The Bendix works at war — the South Bend production record

1929 – 1945

What South Bend made: The Bendix company of this record — founded in South Bend in 1924 on brakes, its founder's starter drive manufactured for it from 1914 by the Eclipse Machine Company of Elmira, New York — turned to aviation in 1929 and took the name Bendix Aviation Corporation, a holding company built over Delco Aviation, Eclipse, the Stromberg Carburetor Company and other accessory makers. The inventions and patents are carried in the Inventors & Inventions section; the company's officers in Founders & CEOs. What belongs here is the production geography, and The History Museum's account of it, given to the South Bend Tribune in 2026, is specific: from South Bend, Bendix was a critical supplier of automotive components — brakes, carburetors, starters — and of aviation equipment including aviation instruments, radio transmitters, landing gear and receivers; and before the war, in the museum's deputy director's words, airplane parts were not even ten percent of what Bendix was making. The works' own two hands — hydraulics, brakes and landing gear — are the part of the aviation record that the curator of the National Museum of Military Vehicles assigns wholly to Bendix: "when talking about instrumentation, when talking about hydraulics and brakes and landing gears, all of those things 100% can be laid at the feet of Bendix." Studebaker built the B-17's engines here; Bendix, in the same account's summary, made "all the parts to keep it in the air and land it when it gets to the ground."

The war scale, dated: Unlike Studebaker, Bendix did not have to convert: it made more of what it already made, for government and civilian buyers both. During the war the South Bend plant added over 10,000 employees and 700,000 square feet, on the museum's account. The corporation as a whole ranked 17th among United States corporations in the value of its wartime production contracts, on the standard company record. The company's own 1941 annual report carried the boast the museum still quotes — "every plane in the air, every ship at sea and almost all mechanized equipment is in one way or another Bendix-equipped" — and it is printed here as what it is, a company's annual-report sentence, not a measurement. Two boundaries stand in this entry. The pressure carburetor that, in the standard company record, "dominated the market during World War II" was a Stromberg product, and Stromberg's works stood at Elmira; and in 1951 Bendix outgrew South Bend and built its second, larger plant in Mishawaka — a separate city's ground, whose Bendix missile work of the following decade is Mishawaka's record and is boundary-printed in this build's Military section, not absorbed here.

Sources:

1. South Bend Tribune, "169 years of South Bend military vehicle production aided U.S. success" (3 September 2026) — The History Museum's Kristie Erickson and the National Museum of Military Vehicles' Rae Whitley: the South Bend product list (brakes, carburetors, starters, aviation instruments, radio transmitters, landing gear, receivers); airplane parts under ten percent of pre-war output; over 10,000 employees and 700,000 square feet added in the war; the 1941 annual-report sentence quoted as the company's own.
2. Bendix Corporation, standard company record (Britannica; International Directory of Company Histories) — the 1924 South Bend founding; the 1928 Eclipse control; the 1929 turn to aviation and the Bendix Aviation name; ranked 17th among U.S. corporations in value of wartime production contracts; the second, larger plant at Mishawaka in 1951.