LOCKHEED AIRCRAFT CORPORATION IN 1975

Lockheed today is a company with long and broad experience in science and engineering, and with technical and management competence across a wide range of defense systems and industrial programs.
   
Its interests include missile, satellite, and space exploration and communication systems, military and civilian aircraft, electronics, propulsion, shipbuilding, ground support, heavy construction, air, ground, and shipboard materials handling, underseas warfare, ocean systems, bionics, nuclear products and services, military base operation, maintenance, and servicing, airport management, international business developments, tracking base operations, and general industrial development and manufacture.
  
But it wasn't always this way.
   
More than a half century ago two brothers, Allan and Malcolm Lockheed, began building the first aircraft bearing the Lockheed name. It was a tractor type seaplane that carried three persons and flew 60 miles an hour.

The Lockheed brothers successfully flew their hand built seaplane over San Francisco Bay in 1913. Three years later they founded a company in Santa Barbara, Calif., to manufacture a twin engine, 10 passenger flying boat, two seaplanes for the Navy, and a small sport biplane.
    
In the late 1920s Allan Lockheed formed a company to build the advanced Vega monoplane. The firm prospered, and in 1928 moved to larger quarters in Burbank, Calif. From this plant came record setting aircraft - Vega, Air Express, Sirius, Altair, Orion. Flown by famed pilots like Lindbergh, Wilkins, Amelia Earhart, Wiley Post, and many others, they made aviation history in a time when speed was king.
  
Came the depression years. In 1931 Lockheed - then part of Detroit Aircraft Corp. - went into bankruptcy with its parent company. In 1932 a group of investors purchased assets of the Lockheed firm and formed the present corporation. The new owners staked their limited funds to develop an all metal, twin engine transport, the Model 10 Electra. It first flew in 1934 and quickly gained world wide fame.

By 1938 Europe was on the brink of war. Lockheed’s expanding production, aggressive management, and eagerness to take on challenging jobs won it a huge order to build needed bombers for embattled Britain. Almost overnight Lockheed converted its Model 14 transport into the rugged Hudson bomber for the RAE and during the war years built 3000 of them for Britain, the U.S., and allied nations.

Lockheed’s first operational fighter, the twin boomed P-38 Lightning, began production in 1939. When the U.S. entered World War II, P-38 manufacture was in full swing and hit a 15 a day peak. Employment climbed above 93,000. From Lockheed factories poured more than 19,000 military planes — Hudsons, P-38s, PV-1 Venturas, PV-2 Harpoons, Lodestar and Constellation transports, and Boeing designed Flying Fortresses.

Near war’s end Lockheed began building the F-80 Shooting Star, first U.S. operational jet fighter and forerunner of the T-33 trainer, F-94 interceptor series, and T2V-1 Navy trainer.

After World War II the commercial Constellation, its three vertical tails an unmistakable trademark, became a global Lockheed symbol. In 15 years some 35 airlines bought more than 500. Around the world, Connie advanced air travel to spectacular heights of luxury, speed, and operating efficiency.

Lockheed expansion and growth stepped up rapidly in the 1950s. It began operating the government aircraft factory in Marietta, Ga., now Lockheed-Georgia Company. It formed a division, now Lockheed Missiles & Space Company, in Sunnyvale, Calif., to handle these growing programs. Before the decade ended, Lockheed established Lockheed Electronics Company in Plainfield, N.J. Lockheed purchased Puget Sound Bridge & Dry Dock and Colby Crane & Manufacturing in Seattle, now Lockheed Shipbuilding and Construction Company, and also acquired foreign industrial interests. Lockheed's corporate organization, Lockheed-California Company, and Lockheed Air Terminal, Inc. that operates Hollywood-Burbank airport are all in Burbank. Lockheed Aircraft Service is in Ontario, Calif.

In the mid 60's, Lockheed anticipated the market for a new passenger transport to serve the world's most heavily traveled air routes. Result: the advanced technology L-101 TriStar wide-bodied transport. More than 100 TriStars had entered airline service by the spring of 1975. In their first three years of service, the TriStars flew 325,000 flight hours, carried 16 million people, and flew some 17 billion passenger miles.
  
Some 200 additional TriStars are forecasted to enter service in the next several years. The TriStar program is expected to extend through the 1970s and beyond.
  
Lockheed facilities in early 1975 covered more than 25 million square feet. Assets totaled above $1.6 billion. Employment was approximately 60,000 people. The organization chart below shows the corporation's makeup and areas of interest.

All information on this page is from a Lockheed Aircraft Corporation brochure of 1975.