Allan Haines Lockheed was born Allan Loughead on January 20, 1889 in Niles, California, United States, the son of John Loughead and Flora Haines. An older stepbrother spelled the family name Lougheed, but it was pronounced "Lockheed, " spelled that way in the 1920's, and legally changed in 1934. Little is known of John Loughead, but his wife was a professional writer.
Allan received limited schooling.
All the Loughead brothers had mechanical skill. Malcolm, two years older than Allan, became an automobile mechanic in San Francisco in 1906 and Allan followed him in 1908. In 1909 James E. Plew, a Chicago automobile distributor interested in aviation, hired Allan as a mechanic for his Curtiss biplane and took him to Chicago. Lockheed made his first flight there in 1910 with George Gates, the builder of a pusher biplane.
Lockheed then worked for a year as a flight instructor for the International Aviation Company of Chicago. In 1912 he returned to San Francisco and joined with Malcolm to build a seaplane, called Model G, financed by Max Mamlock, head of the Alco Cab Company of San Francisco. This plane flew exhibition flights at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915. In 1916 the brothers established the Loughead Aircraft Manufacturing Company in Santa Barbara, California, and hired John K. Northrop as engineer.
During World War I the company built a twin-engine flying boat, the F-1, and received orders for two others. It later built a monocoque high-wing airplane, the S-1. Business declined after World War I. Malcolm left the firm in 1919 to develop a hydraulic four-wheel brake system for automobiles. In 1921 the company was liquidated. Allan Lockheed went into real estate, but his heart remained in aviation.
In 1926 he and Northrop founded the Lockheed Aircraft Company; Fred S. Keeler, a brick and tile manufacturer, put up $25, 000 for 51 percent of the company's stock. The first factory was located in Hollywood, California. There Lockheed and Northrop designed and built the Vega, based on the S-1. With a capacity of ten passengers, the Vega was an important step in the development of air transport. The first Vega was bought by George Hearst, son of William Randolph Hearst, the publisher, for $12, 500. Further favorable publicity came when Sir Hubert Wilkins flew in a Vega across the North Pole from Barrow Point, Alaska, to Spitsbergen, Norway, in 1928 and used it for Antarctic exploration a year later.
Business boomed, and in 1928 Lockheed Aircraft moved to more spacious quarters in Burbank, California, where its headquarters has remained. The aviation boom of the late 1920's, stimulated by Lindbergh's flight from New York to Paris and by rapid technical developments in air transport, led to the emergence of several ambitious combinations of aviation companies. The Detroit Aircraft Corporation, formed by prominent automobile men, including Ransom E. Olds, Charles F. Kettering, Roy D. Chapin, and Charles S. Mott, aspired to become "the General Motors of the air. " In July 1929 this organization acquired 87 pecent of Lockheed by an exchange of stock. Allan Lockheed left the company and predicted that the deal would lead to disaster. He was right. With the coming of the Great Depression the Detroit Aircraft Corporation collapsed, dragging the Lockheed Aircraft Company into bankruptcy with it. Lockheed was sold at a receiver's sale in 1932 for $40, 000 to a small group of businessmen who managed to rehabilitate it.
Although he retained no further connection with the company bearing his name, Allan Lockheed remained associated with aviation. He became a consultant, and in 1937 he organized the Alcor Aircraft Corporation in San Francisco and designed a twin-engine, high-wing cantilever monoplane. But the company survived for only two years.
During World War II he worked for two furniture companies in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that had been converted to making aircraft components. He served as vice-president and manager of the aviation division of Berkey and Gay in 1941 and as general manager of the Aircraft Division of the Grand Rapids Store Equipment Company from November 1942 until the end of the war. From August 1941 to January 1942 he was also a member of the Cargo Plane Commission of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.
After World War II Lockheed withdrew from aviation. He returned to California and resumed his real estate activities. He retired to Arizona and died in Tucson.
Lockheed was a pioneer in the aviation industry. He was the founder of the Lockheed Aircraft Company. His legendary aircraft of all time, the Vega chalked up speed and distance records throughout the world in flights by many of the famed aviators of the time. Famous pilots who flew the Vega included Amelia Earhart and Charles and Anne Lindbergh.
Lockheed married Dorothy Watts in Chicago in June 1911. They had two children. Dorothy Lockheed died in 1922, and on June 5, 1938, Lockheed married Helen M. Kundert. They had one son.
