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General Dynamics Corporation (GD) is an American publicly traded, aerospace and defense corporation headquartered in Reston, Virginia. As of 2020, it was the fifth-largest defense contractor in the world by arms sales, and 5th largest in the United States by total sales. The company is a Fortune 100 company, and was ranked No. 94 in 2022.

Formed in 1954 with the merger of submarine manufacturer Electric Boat and aircraft manufacturer Canadair, the corporation today consists of ten subsidiary companies with operations in 45 countries. The company's products include Gulfstream business jets, Virginia- and Columbia-class nuclear-powered submarines, Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers, M1 Abrams tanks and Stryker armored fighting vehicles.

In 2021, General Dynamics had worldwide sales of $38.85 billion and a workforce of approximately 103,000 full-time employees. The current chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) is Phebe Novakovic.

History

Electric Boat

General Dynamics traces its ancestry to John Philip Holland's Holland Torpedo Boat Company. In 1899, Isaac Rice bought the company from Holland and renamed it Electric Boat Company. Electric Boat was responsible for developing the U.S. Navy's first modern submarines which were purchased by the Navy in 1900.

In 1906, Electric Boat subcontracted submarine construction to the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts, to build the submarines they had designed and won contracts for. Between 1917 and 1924, the company was named Submarine Boat Corporation. In 1933 Electric Boat acquired ownership of a shipyard in Groton, Connecticut, to build submarines. The first submarine built in Groton to be delivered to the U.S. Navy was the USS ''Cuttlefish'' in 1934.

Electric Boat was cash-flush but lacking in work following World War II, during which it produced 80 submarines for the Navy, with its workforce shrinking from 13,000 to 4,000 by 1946. President and chief executive officer John Jay Hopkins started looking for companies that would fit into Electric Boat's market in hopes of diversifying.

Canadair purchase

Canadair was owned by the Canadian government and was suffering from the same post-war malaise as Electric Boat. It was up for sale, and Hopkins bought the company for $10 million in 1946. The factory alone was worth more than $22 million, according to the Canadian government's calculations, excluding the value of the remaining contracts for planes or spare parts. However, Canadair's production line and inventory systems were in disorder when Electric Boat purchased the company. Hopkins hired Canadian-born mass-production specialist H. Oliver West to take over the president's role and return Canadair to profitability. Shortly after the takeover, Canadair began delivering its new Canadair North Star (a version of the Douglas DC-4) and was able to deliver aircraft to Trans-Canada Airlines, Canadian Pacific Airlines, and British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) well in advance of their contracted delivery times.

Defense spending increased with the onset of the Cold War, and Canadair went on to win many Canadian military contracts for the Royal Canadian Air Force and became a major aerospace company. These included Canadair CT-133 Silver Star trainer, the Canadair Argus long-range maritime reconnaissance and transport aircraft, and the Canadair F-86 ''Sabre''. Between 1950 and 1958, 1,815 Sabres were built. Canadair also produced 200 CF-104 Starfighter supersonic fighter aircraft, a license-built version of the Lockheed F-104.

In 1976, General Dynamics sold Canadair to the Canadian Government for $38 million. Canadair was acquired by Bombardier Inc. in 1986.

General Dynamics emerges

Aircraft production became increasingly important at Canadair, and Hopkins argued that the name "Electric Boat" was no longer appropriate—so Electric Boat was reorganized as General Dynamics on 24 April 1952.

General Dynamics purchased Convair from the Atlas Group in March 1953. The sale was approved by government oversight with the provision that GD would continue to operate out of Air Force Plant 4 in Fort Worth, Texas. This factory had been set up in order to spread out strategic aircraft production and rented to Convair during the war to produce B-24 Liberator bombers.

General Dynamics purchased Liquid Carbonic Corporation in September 1957 and controlled it as a wholly owned subsidiary until being forced by a Federal antitrust ruling to spin it off to shareholders in January 1969. Liquid Carbonic was then bought that same month by the Houston Natural Gas Company.

Convair worked as an independent division under the General Dynamics umbrella. Over the next decade, the company introduced the F-106 Delta Dart Interceptor, the B-58 Hustler