Grumman Ironworks: Hellcats, the Lunar Module and the Postal LLV Truck

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In 1929, when Keystone Aircraft bought Loening Aircraft and moved operations to Bristol, Pennsylvania, Leroy Grumman and colleagues including William Schwendler stayed in New York and started their own company. In January 1930 they opened in an abandoned factory in Baldwin, Long Island, welding aluminum tubing to repair truck frames while pitching designs to the Navy. Their retractable landing gear floats for seaplanes cut drag, and the FF-1 biplane of 1931 put them on the map. In World War II Grumman built the Wildcat, Hellcat, Tigercat and Bearcat fighters and the TBF Avenger, ranking 22nd among U.S. corporations in wartime production contracts. Demand was so high that General Motors set up an Eastern Aircraft Division to build most Wildcats and Avengers, and Grumman's simple, overbuilt structures earned it the nickname Grumman Ironworks.

In the jet age Grumman built the Panther, A-6 Intruder, E-2 Hawkeye and F-14 Tomcat, the jet of Top Gun. In November 1962 it won the Apollo lunar module contract and built 13 modules, six of which landed on the moon, and on Apollo 13 a module designed to support two men for about 45 hours kept three alive for 90. Grumman lost the space shuttle to Rockwell International and turned to civilian products: aluminum canoes, the Gulfstream business planes sold off in 1978, Flxible buses, fire engines and the Ben Franklin research submarine. In 1986 it was Long Island's largest corporate employer with 23,000 workers, and in 1994 Northrop bought it for $2.1 billion, outbidding Martin Marietta.

• William Hoffman came up with the aluminum canoe in 1944 to use surplus aircraft metal.
• Grumman fire engines carried names like Firecat and Aerialcat.
• Grumman built the Long Life Vehicle mail truck for the Postal Service from 1986 to 1994, with a 24-year service spec later extended to 30.
• The LLV used corrosion-resistant aluminum panels held together with aerospace-grade rivets.
• Grumman's Bethpage hangars became offices for a cable company and the Grumman Studios film and TV center.