Postwar
In the immediate postwar years, Ryan diversified, including even building coffins for a short period. It bought the rights to the Navion light aircraft from North American Aviation in 1947, selling it to both military and civilian customers.
Ryan became involved in the missile and unmanned aircraft fields, developing the Ryan Firebee unmanned target drone, the Ryan Firebird (the first air-to-air missile) among others, as well as a number of experimental and research aircraft.
Ryan acquired a 50% stake in Continental Motors Corporation, the aircraft-engine builder, in 1965.
In the 1950s, Ryan was a pioneer in jet vertical flight with the X-13 Vertijet, a tail sitting jet with a delta wing which was not used in production designs. In the early 1960s, Ryan built the XV-5 Vertifan for the U.S. Army, which used wing and nose mounted lift vanes for V/STOL vertical flight. It was flown, crashed after ingesting a test rescue dummy in its fans, and was not made into a production aircraft. Other Ryan V/STOL designs included the VZ-3 Vertiplane and the YO-51 Dragonfly.
In 1966/67, Ryan was awarded the contract to build the digital Doppler radar system installed aboard the Apollo Lunar Lander.
In 1968 the company was acquired by Teledyne for $128 million and a year later became a wholly owned subsidiary of that company as Teledyne Ryan. Claude Ryan retired as chairman with the Teledyne purchase.
Northrop Grumman purchased Teledyne Ryan in 1999, with the products continuing to form the core of that firm's unmanned aerial vehicle efforts.
Read more about this topic: Ryan Aeronautical
Famous quotes containing the word postwar:
“Fashions change, and with the new psychoanalytical perspective of the postwar period [WWII], child rearing became enshrined as the special responsibility of mothers ... any shortcoming in adult life was now seen as rooted in the failure of mothering during childhood.”
—Sylvia Ann Hewitt (20th century)