T. Claude Ryan and Ryan Aircraft

  In 1922, T. Claude Ryan, at the age of 24, started a flying service in San Diego that grew into Ryan Airlines.  Ryan Airlines was the nation’s first year-round regularly scheduled, daily passenger airline.  In 1926 he started designing and building his own airplanes.  When he got into financial trouble, he sold out to his partner B.F. Mahoney, and stayed working as the manager.  Shortly after, they were contracted to build a modified version of their M-2 mail plane for Charles Lindbergh, which was named the “Spirit of St. Louis.”    T. Claude Ryan incorporated his Ryan School of Aeronautics in 1931 and built his headquarters and manufacturing plant at the new Lindbergh Field airport in 1932.   The name changed to the Ryan Aeronautical Company in 1934 and designed the Ryan Sport Trainer (Ryan ST), and went on to build military aircraft in World War II.    During the war, Ryan also built over a thousand PT-22 military trainer aircraft which were used by the Army Air Corps for primary pilot training.

  After the war, Ryan designed and built a number of experimental and research aircraft; and entered the missile and unmanned aircraft fields.  They developed the Ryan Firebee unmanned target drone, and the Ryan Firebird was the first American air-to-air missile.  In 1968, Ryan was acquired by Teledyne and a year later it became a wholly owned subsidiary as Teledyne Ryan.  T. Claude Ryan retired as chairman when it was acquired by Teledyne.  Teledyne Ryan rolled out the first Global Hawk for testing in February 1997.   Two years later, Northrop Grumman purchased Teledyne Ryan and today most of the former Ryan programs are within the Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems operations which are located in the Rancho Bernardo community of San Diego.