Great Lakes Aircraft Company

The Great Lakes Aircraft Company was an aircraft manufacturer which came into being in October 1928, after the Glenn L. Martin Company relocated from Cleveland, Ohio to Baltimore, Maryland. The new company purchased Martin's former Cleveland factory, inheriting with it production jigs for Martin's T4M torpedo bomber; because of this, when the Navy decided that it needed additional examples of this type, it ordered them from Great Lakes, as the Great Lakes TG. The company went on to develop a biplane dive bomber (the BG) for the Navy, but is best remembered for a series of sport and aerobatic planes developed for the civilian market, most notably the 2T-1A Sport Trainer.

The original company did not last long, folding in 1935 after failing to gain further military contracts, and after seeing the private plane market collapse because of the Great Depression. However, interest in its sport and aerobatic planes has continued through the years, and since the 1960s several companies have placed variants of these Great Lakes types back in production for fairly brief periods.