U.S. EAST COAST AIRCRAFT COMPANIES - An overview of major manufacturers from 1909 to the Jet Age! 

Excellent video Mike. I would add Kaman Aircraft, which is based in Bloomfield, Connecticut. Charlie Kaman was a rotary wing pioneer. A modified Kaman HTK-1 was the first turbine powered helicopter. Another was the first remote piloted helicopter. (Search RU-vid for You Asked For It Kaman helicopter.) The company built the HOK-1 (OH-43D) for the Marine Corps, the HH-43F Huskie for the Air Force, and the H-2 Seasprite series for the Navy. Currently, the company produces the K-MAX external lift helicopter for both civilian and military use. Except the the H-2, Kaman aircraft employ intermeshing rotors.

While you were in the Hartford area (Pratt and Whitney) you should have gone a few miles North to Windsor Locks and mentioned Hamilton Standard. They manufactured propellers for a great many of the aircraft pictured in your excellent video.

I was born and raised on Long Island, and trust me your accent remains. It is still a lot stronger than mine, because I learn how to speak properly

Great video Mike. Never knew there were that many airframe manufacturers in my old area. Grew up off of Hempstead Turnpike, across from Mitchell Field. This probably inspired my career as an aircraft engineer. When you mentioned Chase Aircraft, something "clicked". When you mentioned Stroukoff, the bell went off! As a Aero student at New York Institute of Technology, his son, also and aircraft engineer, was one of my professors for several courses! After graduation, I went to work for Fairchild Republic. Ironically, one of my tasks was to amend the flight manual for the C-123K. I did the "one engine out" capabilities with and without the newly added jet pods. I remember plotting the altitude graphs for a fully loaded prop only model. The graph went to zero altitude! A side note (totally unsubstantiated): The rumor among aero students was that his father, Michael, was hard task master. After designing and building one of his aircraft, he walked down the runway and stopped, proclaiming the aircraft will take off here! Of course there was no internet in the early 70's to research any information. Great story if it's true.

Terrific history, Michael! Thank you. I started out flying those Schweizer sailplanes;, the 2-33, the 1-23. I flew the 1-26 and 1-35 at the Schweizer factory/school in Elmira.

Thanks again for another great video. In the late 80s I had many long discussions with a son of the founder of Gyrodyne. They were making drones 50 years before the Navy was ready to accept the idea. The Dash II helicopters failed often, but the Navy wanted manned aircraft instead of perfecting radio control. Gyrodyne was big on contra-rotating rotors: smooth riding, and no need for a tail rotor. Many times I was in the company's building for entertaining guests. It was so extravagant and dated it could have been used by Goldfinger in the James Bond movie. Today most of the property is used by Stony Brook University.

Thanks for another great aviation history lesson, this one with personal connections to my family and friends. My father helped build B-26's at the Martin plant in Middle River during WW2 and my brother (also named Martin) worked on components of the B-1B bomber there 40 yrs. later. My best friend's father flew their PBM's against U-boats, and my younger son's brother in law helped create exhibits at the Cradle of Aviation Museum.

Another great one Mike.

Great one, Mike. Growing up in OC California, this east coast story telling fills in a lot gaps. Thanks again!

Outstanding Presentation. You are now my favorite aviation historian.

An excellent choice of theme. Not much discussed elsewhere. The history lessons are greatly appreciated. I'm still as crazy over aircraft as aver.

Another hit. Well researched, well documented and well told.

Great history and thanks for mentioning EDO which was here in my home town of College Point. I know they are small and obscure but how about Brewster in Long Island City with the vertical factory and LWF here in College Point, which according to a local history had the first purpose built aircraft factory in the US. Thanks for your work.

Thanks for another wonderful episode. When I lived in CT I worked for Textron Lycoming in Stratford, that was the former Chance Vaught facility. I vividly remember the overhead tracks that were used to haul the Corsair fuselages along the assembly line.

An excellent, well put together tour of this line of history. My Dad worked at Grumman on the Cougar and Panther and my uncle worked on the LEM so Grumman has always had a place in my heart. I still live on Long Island - yes, Brooklyn is on Long island!

Here is a link to Cradle of Aviation's RU-vid channel: ru-vid.com

Well researched and presented Mike. Thank you.

What a fantastic video Mike. Growing up on Long Island like yourself, I got to see many of the aircraft that were built there, flying overhead regularly. Add to that, Mitchel and Suffolk County Air Force Bases, Idlewild (JFK) Airport, and Floyd Bennett Field, and the aircraft types in the skies above L.I. were numerous. Thanks for doing a great job in taking me back to a very special time.

Another great one, Mike! I don’t know if you travel and do presentations, but Pima Air Museum here in Tucson would be a great place to do it! Keep up the good work!

Great video! I grew up in south Nassau and was always a big Grumman fan thanks to the F14 and ww2 cats.

Two of the earliest planes I flew in were featured: the Martin 404 and the Fairchild-Hiller, both in Piedmont Airlines livery. Great presentation!

The Wright-Curtiss fight was caused by Curtiss. He was a brilliant guy and had been working for Bell (yes, that Bell), but never thought that the Bell's ideas of kites would ever work. The Wright's often saw one of 'Bell's Boys' at some of their demonstrations. In fact the first person to die in an aircraft accident was one of them, one Thomas Selfridge. I think the Wright's saw them as sies no more so than if a coach from the other team watched your teams practices from outside the fence. I feel that Curtiss could certainly see that the WB were on to something and that flight was going to be exceptionally lucrative. As such, he tried to engineer aspects to his planes that would avoid the Wright's patent. Thus we have, for example, the aileron as a significant improvement to the Wright's wing-warping apparatus. Now, if you were the WB who had came up with their own ideas and financed the entire thing through profits from their bicycle shop I think almost everyone reading this would be strongly proprietary. Business in those days was largely unregulated and often a free for all. Patents are legitimately there to protect the academic property of the inventor. Now inventing something is one thing, manufacturing it and bringing it to market is another and transitioning from a small business of two or three to a factory calls for a significant change in management philosophy. Anyhow, Wilbur spent much of his time fighting Curtiss' infringements to his patents and died of typhoid in 1912. Orville always blamed this death on the stresses caused by Curtiss. Orville was a 'tinkerer' not an industrial magnate and regardless, his heart was no longer in it. After winning a major patent case in 1912 which he felt some vindication, he sold the company to Glenn Martin in 1915 and largely retired. While the Wright name appeared in company names into WW2, the family was no longer associated with it. Remarkably, Glenn Curtiss himself had to fight similar lawsuits in the 1920's and died of appendicitis while in court in 1930. The Wright's got ~ $1M for their work, Curtiss $30M. Doesn't really seem very fair. The Wright's were also seen as selfish in protecting their property. Easy to say unless it was your property! We still see this today in business where a large/wealthy company will cut corners or not pay their debts knowing that the victim of far less means cannot afford or would not know how to pursue appropriate litigation. Patent fights can often go on for a long thereby increasing the financial burden on the lesser. In retrospect, it is unfortunate that the Wright's could not have combined efforts with Curtiss. I think he would have been better suited to bring things to market and everyone would have been the better. However, the Wright's insular nature, which may well have served them during the inventing, prevented such overtures.

Thanks for mentioning Piper. Lock Haven is my home town. I worked as a draftsman in the engineering department in the late 1960's.

Thanks for a most interesting and informative video. Keep up the great work.

Thank you Mike

So much history so little time. Thanks Mike for keeping our aviation history alive. So many great companies have come and gone, let's hope the ones left will be here for many years to come. How about the history of Torrance Airport/Zamperini Field and maybe include Robinson helicopter history. Back when I was a kid the guys in the control tower let us in and showed us around.

Appreciate all of the effort you put into making these excellent videos. Please keep up the good work!

I agree Mike... I have teared up in many a parking lot "repurposed" from my favorite, Hobby Shop, Drive-in diner, Drive-in Theaters... It's progress, I am told.

Great video and as always full of interesting an new information, to me any way. Nice to see the sailplane segment, once worked in Horseheads NY. Thank you and take care.

Wow, many personal connections here, Mike. I grew up in Queens and my first job, as an aircraft mechanic, was with Fairchild Engine Division. I went on to Republic on the F-105 assembly line. Later, I went to Mitchell Field for my AF Aviation Cadet physical. I wound up flying the F-105D, some of which I had worked on! The F-105 on display at the American Air Power Museum at Republic is one of the aircraft that I flew. I always thought that it was an oversight that there is no official monument indicating the history of Roosevelt field, although the Cradle of Aviation Museum serves that purpose. So much aviation history here. Thanks for doing all the research. I learned a lot!

My late father-in-law worked for Piasecki (later Boeing Vertol) in Springfield, PA as an engineer from WWII until the '80's.

How about a shout out to the other Philadelphia firms? The Naval Aircraft Factory, Brewster and Leonardo today? And a Honorable mention to GE Space Division at Valley Forge. Dad spent 30 on manned and unmanned projects. 🚀

Great job.

Thank you, really interesting. As an aside, there's also the Fairchild FH-1100 helicopter, which competed against the Bell (jet ranger) & Hughes 500.

Another fun fact about Seversky in the X-15. He learned to fly by the age of 14 in a Bleriot XI, c.1908. *1908!* Harder to believe - Orville Wright was alive when the X-1 broke the sound barrier and when the F-86 soon thereafter went supersonic in a dive.

Mike, during your visit to Connecticut you missed a company that is still in business building helicopters today Kaman. They are still building the K-Max based on the H-43 intermeshing rotor design. We have a great multimedia display on Charlie Kaman and all his innovations at the New England Air Museum if you ever get up this way.

Thanks for a walk down this memory lane Mike! Being a Lawng Island kid growing up between Grumman and Republic this was a treat! Many of my friends fathers and uncles built some of those beautiful birds! I also had the pleasure of dating a girl whose father helped design the LEM! Thanks again!

My train club, Long Island Garden Railway Society, runs a train display every January at the Cradle of Aviation. I was an electrician on the Sea Stallion, Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron (HM) - 14. Also, EDO made the minesweeping sled we used.

I'm going with the spelling Chauncey "Chance" Vought and I'm goin' with lovin' another vid on the good ole days.

Great video. Thank you. Couple of comments. 1) Nicole Piasecki is an executive at Boeing. She and I would occasionally cross paths during technology reviews. 2) Very early on they dropped the word excursion from the name of the lunar lander. It was just the LM, or Lunar Module. Thank you for the photo of the Piper Aztec. My father-n-law owned and flew one.

One of the surprises to me, a native New Englander born in Hartford CT when I visited the Seattle Museum of Flight, was to learn of the Boeing connection to Pratt & Whitney, where several of my family had employment from time to time. I now call myself a Californian since the family resettled there in Santa Ana. There I was of course, taught about Glenn L. Martin's first airplane built in an abandoned church off of Main Street. That Martin Aircraft Co. is most known for its Maryland location belies the West Coast starting point of what became the nation wide amalgamation that was also a West Coast phenomenon starting in Santa Barbara as Loughhead before the spelling simplification of that name. Will you be filling in the many aircraft facilities that found homes in the Midwest next? After all a couple of Ohio boys started it all.

Check out the November 1960 issue of Business/Commercial Aviation. Father's older brother and his bought-new Piper Comanche on the cover, my second airplane ride @ age eight.

I've seen what was left of the Fairchild factory in Hagerstown when I lived there for a brief time back in the early 90's. To think so many cool planes came from there... Thanks for the great video, Mike!

Interesting side note: in the picture at 2:57, you can see a structure being moved on a surface street in the lower left corner...

I have to correct my last comment. A modified Kaman K-225 was the first turbine powered helicopter. A modified Kaman HTK-1 was the first twin turbine powered helicopter (April 21, 1953).

Isn't it a shame these great companies are all gone or swallowed up into other companies. Great vid and info. Northrop,and North American were also west coasters ...but you knew that.

Oh, and one more thing, Mike, GM received a contract to build F-84Fs under licence from Republic, in the mid 50's, on top of building Wildcats, and Avengers under licence from Grumman, during WW-II, plus, there were two other east coast aircraft companies that had existed in the 40's: Brewster, and Columbia. Brewster built the F2A Buffalo carrier fighter, along with licence building F4U Corsairs; designated as the F3A-1, and Columbia took over the J2F Duck production, after Grumman got swamped with large orders for the Hellcat. Plus, GM would've been licence building Bearcats, had WW-II not ended in September 1945.

A fantastic video as always Mr Machat! Much to learn from it as usual. I was familiar with a few of these manufacturers, but had no idea there were so many. Thanks again for a wonderful history lesson! Worth every minute! As always God bless you and yours and thanks again for everything you do! Take care always Sir!!

You skipped over my home town, Bristol, PA, home of Huff-Daland, Keystone, Fleetwings and Kaiser/Fleetwings. Not really a major aircraft company but an interesting one.

Thank you for telling us about the East Coast aerospace companies. It’s sad that time and the economy forced buyouts and mergers that erased some of companies you mentioned…. There’s one more company! The GE plant up in Lynn Massachusetts made the engines for the Bell XP83. However, the engines weren’t powerful enough so it never entered production.

Grumman isn't quite dead on the east coast. The E-2D Hawkeye, the last true Grumman aircraft, is still in production in St. Augustine, FL, and the upcoming Northrop Grumman B-21 stealth bomber is to be built in the Melbourne, FL plant where the J-STARS aircraft were modified.

My thanks to your very interesting Aviation history videos! Excellent! I was wondering if you provided a video on Pratt & Whitney Gas Turbines both for aviation and industrial applications? I was always a big aviation fan, joining the Navy for Naval Aviation but as fate would have it I was assigned to Electricians (A)Training School not Aviation Electricians school. So my career path took me into Electric Production Operating, Repairing and installing Gas turbine Generators.

At about 3:00 looks like a house being moved in the left side of the photograph. Looks like it is coming from the site just up the road and to the right.

Another fantastic presention, Mike ! You mentioned the Martin B-57 as designed and built by Martin, but I have been under the impression that is was a British design, adapted for the USAF by Martin.

Thanks Mike. Kansas up next?

Evansville also built P-47s, as well as the Farmingdale plant.

No mention of Pitcairn Aircraft Company outside of Philadelphia? They made the Fleetwing and were early proponents of the autogyro,

Watching the C-119 was a big part of my early youth. The 434th troop carrier wing flew out of Bakalar AFB in Columbus, Indiana.

Mentioned being stationed in Japan in the 60’s, where at? Dad was stationed at Tachi, mom ended up coming over and a couple years later I arrived, born at Tachi.

Hey Mike, I’ve had the privilege of flying a couple of North American Aviation models, both propeller types, though one the B-25 is a recip and the other, an OV-10A is a turboprop. Could you add either of these two awesome aircraft to your RU-vid channel offerings, please? Thanks, Hart

Doesn't Northrop Grumman Still Build E2D aircraft in Florida?

Martin Titan picture is a Titan 1.

Missed one Brewster

Little correction, apart from the canceled and converted Lexington class and very arguably the Alaska class. The USN never had battle cruisers, I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure. The first reference to the Curtis taking of was an armored cruiser.

MIKE GREAT VIDEO BUT WAR IN EUROPE

👍👍

Kaman, Hamilton standard, Brewster aircraft.

You missed Kaman in Connecticut.

Shouldn't the LEM have been called the Moon Cat? How about Lunar Cat?

It's a shame all these companies went under with competition comes innovation