What We Make Martin-Baker America manufactures warplane ejection seat components, crashworthy helicopter seats

Mar. 12—Editor's note: What We Make and Evolving Enterprise, a bi-weekly series, will spotlight innovative and dynamic companies driving the local economy through manufacturing and distribution, technology development and education, all while connecting our region to the world.

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — What Martin-Baker America makes today in Johnstown originates with a tragic failure in England during World War II.

The company was originally an aircraft builder, co-founded in 1934 by friends Sir James Martin and Capt. Valentine Baker.

Martin was an Irish engineer. Baker served in all three of the British Armed Forces during World War I. In addition to co-founding Martin-Baker Aircraft Co., Baker was also its test pilot.

In Berkshire in 1942, with World War II well underway and air raids of England by Germany intensifying, Baker took a test flight of a Martin-Baker war plane prototype.

The engine seized and Baker was forced to conduct an emergency landing, but his aircraft struck a hay pile, cartwheeled through a hedge, and he was killed.

"His partner's death inspired Sir James to develop the ejection seat," Martin-Baker America Vice President and General Manager Matt Johnson said. "He walked away from aircraft production and decided to produce the ejection seat. He kept the Baker name in the company name."

Across the Atlantic Ocean, nearly 60 years years later, the city of Johnstown was working on its own identity shift, from a struggling former powerhouse of steel production to a national defense manufacturing hub.

The city's senior representative in the U.S. Congress, U.S. Rep. John Murtha, showed the Martin family that Johnstown was ideal for the company's expansion into the America.

"Murtha demonstrated to the Martin family that there were hard-working folks here and a competitive labor wage can be had in Johnstown," Johnson said.

For the past 20 years, a couple hundred employees at Martin-Baker America, 169 Jari Drive, Richland Township, have been producing aluminum rail systems for Martin-Baker ejection seats that equip NATO countries' aircraft fleets. The Johnstown site also produces crashworthy military helicopter seats at a pace of about 100 a month, as well as servicing hundreds of parts sent from customers' fleets monthly.

The seat ejects straight up into the air, launched by the explosion of a rocket motor under it. The rails that guide the seat upon ejection are manufactured from aluminum bars stacked in Martin-Baker America's sprawling facility. Those rails are sent to the parent company in England, which produces the ejection seats.

"When it comes to ejection seat work, Martin-Baker wants to keep all the core technology there in the United Kingdom because all of the engineering is done there, so they really want to keep that central to themselves," Johnson said.

However, crashworthy helicopter seats are wholly made at the Johnstown location.

"The government has recognized us as our own entity here in the United States with all of our crashworthy helicopter products," Johnson said.

In total, about 170 people are employed by Martin-Baker America in Johnstown, including assemblers, machinists, sewing machine operators, manufacturing engineers, quality engineers and contract representatives.

Jack Rovan, Martin-Baker America manufacturing manager, was among the first four employees hired when the company opened in 2001.

Rovan was born and raised in Johnstown, earned a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, married after graduation, but moved to New York after the 1977 Johnstown flood. Wanting to return to western Pennsylvania, he moved to Pittsburgh in 1998. But when Martin-Baker landed in Johnstown, he had a reason to move back home.

The company has increased its capabilities over time, he said.

"When I was hired, the intent was we were only going to be doing assembly here," he said. "But then, what we found out was we needed things painted and couldn't find anyone who could do the quality of painting we wanted to have done, so we put a painting operation in. The same thing happened with sewing, heat-treating, tube-bending, machining. We kept expanding into different areas."

In 2009, Rovan's son, Duke Rovan, joined the company and is currently a senior manufacturing engineer.

"Although I could retire, I enjoy working, and seeing my son at work every day is nice, too," Jack Rovan said.

Martin-Baker America is a family-run business and has a family-run feel, said Johnson, a Johnstown native who joined the company among the first 30 employees in 2001.

"Most of the employees all know each other by a first-name basis," he said. "For as large as it's become, it's sort of a small hometown environment. The Martin family is British, but we've been able to maintain the small business feel. They visit Johnstown. We see them at trade shows."

Multi-year U.S. military and NATO programs requiring helicopter seats and fighter jet ejection seats provide long-term work that keeps Martin-Baker America stable, Johnson said.

However, the U.S. Army's Black Hawk helicopters, which require Martin-Baker's helicopter seats, will taper off over the next six years.

"But the exciting part is we have an opportunity to compete for the new helicopter that will replace it," Johnson said. "So we are a strong favorite. The Army would like to maintain commonality with seats they have from the Black Hawk in the next generation."

Martin Baker has about 70% of the free world's ejection seat market, he said. The company's competitors include East/West Industries in New York, Britain- based BAE systems, and the Iowa-based Rockwell Collins aerospace company.

"So we have to maintain all the seats that are already in existing fleets," he said. "That's another large part of what we do here. At specified intervals, they'll send us seats for refurbishment."

Martin-Baker's products saved many lives since the death of Baker. In fact, the company has kept count: its seats have saved more than 7,600 lives since 1949, it asserts.

The Martin-Baker America site in Johnstown has become an integral part of that mission.

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