The United Aircraft Corporation was an American aircraft manufacturer formed by the break-up of United Aircraft and Transport Corporation in 1934. In 1975, the company became United Technologies, which in 2020 merged with Raytheon to form Raytheon Technologies, later renamed RTX Corporation.

History

Pre-1930s

1930s

The Air Mail scandal of the early 1930s resulted in a rebuilt air mail system, under the Air Mail Act of 1934, in which carriers and their equipment manufacturers (e.g., of airframes and engines) could no longer be owned by the same company. The United Aircraft and Transport Corporation was broken up on September 26, 1934, as a result of this new law. The corporation's airline interests went on to become United Airlines. Its manufacturing interests east of the Mississippi River—Pratt & Whitney, Chance Vought, and Sikorsky—remained together as the new United Aircraft Corporation, headquartered in Hartford with Frederick Rentschler, founder of Pratt & Whitney, as president. All manufacturing interests west of the Mississippi became part of a revived Boeing Aircraft.

The latter half of the 1930s saw military procurement buildups around the world as governments foresaw possible war on the horizon. United Aircraft sold to both the United States Army and the United States Navy, but the Navy's requirements for carrier-based aircraft, with maximized power-to-weight ratios for minimized takeoff runway length, were always more in tune with the specialties of United's subsidiaries (Pratt & Whitney, Chance Vought, and Sikorsky). The U.S. government encouraged corporations to build up their physical plant, but the corporations knew that there would be a postwar glut of overcapacity if they did so. In many cases a compromise was reached in which the government paid partially or fully for the expansions in the form of tax breaks and accelerated depreciation. At the close of the war, jet engines and helicopters were both big new things whose coming growth many companies hoped to get in on. United Aircraft entered both industries, via Pratt & Whitney and Sikorsky, respectively. Leaving behind a tradition of mating airframes to particular engines (which linked the profitability of an airframe model to that of its exclusive engine supplier), the airframe builders began offering multiple brands of engines. Producers had to compete on service, warranties, and eventually even by buying entire aircraft and then leasing them to the airlines.

Business units

  • Chance Vought — spun-off in 1954
  • Hamilton Standard
  • Norden Systems — established 1958
  • Pratt & Whitney
  • Pratt & Whitney Canada
  • Sikorsky Aircraft

References

Footnotes

Notes

Bibliography

  • UTC−United Technologies Corporation website