Bell Aircraft - History

History

As a teenager, Larry Bell saw his first plane at an air show, starting a lifelong fascination with aviation. Bell dropped out of high school in 1912 to join his brother in the burgeoning aircraft industry at the Glenn L. Martin Company, where by 1914 he had become shop superintendent. By 1920 Bell was vice president and general manager of Martin, by now based in Cleveland, OH. Feeling that he deserved part ownership, in late 1924 he presented Martin with an ultimatum. Mr. Martin refused, and Bell quit.

Bell spent several years out of the aviation industry, but in 1928 was hired by Major Reuben H. Fleet at Consolidated Aircraft, in Buffalo, New York where he was guaranteed an interest in the company. Before long, Bell became general manager and business was booming, but he still wanted to be able to run his own company. He knew that, although he could raise local capital, he wouldn't be able to compete with either Consolidated or Curtiss-Wright, the two major aircraft builders also based in Buffalo. Serendipitously, in 1935 Major Fleet decided to move Consolidated Aircraft to San Diego, and Bell stayed behind to establish his own company, the Bell Aircraft Company, on 10 July 1935, headquartered in the former Consolidated plant at 2050 Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo.

Incidentally, Bell was the third major aircraft builder to occupy the site. The factory complex was originally built in 1916 for the Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Company, and during World War I had been considered the largest airplane factory in the world.

Bell's first military contract followed in 1937 with the development of the ill-fated YFM-1 Airacuda, an unconventional bomber-destroyer powered by two Allison-powered pusher propellers. The YFM-1 incorporated groundbreaking technology for the time, with gyro stabilized weapons siting and a thermionic fire control system. Including the prototype, just 13 Airacudas were produced, and these saw only limited service with the USAAC before being scrapped in 1942.

Bell enjoyed much success the following year with the development of the single engine P-39, of which 9,588 were built. Putting their previous experience with Allison engines to good use, the P-39 placed the engine in the center of the aircraft, with the propeller driven by a long shaft through which a 37mm cannon was also mounted, firing through the propeller's spinner. Due to persistent problems, the original turbosupercharger was deleted from production models, instead using a single-stage, single-speed supercharger, as was standard on all other Allison-powered products, with the exception of the P-38.

The P-39 performed poorly at high altitudes compared to newer, late-war designs. Most Allied forces thought the Airacobra effective only for ground attack roles, as demonstrated by a few U.S. Army Air Forces units that flew P-39s, such as the so-called Cactus Air Force on Guadalcanal in 1942-43. However, the Soviet Air Force used their Lend-Lease P-39s primarily in the air-to-air role, where they found it to excel as a font-line fighter against some of the best pilots and aircraft of the Luftwaffe. Indeed, the Soviet P-39s scored the highest number of individual kills attributed to any U.S. fighter type.

A somewhat larger and more powerful version of the P-39 was produced shortly before the end of World War II. Called the P-63 Kingcobra, this warplane addressed many of the shortcomings of the P-39, though it was produced too late in the war to make any contribution. 2,971 P-63's were built between 1943 and 1945, many delivered to the Soviet Union. Also, by that time, the Army Air Forces already had the superior P-47 Thunderbolt and P-38 Lightning fighter-bombers.

In October 1942, The Bell-built twin-jet P-59 Airacomet was the first American jet aircraft to fly. Unfortunately, performance was below expectations, roughly on par with contemporaneous propeller-driven aircraft, an outcome generally attributed to the extremely short development timeframe required by the USAAF, as well as the intense secrecy imposed on the project. Design had begun in September 1941, during which time the Bell team was guided mostly by theory, as General Electric would not finish and begin testing the first engine until March 1942. Also, General Henry "Hap" Arnold had forbidden use of wind tunnels to test and optimize the design, but later relented somewhat, only allowing the group to use the low-speed tunnel at Wright Field, Ohio. Bell engineers could only guess at the performance characteristics. Originally intended initially as a production aircraft, the P-59 nevertheless became an important experimental testbed for jet technology, providing invaluable data for development of later jet airplanes.

During World War II, Bell also built heavy bombers under license from other aircraft companies at a factory near Marietta, Georgia, just northwest of Atlanta. Online by mid-1943, the new plant produced hundreds of Consolidated B-24 Liberators and Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers. In mid-1944, the production of the B-24 was consolidated from several different companies (including some in Texas) to two large factories: the Consolidated Aircraft Company in San Diego and the Ford Motor Company's spawling factory in Willow Run, near Detroit, Michigan, which had been specially designed to produce B-24s. For the rest of the war, Bell's Marietta plant concentrated on producing B-29s, producing 668 of them by the time contract expired in the fall of 1945.