 | |
 The Temco plant at Dallas in the late 1950s | |
| Formerly | Texas Engineering & Manufacturing Company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Aerospace |
| Founded | 1946 |
| Founders |
|
| Defunct | 1960 |
| Fate | Merged |
| Successor | Ling-Temco-Vought |
| Headquarters | , United States |
The Texas Engineering & Manufacturing Company (TEMCO), also known as Temco Aircraft Corporation, was a U.S.-based manufacturing company located in Dallas, Texas, USA. It is best known for eventually forming part of the conglomerate Ling-Temco-Vought.
Temco was the brainchild of Robert McCulloch, who began his career in aircraft with the Aircraft Division of William Beardmore and Company in Scotland. McCulloch emigrated to the US in 1927 and worked for a small machining company before joining the Atlantic Aircraft Corporation. The company was "flipped" a number of times during the Great Depression, first becoming Fokker Aircraft of America, then General Aviation, and finally North American Aviation (NAA), where McCulloch rose to become factory manager in 1941. That year he took a position at Convair as the general manager of their factory in Nashville, Tennessee, but he returned to NAA in 1943 and by the end of World War II was the manager of their new plant in the Dallas area at Grand Prairie.
With the end of the war Convair closed their Dallas plant, McCulloch joined with another NAA executive, H. L "Bert" Howard, to form the Texas Engineering and Manufacturing Corporation, later shortened to TEMCO, and reorganized as the TEMCO Aircraft Corporation in 1952. [1] McCulloch was the president and general manager, while Howard was executive vice president and treasurer. Other members of the initial management team included: Al V. Graff, general superintendent; Clyde Williams, secretary & assistant treasurer; Joseph H. Baylis, industrial relations; Howard Jones, plant engineering, Ted H. Beck, aircraft engineering; Charles D. Collier, purchasing; John A. Maxwell, Jr., manufacturing control; Robert Yonash, production engineering; J. D. McKelvain, inspection; Otto Witbeck, shop superintendent; and O. A. Berthiaume, shop superintendent. All of the initial management team were former NAA employees. [2]
Their idea was to keep the plant open and try to find contract work with other aviation firms on a "rental" basis. Bankers were unimpressed with the plan, but they eventually secured financing from several sources, notably Col. D. Harold Byrd who would later serve with the company.
In addition to aircraft manufacturing, described below, TEMCO also produced many other products, mostly under contract to other companies. These included: [2]
This division also assembled a tractor for the Intercontinental Manufacturing Company (IMCO) [3]
The company secured contracts for various parts for major aircraft designs, including the C-82, Fairchild F-28, Lockheed F-104 Starfighter and P2V Neptune, the McDonnell F-101 Voodoo, the Boeing B-47 Stratojet, and many others. Additionally they started subcontracting production of the Globe Swift two seat general aviation design, but were so successful in production that supply soon caught up with demand and Globe went out of business. TEMCO retained the rights to the design in 1947, producing it in small numbers for the next four years. Equipping the Swift with a much more powerful engine and tandem two-seat cockpit turned it into the T-35 Buckaroo trainer aircraft, which competed and lost out to the Beechcraft T-34 Mentor. Ten T-35's were eventually sold to Saudi Arabia. Another new-design was also produced as the Model 33 Plebe, which also failed to enter production.
Work soon flooded the original Grand Prairie site, and a new plant was set up at Majors Field in Greenville, primarily to offload US Air Force work and allow Grand Prairie to be used primarily for Navy work. [4] [ failed verification ] TEMCO, meanwhile, turned increasingly to overhaul services at their new Greenville plants, and won a contract to overhaul C-54's returning from the Berlin Airlift. TEMCO also acquired the Luscombe Aircraft, another Dallas-area company involved in similar work. In 1953 they became involved in a partnership with Riley Aircraft Sales to convert existing North American Navions to a twin-engine version, the Twin Navion, eventually buying the rights to the conversion and converting 138 aircraft over the next four years. However, by 1954 contracts were drying up, and the company was down to only 500 employees, laying off over 2,000 in a town of only 15,000.
TEMCO increasingly turned to aviation electronics and missile guidance systems. In 1955 they won a contract to produce "quick reaction kits" for the Air Force's B-29 Superfortress fleet, and employment started increasing again. In 1955 they won a similar contract for the B-50, and by the end of the next year were up to 1,700 employees. By 1958 electronics was providing half of the company's income, but they continued to win overhaul contracts, including the C-121 and C-97. They also designed a light attack aircraft based on the earlier Model 33, the new Model 58 but this failed to find any buyers. In 1952 they started work on what would become the Model 51 Pinto, competing with an Air Force contract that was eventually won by the Cessna T-37. Fourteen were eventually taken on by the Navy in 1956, who flew them as the TT-1. Several of these eventually worked their way into civilian hands, where they were converted with the J85 engine and known as the Super Pinto. From 1957 to 1960, Temco developed the ASM-N-8 Corvus anti-radiation missile for the U.S. Navy. The project was cancelled in 1960, when the program was taken over by the U.S. Air Force.
By 1960 electronics was their major product, and the company merged with another Dallas-area electronics firm, Ling-Altec, itself recently formed in a merger of Ling Electronics and Altec. Together the two firms raised capital from various sources, and in 1961 formed a merger with Chance Vought, who had moved to the area in 1948, to become Ling-Temco-Vought , or LTV. McCulloch served as chairman of the board and chief executive officer. He remained as chairman of the board and later chairman of the executive committee until his retirement in April 1970.
Through the 1970s LTV started divesting itself of its aviation holdings. The former Temco Aircraft electronics plant at Greenville, by then known as LTV Electrosystems, became E-Systems, eventually being purchased by Raytheon, and today is a part of L3Harris known as L3Harris ISR Systems.
| Model name | First flight | Number built | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Temco F-24 | 280 | Single engine utility airplane [5] | |
| Temco T-35 Buckaroo | 1948 | 26 | Single engine trainer |
| Temco D-16 | 1952 | 110 | Twin engine conversion of Ryan Navion |
| Temco 33 Plebe | 1953 | 1 | Single engine trainer |
| Temco 58 | 1956 | 1 | Single engine trainer |
| Temco TT Pinto | 1956 | 15 | Single engine jet trainer |
| Temco XKDT Teal | 1957 | Target drone | |
Grand Prairie is a city in the U.S. state of Texas, located in Dallas, Tarrant, and Ellis counties with a small part extending into Johnson county. It is part of the Mid-Cities region in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It had a population of 175,396 according to the 2010 census, making it the fifteenth most populous city in the state. Remaining the 15th-most populous city in Texas, the 2020 census reported a population of 196,100.
James Joseph "Jimmy" Ling was an American businessman and former head of Ling-Temco-Vought corporation. While at its helm, Ling used LTV funds to purchase a large number of corporations, and was one of the more famous of the 1960s conglomerate managers.
Vought was the name of several related American aerospace firms. These have included, in the past, Lewis and Vought Corporation, Chance Vought, Vought-Sikorsky, LTV Aerospace, Vought Aircraft Companies, and Vought Aircraft Industries.
Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV) was a large American conglomerate which existed from 1961 to 2001. At its peak, it was involved in aerospace, airlines, electronics, steel manufacturing, sporting goods, meat packing, car rentals, and pharmaceuticals, among other businesses.
The Dassault Mirage G, also known as the Mirage IIIG, was a variant of the French Dassault Mirage series of supersonic warplanes, but with a variable-sweep wing. Three prototypes were flown; one single-engined G and two twin-engined G8 examples. Various roles, equipment fits and other variants were proposed, but none entered production.
Altec Lansing, Inc. is an American audio electronics company founded in 1927. Their primary products are loudspeakers and associated audio electronics for professional, home, automotive and multimedia applications.
The Gray Eagle Award is presented to the Naval Aviator on continuous active duty in U.S. Navy or Marine Corps who has held that designation for the longest period of time. A similar trophy, the Gray Owl Award, is also presented to the Naval Flight Officer on continuous active duty in the U.S Navy or Marine Corps who has held that designation for the longest period of time.
The Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV) XC-142 is a tiltwing experimental aircraft designed to investigate the operational suitability of vertical/short takeoff and landing (V/STOL) transports. An XC-142A first flew conventionally on 29 September 1964, and completed its first transitional flight on 11 January 1965 by taking off vertically, changing to forward flight, and finally landing vertically. Its service sponsors pulled out of the program one by one, and it eventually ended due to a lack of interest after demonstrating its capabilities successfully.
The history of Dallas, Texas, United States, from 1946 to 1974 concerns the city during the mid-20th century.
Lear Siegler Incorporated (LSI) is a diverse American corporation established in 1962. Its products range from car seats and brakes to weapons control systems for military fighter planes. The company's more than $2 billion-a-year annual sales comes from three major areas: aerospace-technology, automotive parts, and industrial-commercial. The company, however, is basically anonymous, since its products are either unmarked or bear only the label "LSI". Lear Siegler went private in 1987.
The Grand Prairie Armed Forces Reserve Complex or Grand Prairie AFRC is a former United States Navy Naval Air Station located on Mountain Creek Lake in southwest Dallas. The installation was established as an Army aviation center, and eventually became home to aviation assets from all the military services.
The Temco T-35 Buckaroo was designed in the late 1940s as an extremely low-cost trainer for commercial and military markets. Temco's failure to secure a United States Air Force order for the Buckaroo forced it to turn to non-U.S. governments to keep the production lines going, yet only a few export orders materialized.
John Kenneth Hilliard was an American acoustical and electrical engineer who pioneered a number of important loudspeaker concepts and designs. He helped develop the practical use of recording sound for film and won an Academy Award in 1935. He designed movie theater sound systems, and he worked on radar as well as submarine detection equipment during World War II. Hilliard collaborated with James B. "Jim" Lansing in creating the long-lived Altec Voice of the Theatre speaker system. Hilliard researched high-intensity acoustics, vibration, miniaturization and long-line communications for NASA and the Air Force. Near the end of his career, he standardized noise-control criteria for home construction in California, a pattern since applied to new homes throughout the U.S.
The Ling-Temco-Vought XQM-93 was a remotely piloted aircraft developed in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s for use as a communications relay in the Vietnam War. A prototype flew in 1970, but the program was abandoned without producing a service-ready aircraft.
William Paul Thayer was an American test pilot, flying ace, aviation executive, and United States Deputy Secretary of Defense during the Reagan Administration.
The Intercontinental Manufacturing Company (IMCO) was formed in the Dallas, Texas area in 1948 by Harold J. Silver and Robert F. Yonash, initially to fulfill an order from Argentina for tractors. IMCO soon changed focus to defense subcontracting, where it remains today.
Robert F. Yonash was an American engineer in the early days of the aircraft industry. He was a member of the start-up management team for the Texas Engineering & Manufacturing Company (TEMCO), which eventually became the "T" in the conglomerate Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV). He was the co-founder, with Harold Silver, of the Intercontinental Manufacturing Company (IMCO), which is currently owned by General Dynamics.
Charles Edward Acker is an American businessman who was CEO of Braniff Airways, Air Florida, and Pan American World Airways. He is a principal at Intrepid Equity Group.
David Harold "Dry Hole" Byrd was a noted Texan producer of petroleum, and a co-founder of the Civil Air Patrol. Byrd's cousin, polar explorer Richard E. Byrd, named Antarctica's Harold Byrd Mountains for him.
