"The Widowmaker"

CXI

Glenn L. Martin (1886-1955) was the fourth man (after both Wright brothers and Glenn Curtiss) to fly a motorized heavier-than-air-craft of his own design. Like the Wrights and Curtiss, Martin began his career as a bicycle designer. He was also fascinated, like them, with engines. 

Glenn L. Martin

His first attempts at flying involved sails and kites. As a child, he propelled his little red wagon with wind power, and he designed a clever bicycle that was propelled by kites. His first business, when he was only a child, was in building kites for neighbors at 25 cents apiece. 

Not long after the Wrights and Curtiss flew, Martin flew too, in a bamboo glider fitted with an engine of his own design. His mother, Araminta, was his assistant engineer, and remained by his side for the rest of her life. Most probably asexual, Martin, who acted in a few early Hollywood films as a dashing and heroic pilot, once refused to kiss actress Mary Pickford “because [his] mother wouldn’t like it.” Although he liked to be seen publicly with Hollywood starlets, there is no record of him ever taking one back to the home he shared with “Minta.” 

Glenn L. Martin and his mother Minta

Martin was a stereotypically rawboned Midwesterner of the "American Gothic" mold, right down to his rimless round glasses. He had no vices to speak of, not even mild profanity, and was considered bizarre in the rough-and-tumble world of early aviation. Briefly a partner with the Wrights, his personal stiffness was offputting, and they broke off their business arrangement by mutual consent. Nevertheless, he was considered a genius at aircraft design. 

In 1912, he flew a seaplane of his own design 70 miles from the California coast to Catalina Island, establishing a new overwater record. Martin continued to build flying boats and seaplanes well into the 1950s, long after they had been rendered obsolete by improvements in airplane design. His most famous flying boat design was the civilian M-130, built for Pan American Airways.

The Glenn L. Martin Company provided Pan American Airways with its first true transoceanic flying clippers

Unlike other aviation pioneers who worked in wood and canvas, Martin designed all-metal multiengine planes. His first large plane design was the MB-1, which became the first production bomber of the U.S. Army Air Corps.  The MB-1 entered service in the summer of 1918. Intended for use in Europe during World War I, the war ended before the MB-1 could be deployed.  

The MB-1 was the first American-built bomber aircraft used by the U.S. Army Air Corps

Just after the war, Martin delivered on the MB-2, a larger and more rugged but slower version of the MB-1. The MB-2 is most famous for having been the bomber used by General Billy Mitchell in tests that proved that airborne bombs could sink naval vessels. In 1921, a squadron of MB-2s sank the target ship SMS Ostfriesland. Mitchell was later court-martialed for his vehement advocacy of air power (though the precipitating reason was his criticism of the Navy’s incompetence in handling the dirigible U.S.S. Shenandoah.) The MB-2 served the Army Air Corps into the 1930s, when it was replaced with revolutionary Martin B-10 bomber.

The MB-2 was essentially a reinforced MB-1. A squadron of six MB-2s sank the target ship Ostfriesland in 1921

The SMS Ostfriesland had been a German battleship in World War I. Seized as reparations by the United States, the proud craft was used as a target ship when General Billy Mitchell proved that aircraft could sink naval vessels

After sending the Ostfriesland to Davey Jones’s Locker in 1921, Billy Mitchell was mocked by Old Guard military men who claimed his test had been rigged: The Ostfriesland had been neither armed nor under weigh when it was sunk. These criticisms were true, but so was the fact that six biplanes had sunk a capital ship of one of the world’s great navies. Mitchell, who was cashiered for his outspokenness, had his naysayers right up until the day that the Japanese savaged Battleship Row at Pearl Harbor in 1941

The B-10 bomber (and its variants, which led to the Martin B-18), was an all-metal monocoque twin-engine monoplane, the first to be used as a weapon of war. It could carry a crew of three, a ton of bombs, and was armed with three .30 calibre machine guns. Its length overall was 44’ 9” and its wingspan was 70’ 6”. It had an impressive top speed of 213 miles per hour and a range of 1,250 miles. It was considered a “heavy” bomber in its heyday, but the U.S. Army Air Corps needed a larger and longer range platform. Ultimately, the B-10 was phased out in favor of Boeing’s B-17 Flying Fortress, which served during World War II. 

The Martin B-10 of 1933 was the first modern U.S. bomber aircraft. Critics claimed that the plane was “too modern,” that the crewmembers would be half-blinded by being enclosed in a cabin, and that the wings were bound to fall off without supporting struts. None of that turned out to be true. Although the B-10 never went to war as an American plane, other air forces did use them, and they proved their worth. But by World War II, they were utterly obsolete

The B-26 Marauder was a fast and maneuverable medium bomber during World War II, far more streamlined than the boxy B-25s used on the “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo” Raid of April 1942.  In the early months of the war when green flying crews were rushed into service, the Marauder demonstrated that it was not a forgiving plane. It tended to stall near landing speed, and it tended to slideslip on approach. There were a lot of crashes and a lot of deaths. Pilots gave the B-26 the nickname “Widowmaker.” After some factory tweaks and after improvements in pilot training, pilots still called it the Widowmaker --- but after the wives of enemy troops

Martin continued to design bombers, however. During World War II, Martin designed and built the B-26 Marauder and A-22 Maryland bombers, the PBM Mariner and JRM Mars flying boats, and under license from Boeing, 531 B-29 Superfortresses, including the “Project Silverplate” atomic bomber aircraft used in the Manhattan Project, including Enola Gay and Bock’sCar, which dropped the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively.   

 

Martin retired after World War II and passed away in 1955, but his company (which underwent several mergers becoming Martin-Marietta and then Lockheed Martin) moved into jet and rocket design, and continues to create aircraft today.