Martin Mars Miscellanea

A couple months back the New York Times wrote an article about the Martin Mars, the largest flying boat ever built. I found it particularly interesting because my grandfather helped design the plane while working as an engineer for Martin during World War II. I remember him showing me pictures of the plane back at his house in Mystic, CT.

Strangely enough, my dad just sent me some neat TIFF files with this description:

You might find these interesting, I scanned the originals which I've had in the safe. In stamp collecting these are referred to as "First Flight Covers", the word "cover" in this case refers to the envelope. They commemorate the first flight of a particular airplane or new route. Pan Am was big in this back in the '30s. These two covers are quite rare in that there were only 3 or 4 of these planes ever built. They just retired the only two in active service this year, they were used for fighting fires in the Pacific NorthWest.

One has the signatures of the pilot and copilot, the pilot is mentioned in the article. The other was mailed to your great grandparents with the note and newspaper clippings. Dad was working for the Glenn L. Martin company in Baltimore at the time. A little family history...

This all took place in late 1941...

Perhaps I'm the only person that would find this cool, but just in case...


This is a letter sent by my grandfather to his parents, I'm not sure if this was the letter sent on the first flight of the Martin Mars or if this was a letter letting them know that a letter would be sent on the first flight of the Martin Mars. The most interesting thing to me though is that my Grandpa addressed his parents as "Folks".

Kinda neat that this is a collectors item. But more importantly, my great grandmother's name was E. Field Worsley? Totally random. I had know idea. Awesome name.

A newspaper clipping from 1941. Look at the beautiful design! So art deco, and they probably never even realized it. They were building a war plane and yet it's strikingly elegant.


The attached story. Note that the first attempted flight of the plane ended with a propeller breaking loose causing one of the 2,000 horsepower engines to be ripped from the nacelle. And I thought "nacelle" was just a term from Star Trek. Also, it's fun reading articles from this era because everyone sounds like they're talking in a Noir film. "Listen here, see! This ship is invincible, see! Nothing can stop it. You don't know who your mess'in with, kid!"

Cheers, Grandpa.