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| Vultee airplanes on assembly line. |
The Vultee Era
The next aircraft manufacturing pioneer to come to Downey was considerably
more successful than his predecessors. Jerry Vultee
moved his young Aviation Manufacturing Corporation
to Downey from its hangar-plant in Glendale in 1936.
Having previously built commercial airliners, Vultee shifted his
focus to military applications, developing the V-11 attack
bomber. While the American Army Air Corps was apparently
uninterested in the aircraft, many were sold to the Chinese, Turkish,
Brazilian and Soviet Union governments.
Ultimately, the U.S. government did purchase some V-11s as well
as many more of later Vultee models; by 1941 Vultee(Aviation Manufacturing
Corp. became Vultee Aircraft, Inc. after the untimely
1938 death of Jerry Vultee in an airplane crash) produced 15 percent
of all the military aircraft in the nation. Three new models in
addition to the attack bomber were being produced by 1940: the Vultee
Valiant Basic Trainer; the Valiant 51,
a basic combat aircraft; and the Vanguard pursuit-interceptor.
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“Rosie the Riveters”
working at the Vultee plant ca. 1942. |
Vultee Aircraft was an innovator in the area of manufacturing as well
as aviation design. Having significantly expanded and revamped the
Downey manufacturing facility to meet the new demand for its aircraft,
Vultee now boasted that it had “more automatic machinery per
square foot than any other aircraft factory.” Vultee’s
particular masterpiece (in their own words) was what the executives
exultantly described as “the first and only truly powered assembly
line in the industry.”
In 1942 Vultee bought operating control of the Consolidated
Aircraft Corporation of San Diego and became Consolidated
Vultee Aircraft Corporation (Convair). Convair at Vultee
Field in Downey produced hundreds of Vultee Basic Trainers, parts
for military war aircraft produced by other companies, and the
B-24 “Liberator” heavy bomber.
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Vultee manufacturing
plant |
At the end of World War II in 1945, as the production of military
aircraft wound down, the Vultee Division of Convair remained open
to support missile systems development for the government. Convair
had contracts for the short-range LARK surface-to-air missile,
and to study long-range missile weapons systems. The latter, dubbed
MX-774 was designed to study two types of missiles:
a subsonic, jet-engine cruise missile and a rocket-powered supersonic
ballistic missile. The contract was cancelled for economic reasons
in 1946.
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Vultee P-4. |
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