Background
Lawrence Bell was born on April 5, 1894, in Mentone, Indiana, the son of Isaac Evans Bell and Harriet Sarber. His father owned a small lumber mill until he retired in 1907 and moved to Santa Monica, California.
Lawrence Bell was born on April 5, 1894, in Mentone, Indiana, the son of Isaac Evans Bell and Harriet Sarber. His father owned a small lumber mill until he retired in 1907 and moved to Santa Monica, California.
Bell was already interested in aviation as a student at Santa Monica High School.
In 1912 Lawrence became a mechanic for his brother Grover E. Bell and Lincoln Beachy, who were exhibition pilots. When Grover was killed in an accident, Bell quit the aviation business briefly before going to work for Glenn L. Martin. In 1913 he converted a Martin plane into a bomber for Pancho Villa. Within two years he had risen to the position of superintendent and persuaded Martin to hire an engineer, Donald Douglas, Sr. , who had graduated from the newly established aeronautical program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1917, when the Martin and Wright interests were merged, Martin went to Cleveland and took Bell with him to start another company. Bell was soon promoted to vice-president and general manager. He left in 1928 to join Reuben Fleet at the Consolidated Aircraft Company in Buffalo, New York, and within a year he had become vice-president and general manager. In 1935 Consolidated moved to San Diego, California, but Bell remained in Buffalo.
On July 10, he established the Bell Aircraft Corporation with the help of Ray P. Whitman and Robert J. Woods, who had raised $150, 000. The company at first took on subcontracts from other manufacturers and did experimental work. Bell, who had learned to fly many years before, was far more interested in design and engineering than in flying. Woods, a top aeronautical engineer, designed the XFM-1 Airacuda, the first American twin-engine multiplace fighter plane, which was first flown on September 1, 1937. Bell received a small Air Corps contract for it the following year, but it went no further.
Meanwhile, in 1937, Bell had offered the Army Air Corps a single-seater design with the engine placed behind the pilot, and contracts followed for the widely used P-39 Airacobra. The company began to benefit almost at once from both the British need for planes and from President Roosevelt's expansion of the air corps - in 1939 Bell had 100 employees; by 1944, there were 55, 000 employees at five Bell plants. During World War II, the P-39 was followed by the similar P-63. Bell also took over Boeing B-29 production contracts and turned out a bomber a day for 663 consecutive days at the Marietta, Georgia, plant. To meet a threatened shortage of aluminum, Woods and his team designed the XP-77 fighter plane made almost entirely of molded Sitka spruce plywood. Late in the war Bell developed the pioneer jet fighter, the P-59 Airacomet.
In addition to supervising the company's wartime activities, Bell served as president of the National Aircraft War Production Council and on the Aircraft War Production Council, East Coast, Incorporated. Through these organizations he was instrumental in arranging for the exchange or transfer of key personnel to help speed production. In 1944 he was awarded the Daniel Guggenheim Memorial Medal for "achievement in design and construction of military aircraft and for outstanding contributions to the methods of production. " After the war he was honored by the American Legion for his work in hiring the handicapped, who made up 5. 5 percent of his work force in 1951.
Bell was always looking to the future. In 1941 he brought a young Princeton graduate with twelve years' helicopter experience into the firm, setting him up in a workshop well removed from the company's activities so that he would not be interrupted. The idea paid off handsomely, after Bell himself had devoted many hours to working with him, and in March 1946 Bell was awarded the first commercial license for helicopters by the Civil Aeronautics Board. Two years later the X-1 experimental plane was awarded the Collier Trophy, and in 1953 the X-1A raised the world's speed record from 967 to 1, 650 miles per hour. Earlier, Bell had directed his engineers to investigate remote control as a way of saving the lives of test pilots, and this led the company to guided missiles.
In the early 1950's subcontract work for the B-47 and B-36 was moved from the main plant to Tonawanda, New York, and the helicopter division was relocated to Fort Worth, Texas. The move enabled the Buffalo headquarters to concentrate on guided missiles, a natural fusion of the remote control, supersonics, and rocketry in which Bell had become a leader. One of his bold moves in this connection had been to hire Walter Dornberger, the German general who had managed the Peenemünde experimental facilities where the V-2 rocket was developed. By 1952 Bell systems were being used to guide the weapons of other makers as well. By 1955 Bell was also engaged in VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) designs and was a leader in maintaining American technical superiority over the Russians.
Motivated as much by dreams of flying as by profits, Bell assembled a team of engineers and analysts who could turn his ideas into hardware. The strain, however, provoked intermittent ulcer attacks. In 1954 he turned over the general management of the company to Leston P. Faneuf, after having suffered a mild heart attack the previous year. He resigned the presidency on September 18, 1956, but remained chairman of the board. He died in Buffalo, New York. In 1960 the defense business of Bell Aircraft was acquired by Textron, and three operating divisions were established: Bell Aerospace Textron, Buffalo; Bell Helicopter Textron, Fort Worth, Texas; and the Hydraulic Research Division, Valencia, California.
Lawrence Bell was an aerospace pioneer who founded Bell Aircraft Corporation in 1935. In 1939 his company had 100 employees, by 1944, there were 55, 000 employees at five Bell plants. Bell Aircraft's most famous models: the P-39 "Airacobra", P-63 "Kingcobra", P-59 "Airacomet" (the first jet-powered aircraft), the X-1 (the first aircraft to break the sound barrier in level flight). The latter was awarded the Collier Trophy. John Bell also served as president of the National Aircraft War Production Council and on the Aircraft War Production Council, East Coast, Incorporated. Bell was awarded the Daniel Guggenheim Memorial Medal (1944) for "achievement in design and construction of military aircraft and for outstanding contributions to the methods of production. " Bell was posthumously inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame (1977), the Army Aviation Hall of Fame (1986), and the International Aerospace Hall of Fame (2004).
On July 17, 1915, Bell married Lucille Mainwaring. They had no children.
