Allan Haines Lockheed (né Allan Haines Loughead; January 20, 1889 – May 26, 1969) was an American aviation engineer and businessman. He formed the Alco Hydro-Aeroplane Company along with his brother, Malcolm Loughead, which became Lockheed Corporation.
Loughead legally changed his name in 1934 to Allan Lockheed, the phonetic spelling of his family name, to avoid spelling confusion. He went on to form two other aircraft manufacturing companies in the 1930s, both of which were unsuccessful. After World War II, he continued his career as a real estate salesman while occasionally serving as an aviation consultant. Allan Lockheed kept an informal relationship with the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation until his death in 1969 in Tucson, Arizona.
Early life
Allan Loughead was born in Niles, California, in 1889, the youngest son of Flora and John Loughead. He had a half-brother Victor, a sister Hope, and a brother Malcolm Loughead.
Flora Haines Loughead was a well-known novelist and journalist. After separating from her husband, Flora took the children to Santa Barbara, California, where the brothers experimented with kites. Later, Flora moved them to a fruit ranch near Alma, California, where the brothers became interested in the gliding experiments of Professor John J. Montgomery. The Loughead brothers attended elementary school only, but were mechanically inclined from an early age.
Victor Loughead, who was interested in automobiles and airplanes, moved to Chicago, where he became associated with James E. Plew, an automobile dealer. There, in 1909, Victor wrote a book, Vehicles of the Air, which became a popular treatise on aircraft design and aviation history. In 1904, Malcolm became a mechanic with the White Steam Car Company in San Francisco.
Allan Loughead went to San Francisco in 1906 where he became a mechanic at $6 a week ($ in 2020 dollars). By 1909, he was driving race cars.
Early experience with aviation
In Chicago, Victor Loughead convinced Plew to acquire rights to one of the Montgomery's gliders and to buy a Curtiss pusher biplane. Plew hired Allan Loughead to convert the Montgomery glider to a powered aircraft. When Allan left for Chicago, he said, "I expect to see the time when aviation will be the safest means of transportation at 40 to 50 miles per hour, and the cheapest, and I'm not going to have long white whiskers when that happens. The airplane will take over both land and water travel. Flying has no barriers."
Allan and Malcolm Loughead installed a 2-cylinder, 12 hp motor on the Montgomery glider with Victor as engineer. Allan Loughead's first flight was in Chicago in 1910 when he climbed aboard a home-made aircraft and operated its ailerons while its builder, George Gates, operated the rudder and elevators.
When two of Plew's trained pilots could not get the Curtiss airborne, Allan said: "I've got a $20 gold piece that says I'll make it fly, and I'm offering three-to-one odds! Any takers?" There being none, he got the airplane airborne on his second try. Later he said of this flight, "It was partly nerve, partly confidence and partly damn foolishness. But now I was an aviator!" The Curtis pusher was powered by a 30 H.P. engine.
When Plew withdrew from aviation after two of his planes were wrecked and a student killed, Loughead became a flight instructor with the International Aeroplane Manufacturing Company in Chicago, and put on aerial exhibitions for 25% of the gate receipts. Later he said: "I was really rich the first week out. I made something like $850." During an exhibition at Hoopeston, Illinois, his rain-soaked airplane failed to climb enough and was entangled in telephone wires. At that point, he decided to build a better aircraft so he could collect all of the gate receipts.
Alco Hydro-Aeroplane Company
Loughead returned to San Francisco in 1912 and went to work as an auto mechanic. There, he and his brother Malcolm spent their spare time building a three-place seaplane to operate from San Francisco Bay. They constantly ran out of money until they convinced Max Mamlock of the Alco Cab Company to invest $4,000 in the plane. Finally, after 18 months, their Model G was christened the ALCO NO. 1 in 1913, and Allan Loughead made a successful flight in it from the waters of the Golden Gate entrance to San Francisco Bay.
That first flight was on June 15, 1913. The flight reached an altitude of 300 feet and a speed of 60 miles per hour. Allan then returned to take Malcolm for a ride. The Model G made three flights that day.