Allen Paulson

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Allen Eugene Paulson (April 22, 1922 – July 19, 2000) was an American businessman.

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Business career in aviation

Allen E. Paulson, a native of Clinton, Iowa, was on his own at age 13, selling newspapers and doing janitorial service at a local hotel until he moved to California in 1937. To pay his way into college, he worked on a dairy farm. After graduating high school in 1941, he began working as an entry-level mechanic for TWA. He served in the United States Army Air Corps from 1943 to 1946 and spent a year studying engineering at the University of West Virginia. After the war, he returned to TWA, this time as a flight engineer, and obtained his pilot's license from his GI Bill. He then began flying for TWA for the first time. He began flying to Chicago to buy cars that he drove back to California to sell using his TWA travel privileges. He had a van and was transporting a number of cars on every trip by the time.

In 1951, he left TWA to create his own business, first purchasing surplus Wright R-3350 engines from Boeing B-29s and selling the parts to airlines. He purchased his first plane for resale in 1955, stripping the aircraft for parts and scrapping the rest, then rebuilding one aircraft for resale from the parts of several. He bought three Convair 240s, and Western Airlines had changed to Lockheed Electras. He later acquired all of Martin 404s in TWA. He also sold those, 240s and Convair 340s for business planes.

His company, the California Airmotive Corp., became one of the world's biggest manufacturers of secondhand aircraft (especially secondhand airliners). At one time, he had 35 Lockheed Constellations, 22 Douglas DC-6s and DC-7s, and four other airliners in storage at Fox Field in Lancaster, California, 1970/71, not to mention other aircraft at other airfields such as Burbank.

West Coast Airmotive Corporation was a subsidiary company of West Coast Airmotive Corporation in the early 1960s. Allen Paulson inherited the Pacific Airmotive Corp. at Burbank and began converting various forms of passenger transportation to freighters. Several Lockheed Constellations were rebuilt by Paulson's company and converted to freighter aircraft. In 1973, California Airmotive was renamed American Jet Industries.

Clay Lacy and his friend Clay Lacy competed in the California 1000 Mile Air Race at Mojave in November 1970. The plane, branded "Super Snoopy," took sixth place in a field of twenty, but had 1,500 gallons of fuel remaining at the end. During the competition, one writer noticed that the DC-7 flew lower than some of the single-engined aircraft, that it flew quicker and made better pylon turns than a competing Douglas A-26 Invader. At an average speed of 344.08 mph, a Hawker Sea Fury won the race in 2 hours 52 minutes and 38 seconds. When a second 1000-mile race was scheduled for Brown Field, California, in July 1971, the Paulson teamed with Lockheed test pilot Herman "Fish" Salmon and launched Lockheed N9723C, which also appeared in Qantas as VH-EAP "Southern Zephyr," while Clay Lacy entered "Super Snoopy." The "Red Baron" was a contender for the race, rounding the pylons at 200 feet. The other pilots registered in the competition had a meeting the night before the race and told Darryl Greenamyer, who was in charge of the race arrangements, that if the two major planes attended, they would not be allowed to participate, so the two planes were withdrawn.

Paulson began to build the American Jet Hustler, a single runway plane with a propeller in front for short runway use, and a jet in back for high-altitude cruising in 1970. The design was a pressurized business plane with a Pratt & Whitney PT6 in the nose and a Standby Teledyne Continental turbine unit in the tail. The plane first flew on January 11, 1978, but not much production was ever built.

He acquired the opportunity to purchase the Grumman American plants and offices from Grumman for $52 million in 1978, founding the Gulfstream American Corporation. He acquired Rockwell International's aviation division in Oklahoma in 1982 and integrated it with Gulfstream American to create Gulfstream Aerospace. Paulson converted the company into the world's biggest private jet manufacturer. Annual sales soared to $1 billion. He sold the company to Chrysler for $637 million in June 1985. In 1989, he was given the Clarence E. Page Memorial Trophy from the Oklahoma Air and Space Hall of Fame. Paulson bought all 25 million shares of Gulfstream's common stock from Chrysler in 1990, with the help of Forstmann Little & Company, an investment of $825 million. Paulson announced his retirement in January 1992 and Forstmann Little bought the company.

In 1990, Paulson and a Gulfstream flight crew set 35 world records for a around-the-world flight in a Gulfstream IV plane. He earned the Harmon Trophy in 1987 as the world's best aviator, and the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame in 1992 inducted him into the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame. Allen E. Paulson has received numerous honors during his lifetime, including five honorary doctorates, the National Business Aviation Association's Meritorious Service to Aviation Award, and the American Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award.

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