This article has been more of a whopper after having had a look at French and British wartime industries (click here for France or Britain). I posted a flowchart of US aircraft manufacturers at the end of this article. I could barely fit everything on an 11x17 sheet, and I’m assuming I’m still missing some minor builders. I did not expand into engine or rocket manufacturers, so there’s no SpaceX and whatnot, except for a few involved at some point with aircraft production (fixed wing and helicopter). I added comments in the flowchart to help understand what happened to some of these companies, in 6-point type (sorry). You’ll have to zoom in to read that stuff.
The US aerospace industry differed altogether from its European counterparts. There was no massive nationalization and forced mergers in the 30s and 60s like in France and Britain. Most companies started out as separate businesses in the 20s and 30s. Many were bought out and turned into divisions of large holding corporations, often keeping their brand names alive across multiple ownerships. Some got liquidated outright without a clear successor.
Driving forces behind the US aerospace manufacturers involved a fast-growing airmail and civilian transport industry. The 1925 Kelly Act enabled the USPS to contract private carriers to fly mail across the country. Early on, the government subsidized the airmail industry, which gave a significant boost to aircraft manufacturing. The Airmail Act of 1934 targeted large holding corporations combining aircraft manufacturing and airline companies, among other services, to obtain better airmail contracts. This anti-trust measure split these corporations into independent companies (while the opposite was happening in Europe).
The Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938 gave the federal government direct oversight of civil aviation, airfares, routes, and safety (ending with the famous airline deregulation circa 1978). Passenger traffic rose quickly in the 30s, spurring companies like Boeing, Curtiss-Wright, Douglas, and Lockheed. Particularly noteworthy was the 1936-era Douglas DC-3, which initially served as a passenger airliner for American Airlines and later found great use in war as the C-47 Skytrain.
The US only started gearing up for war in the wake of the Munich Conference in 1938. FDR’s objective was to increase the number of US-built warplanes to 10,000 in a relatively short term. Funds enabled the Army Air Corps to order 6,000 aircraft and boost its personnel to 3,200 officers and 45,000 enlisted. Unlike France and Britain, there was no concern for air bombardment, military invasion, or lack of critical resources interrupting US industrial output. In short, major airplane builders could almost hit the ground running, joined not long afterward by companies like Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, Packard, and Willys. Production shot from just over 2,000 military aircraft of all types in 1939 to more than 6,000 in 1940.
Government programs became crucial tools to expand industrial capacity. By 1940, they built new aircraft factories and leased them to established manufacturers in order for them to fulfil quickly ballooning contracts. Companies that benefited from these programs were, among others, Curtiss-Wright, Bell, and Douglas. The concept of government-driven industrial expansion parallels the strategy of so-called Shadow Factories in Britain, but executed at an American scale, with comparatively unlimited energy and resources. Civilian car manufacturers picked up the slack. From 1942 onward, they built no cars at all, concentrating on warplanes alone.
From March 1940 onward, aircraft manufacturers were free to sell aircraft to friendly nations, provided foreign sales did not affect US orders. Nonetheless, during the spring of 1940, France and Britain ordered more aircraft than the US government. Something I didn’t know before writing this article was that the U.K. had depleted its cash holdings and gold reserves to pay for US-built materiel, under the “cash and carry” policy required by the United States’ Neutrality Acts of the 1930s. France was in no better situation regarding payments in gold.
The Lend-Lease Act of 1941 terminated the United States’ neutrality, right in the nick of time, further increasing deliveries outside the US until 1945. Up to 17% of the US’s total war spending, including oil, food, ships, and weapons, went to support allied nations, all free of charge and very much in line with FDR’s foreign policy goals. One of the main benefactors was Britain, which by then could hardly have afforded this support.
Britain’s precarious situation in the fall of 1940 prompted its government to carry out the Tizard Mission. It shared technology in exchange for the ability to produce classified materiel in the US, since industries in Britain were wholly involved in manufacturing urgently needed weapons. This indirectly relates to this article’s primary topic, although the mission did have a direct impact on US aerospace technology. The mission made key knowledge available to the US regarding radars, jet engines, and eventually, the Manhattan Project. Separately from this, the US and Britain shared their knowledge of codebreaking and cipher machines in 1941.
Reflecting the need to accelerate production, some warplanes had to be modified to fix flaws after significant numbers had been built. Some made it through despite flaws that, in some cases, could be addressed after delivery to the front lines. To help with such challenges, the Army Air Corps (before WWII started) and the USAAF (from 1941 onward) sent officers to act as liaisons between the manufacturers and the military. They focused on coordination, oversight, technical support, resolving production bottleneck issues, feedback, and improvements.
One notorious example of post-production technical flaws is the SB2C Helldiver, otherwise known as the “Son-of-a-B**** 2nd Class” for its awful handling characteristics. It did, nonetheless, become the main dive and attack bomber of the US Navy, after all modifications were in place. Other even more famous and highly successful warplanes fit in this category for various reasons, such as the B-29 Superfortress, the P-51 Mustang, and the F4U Corsair. The P-38 Lightning could also be counted here. Such is the cost of deploying advanced technology as quickly as possible while at war.
By 1943, more than a million people were at work manufacturing military aircraft—the largest industry in the US at the time. North American Aviation built a total of 44,000 aircraft, including the P-51 and the B-25. Meanwhile, Boeing upped the ante with 98,000 aircraft of all types. Chrysler built more than half of the 30,000 Wright R-3350 engines for the B-29, mostly out of their plant in Chicago. Throughout the war, General Motors built 75% of all Wildcats and Avengers, or a quarter of all carrier-borne warplanes. Ford’s massive plant in Detroit, Michigan, built more than 5,000 B-24 Liberators in 1944-1945. It produced 46,000 tons’ worth of airframes, more than half what Germany could manufacture and as much as Japan’s entire industry. I don’t know if they built ‘em “Ford Tough,” but they certainly built ‘em “Ford Fast.”
WWII led Americans to adopt the doctrine of air power. Designing, manufacturing, deploying, and servicing vast numbers of war machines during a global conflict—while supporting allies—remains an astounding accomplishment. One’s head spins at the thought of all those great machines: the P-40 Warhawk, P-47 Thunderbolt, P-51 Mustang, F6F Hellcat, F4U Corsair, and the B-29 Superfortress, with or without the British Merlin engines.
None of this would have been possible without the massive participation of women in the industry for the first time. Everyone remembers the poster showing “Rosie the Riveter.” The female workforce in the aerospace industry went from 1% pre-war to 65% during. By 1945, the US could manufacture 96,000 aircraft per year and, in total, did build more than 300,000 warplanes during the entire course of the conflict. More than 150,000 remained in surplus when the smoke cleared. America had become the world leader in both civilian and military aerospace within about 6 calendar years.
US manufacturers started out mostly in the 20s and 30s before conglomerates swallowed most of them in less than a hundred years: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Textron, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, and RTX. I kept the latter out of my flowchart: RTX (known before 2023 as Raytheon Technologies, formerly United Technologies) appears a few times in my tiny-type comments as United Aircraft and Transport Corporation. Here’s its summary according to Wikipedia: “The United Aircraft and Transport Corporation was formed in 1929, when William Boeing of Boeing Airplane & Transport Corporation teamed up with Frederick Rentschler of Pratt & Whitney to form a large (…) firm, uniting business interests in all aspects of aviation—a combination of airframe and aircraft engine manufacturing and airline business, to serve all aviation markets, both civil aviation (cargo, passenger, private, air mail) and military aviation.” Woof!
It controlled stock in companies like Boeing, Northrop, Vought, Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky, Stearman, what would later become United Airlines, and a number of others. They got hit with an anti-trust action in the 30s, forcing the company to split up. One part became Boeing, another what would later be branded United Technologies, and United Airlines. This shows the extent of Boeing Aircraft Corporation as early as the 30s. It’s still a tentacular conglomerate that funneled ten companies showing in the flowchart, plus more than a dozen at an average $4.35B cost for each (if my Google-fu fails me not). All this comes with a sprinkle of mixed issues, including war profiteering, unethical conduct, pollution, subsidy disputes, industrial espionage, quality control, safety concerns, etc.
I did not include Stearman in the flowchart due to a lack of space and relevance. It was created in 1927 and was bought out two years later by United Aircraft and Transport Corporation.
Another large business in the early days was AVCO (for “Aviation Company”). It also controlled more than 20 businesses, including what would later become American Airlines. It also got pulled apart in the 30s. Eventually, Textron acquired its aerospace assets in 1984 while AVCO’s financial services went to Citigroup in 2000.
One event on this flowchart connects with British manufacturer Hawker Aircraft, which I couldn’t show due to a lack of space. In 1994, Raytheon merged its Beechcraft division with the Hawker product line it had acquired in 1993 from British Aerospace, forming the Raytheon Aircraft Company. This was a division of the Raytheon parent company, whose roots go back to 1922 as the “American Appliance Company”. It was renamed Raytheon in 1959. As of 2012, it was the fifth-largest military contractor in the world, specializing in guided missiles. It merged with United Technologies to form Raytheon Technologies in 2020. Hawker-Beechcraft was resold in 2006, went into bankruptcy in 2012, and was acquired by Textron a year later. The Hawker brand was discontinued at about this time. It’s interesting to note that Raytheon started out as an appliance supplier while Textron emerged from the textiles industry ("Tex" for "textiles" and "tron" from synthetics such as "Lustron") before expanding into aerospace.
Have fun exploring the flowchart.
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