Eastern Aircraft Division
The division comprised five plants on the East Coast of the United States, which, since the declaration of war in December 1941, had had to cease production of automobiles or car components.
The Navy[note 2]assigned Eastern Aircraft the code M, so the F4F Wildcat fighter became the FM, and the TBF Avenger torpedo bomber became the TBM.
During the years preceding the declaration of war, Congress voted several massive increases in the size of the American armed forces.
On August 16, 1940, for example, the Two-Ocean Navy Act authorized construction of eight Essex-class aircraft carriers, the first of which was - at that time - scheduled to enter service in 1944.
Grumman - and the Navy - therefore turned to other manufacturers, including General Motors (GM), which was looking for work for its idle automobile plants.
During a subsequent meeting, the Linden representative realized, to his great surprise, that it wasn't just a question of supplying components or sub-assemblies, but of manufacturing the whole aircraft!
A second surprise came up later: in subsequent contacts, the initial request changed again, with the idea now being to manufacture not just one, but two aircraft: the Avenger and the Wildcat !
The materials - and therefore the assembly and welding techniques - were also different: mild steel for car bodies, duralumin, aluminum alloys and chromium-molybdenum for aircraft.
In addition, equipment such as radios, flight instruments, self-protected fuel tanks, armor and weapons were highly specific.
By the end of 1942, for example, the Eastern Aircraft division employed 22,848 people, double the maximum workforce of the five plants prior to its creation.
[14] Training courses were also organized with other manufacturers, as in the case of the Baltimore employees who went to Goodyear (also a Grumman subcontractor) to learn how to cover flight controls with fabric.
[18] In fact, as the two ranges evolved, Eastern took full responsibility for industrialization and aircraft production, with Grumman content to develop prototypes.
The most notable difference was the return, starting with the eleventh model produced, to a battery of four 50-caliber (12.7 mm) machine guns (instead of six), as insisted upon by American pilots.
Although the Avenger was less used as a torpedo bomber towards the end of the war, it remained widely used for horizontal or glide bombing and for anti-submarine patrols - on both fleet and escort carriers.
[22] Production ceased definitively in September 1945, but the TBM-3 and TBM-3E versions served as the basis for numerous variants subsequently developed by Grumman: TBM-3R, -3S, -3W etc.
It appears to be a development of the FM, equipped with a more powerful XR-1820-70 engine, a bubble canopy and - according to some of the few drawings available - a different, wing-mounted landing gear.
[note 10] To replace the Wildcat and Hellcat, Grumman developed the F8F Bearcat, a lighter fighter powered by a Pratt & Whitney R-2800 engine, for which the company received its first order of 2,000 in 1944.
On February 5, 1945, Eastern also received an initial order for the parallel production of 1,876 examples of its own version, called the F3M-1, at its Linden plant.
The timetable for the end of activity of the division and its factories is not known[note 11] Even on the scale of the emergency programs put in place during the war, Eastern's creation and subsequent rise to prominence, as well as the volume of production generated in two and a half years, are impressive : Eastern produced 25% of the total number of carrier-based combat aircraft delivered by the United States to the Allied navies during the conflict, including 76% of all torpedo planes and 18% of all fighters.
