

Please note, they're not perfect. For example, as aerospace manufacturers diversified postwar, I didn't include a lot of the companies that were not directly involved in aircraft manufacturing (e.g. Loral Corporation) they absorbed. Also, there's a number of gaps where I couldn't find information on the fate of companies after being divested.

A couple of formatting notes:

• When the company existed as a subsidiary (i.e. maintained a distinct identity) after being purchased, the parent is listed in italics underneath the name.
• Color coding was used to indicating the overarching company or, in the case of United Technologies, separate business grouping after the company was broken up. Companies that were spun off are listed in a lighter shade of gray.
• Due to display limitations (i.e. adding any more years to a single template would result in very small columns), the timelines are split into before and after the year 2000. Partially for the same reason (but also because there wasn't much movement before the date), they begin at 1910 and companies that began before that have their establishment dates listed in parentheses.

This is brilliant work! Thank you for putting this together.

Noah: It might be the easiest to have a block set aside for Consolidated from the end of WW2 to it's complete breakup and dissolution by GD. Show the parts split off and where they went, since it fractured and was sold to numerous companies.

Sorry, I haven't gotten around to addressing this, but I plan to eventually. I did, however, put together timelines for Honeywell Aerospace and Sperry:

Timeline of Honeywell Aerospace to 2000

(Source: Imgur)

Timeline of Sperry to 2000

(Source: Imgur)

[Chris Brame]

Is there a timeline for Brewster Aircraft?

[Noha307]

Is there a timeline for Brewster Aircraft?

I haven't made one, but I don't think there would be that much to it. AFAIK, it would essentially be founded 1810 --> transitioned to aircraft production 1924 --> dissolved 1946. From what I can tell, there really wasn't that much organizational change to Brewster. They didn't merge with anyone and no one merged with them. Even when they closed they weren't acquired by another company; they were more or less nationalized by the U.S. Navy and initially functioned as a branch of the Philadelphia-based Naval Aircraft Factory before being labeled the Naval Air Warfare Center Warminster.[1]

The best comparison I can think of is Fisher Body: both started as carriage makers, moved into the aircraft manufacturing field, and failed in that endeavor because they had no experience designing aircraft. One of the great lessons of World War II aircraft manufacturing seems to be that automobile manufactures can do a great job license building airplanes - perhaps even better than the original company due to a focus on streamlined mass production (e.g. Willow Run) - but are failures if they are asked to design airplanes (e.g. Buffalo, P-75).

The problem is that there doesn't seem to be much written about the history of Brewster because, unlike big names such as Lockheed or Boeing, it wasn't well known. Furthermore, there tends to be less interest in writing about a failure. To this end, note the three key people listed in the infobox on the company's Wikipedia article: Dayton Brown, C. A. Van Dusen, James Work. (Full disclosure, I was the one who added them there.) All three of them are red links, indicating that they don't have dedicated articles. How many people - even among aviation historians could name them? I certainly couldn't before looking them up.

One final note on Brewster: there are two claimed aspects of the company's "failure" and it is important to distinguish between them. The first is that the company itself was an organizational failure. This is demonstrably true. As I like to tell visitors when the subject comes up while talking about our Corsair, it was a defense contractor that went out of business during a war. (Technically, they only went defunct in 1946, but it was clear they were already on their way out before then.) The second is that they built inferior and problem riddled aircraft. This is much harder to prove one way or the other because so much of the claim is anecdotal. Furthermore, while I have never read it myself, my understanding is that research by Dana Bell disproves this notion. My best guess is that the first claim morphed into the second one. I think people assumed that if the company is poorly managed, then the aircraft it produces also would be poor. (As for how this happens, the discussion in the recent F7U thread is an instructive example.)