Word: swirbul
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Like many another airframe maker, Grumman diversified into such strange lines as aluminum canoes and dinghies. To help pay the overhead, "Jake" Swirbul snared contracts to overhaul Navy planes and to service foreign airlines planes. For the civilian airplane market, Grumman's Widgeon amphibians were refitted for executive use, and Grumman began making its fast, versatile Mallards and the Albatross, an air-sea rescue plane. Swirbul's tactics succeeded in keeping the company narrowly in the black. By 1948 Chairman...
...into combat in Korea) by means of its "accordion plan." To keep capacity flexible without big capital outlays, this plan called for subcontracting wing panels, tail surfaces and other smaller parts to outsiders, not only for Panthers but also for the Cougar, a swept-wing Panther. Thus, Swirbul has kept his work force down to 11,800-less than half Grumman's wartime peak, although his order backlog has soared to roughly $900 million. (In 1952's first six months Grumman made $2.2 million...
...longer runways for jets at the Bethpage plant. Owners of new houses, who had crowded as close as 50 ft. to Grumman's runways, began objecting to the roar of jets. Navy brass was all for moving Grumman to a less crowded and less vulnerable inland site. But Swirbul persuaded the Navy to build Grumman a $22 million plant and test field on 4,500 acres 50 miles farther out on Long Island. There Grumman may build a successor to its Cougar, a new FioF jet fighter, now being tested at Edwards Air Force Base (Muroc), Calif. Says Swirbul...