AM-1 Martin Mauler

 A good friend passed a many years ago was a young ensign.  His name was Bruce Fraites. Bruce flew Mauler out of NAS Grosse Isle. Later he flew S2F's.   Also Bruce was avid modeller belonging to the IPMS.  Bruce and his friend John Macalla where alway found together.  John being younger than Bruce would always check out models to see if they where correct.   Great pair of modellers who knew how to have a good time.

Martin AM-1 Mauler, Bu.No. 22275. This particular static display aircraft served at Naval Air Stations Jacksonville, St. Louis, and was at NATC (Naval Air Test Center )at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland in 1947. It was at the U.S. Army’s Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland where it was used for weapons testing. It was then donated to Bradley Air Museum in Windsor Locks, Connecticut in 1979. In 1990, it was acquired to be part of the Erickson Aircraft Collection now at the Madras Municipal Airfield in Oregon. It is painted with the "4 Aces" nose art of VA-84 (Attack Squadron), a short-lived U.S. Navy attack squadron (15 Sep 1948 – 29 Nov 1949) assigned to Carrier Air Group 8 (CVG-8) that received two AM-1 aircraft in November 1948. (As a side note, during World War II, the Madras airfield was a U.S. Army Air Corps base for training air crews of B-17's, P-38's and P-39's - I have an album about it - and the North Hangar is on the National Register of Historic Places). My photos.

It can be said that the U.S. Navy had made a clear distinction between the types of carrier-borne bombers it deployed: the torpedo bomber (designed to attack targets by releasing torpedos from low altitude) and the dive bomber (designed to deliver a bomb starting from high altitude, descending quickly and fitted with dive brakes). As WWII progressed, the Navy asked for proposals for a new multi-purpose bomber. By 1943, aircraft design and tactics had improved (and by the time the Helldiver A-25 "Shrike" variant was deployed in late 1943, the Army Air Forces concluded it no longer had a need for a thoroughbred dive bomber, and the poor handling of the aircraft resulted in both the British Royal Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force cancelling substantial orders; and keep in mind that by by 1938, Germany had deployed the Ju-87C variant of its "Stuka" as a combined torpedo and dive bomber). As a result, four new design concepts were offered by 1944: the Curtiss XBTC-1/2, Douglas XBT2D-1 (Model 96, which became the production A-1 Skyraider), Kaiser-Fleetwings XBTK-1, and the Martin XBTM-1 ("BT" being the Navy's Bomber-Torpedo designation and "M for the Glenn L. Martin Company). Due to the US Navy's concern that the Curtiss-Wright design was overly complex and that the company's production record was considered suspect during its prior SB2C Helldiver development phase (the Truman Committee - formally known as the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program - a United States Congressional investigative body formed in 1941 and headed by then Senator Harry S. Truman - investigated Helldiver production and turned in a report in the summer of 1943 revealing that the production plant at Lockland, Ohio of Wright Aeronautical Corp. (a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Curtiss-Wright company) had been supplying defective aircraft engines to the U.S. Army Air Forces; the charges included conspiracy and collusion with USAAF inspectors and in the end, three officers, Lt. Col. Frank C. Greulich, Major Walter A. Ryan, and Major William Bruckmann were relieved of duty and later convicted of neglect of duty - this scandal became an inspiration for playwright Arthur Miller’s play "All My Sons"). On May 31, 1944, the Navy instructed the Glenn L. Martin Company to also provide a prototype back-up so-called "unexperimental" design to the Curtiss design (designated Model 210) that would be a reliable airframe for the Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major that was fitted to both the Curtiss XBTC-1/2 and Martin XBTM-1 aircraft. The first XBTM-1 flew on August 26, 1944 piloted by Oliver E. "Pat" Tibbs, Martin's Chief Test Pilot (and the 210 shortly thereafter). After testing at the Naval Air Test Center beginning in December, the Navy ordered 750 aircraft by January of 1945 which number was reduced to 99 as the war came to an end in August 1945. In 1946, the XBTM-1 aircraft designation was changed to AM-1 when the Navy changed its 1942-45 aircraft "Bomber-Torpedo" designation with Attack." Delivery of AM-1 Maulers began in July of 1947, there were numerous design problems that included structural weakness in the rear fuselage section, vibrations in the tail when engaging the arresting wire and tail hooks damaging the rear fuselage, and the cockpit design proved unsatisfactory and was redesigned. As a result of all the design deficiencies, the Mauler did not enter service until March 1948 when they began carrier qualification trials with VA-17A aboard USS Kearsarge (CV/CVA/CVS-33) of the U.S. Navy's Atlantic Fleet. Sixteen AM-1Q variants for electronic countermeasures (ECM) duties were built, with the fuselage fuel tank removed to make room for the ECM operator and his equipment. Nicknamed "Able Mable" for its load-carrying capabilities (Pat Tibbs once carried a record 10,648 lbs. of ordnance in April 1949) and also the "Awful Monster" because of its maintenance problems and tendency to bounce on carrier-landings. The Mauler served aboard several U.S. Navy carriers until 1950 (the Douglas Skyraider became the preferred airframe as it proved to be more reliable in service and easier to fly and land). The Mauler then only served from shore-based squadrons until 1953, and later that year none but Naval Reserve units such as Glenview and Norfolk Naval Air Stations operated the aircraft into the mid-1950's. Powerplant: Pratt & Whitney four-row 28-cylinder R-4360 Wasp Major "corncob" engine. Armament: four 20 mm Hispano-Suiza cannons; twelve 5-inch rockets; and was cleared to carry drop bombs and torpedoes. The large dive breaks, when closed, can be used as landing flaps, or can be split up and down, with its alternating, inter-meshing fingers acting as dive breaks. They have double coats of Zinc Chromate (the U.S. Navy issued a 1942 memo to the effect that a second coat of Zinc Chromate contain Indian Red or Lamp Black to indicate that a second coat had been applied). Out of 151 production aircraft built between 1945-49, only four complete airframes are listed in various online records as still in existence in one state of repair or another (as far as I know there is a fifth partial airframe in storage and I have read there may be another in Brazil but is unconfirmed).