America’s Forgotten Aviation Empire: Why Martin Stopped Making Airliners

Glenn Martin built kites in his mother's kitchen in Kansas. By World War II, his company employed 52,000 workers, built the bombers that proved airpower could sink battleships, trained the founders of Douglas, Bell, and McDonnell, and assembled the Enola Gay. Then he bet everything on a postwar airliner — the Martin 2-0-2. A fatigue crack smaller than a thumbnail tore a wing off over Minnesota. Thirty-seven dead. Then more crashes followed. Eighty-nine lives lost. Grounded fleets. Corporate executives banned their employees from flying his planes. Bankers seized control, and Martin was forced out of the company he'd founded in an abandoned church with six hundred dollars. His name survives today on the world's largest defense contractor — Lockheed Martin — but his story has been almost entirely forgotten. This is the rise and fall of the most consequential aircraft company most people have never heard of.