Jensen, Martin, 1900-1992.

Martin Jensen was a pioneer aviator. He was born in 1900 in Jamestown, Kansas. He joined the U.S. Navy in World War I and after the war was a barnstormer and stunt pilot, crossing the country in a biplane that he designed. In 1924, he established the Jensen Flying School at Dutch Flats Airport in San Diego. In 1925, he completed a coast-to-coast flight in an OX-5 Jenny. He placed second in the 1927 Dole Trans-Pacific Air Race, a race from Oakland to Honolulu in which ten pilots died. He piloted the Aloha, an airplane designed by Vance Breese in San Francisco. In the same year he transported the MGM Studios lion, Leo the Lion, in a specially built Ryan airplane. The publicity flight was to go from California to New York, but Jensen crashed in a remote area in Arizona. He was unhurt and the lion was transported to New York by truck. Jensen developed the Jensen trainer for his own Jensen Aircraft Corporation, which he lost in the stock market crash in 1929. After that he was Dean of Aviation and taught aeronautics at Beckley College in Pennsylvania, and he also did show flying for the "New York Daily News" and Tidewater Oil Company. In 1935, he joined Langley Aircraft as first vice president. He worked on the design of a plastic molding known as the Langley Process. In 1940 he went to work for Vincent Bendix at the Bendix Aviation Corporation. In 1944, Vincent Bendix established Bendix Helicopters. As a Bendix designer, Martin Jensen devised the Bendix Model J single-seat helicopter, which used a system of coaxial rotors driven by a 450hp Pratt & Whitney R-985 piston engine. In 1951, he joined Douglas Aircraft. He retired in the mid-1960s in the San Diego area. During his retired years, he spent considerable time researching aircraft wing designs. Jensen died in San Diego on February 8, 1992.

From the guide to the Martin Jensen Papers, 1927-1990, (University of Wyoming. American Heritage Center.)