Few aviation ‘firsts’ survive scrutiny without an earlier example turning up–often in a bizarre context. A case in point is the J.V. Martin ‘Kitten.’ A remarkable collection of innovative concepts were combined in an airplane that was fundamentally unsound for its avowed purpose.

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When the United States entered World War I on April 8, 1917, the U.S. Army Air Service (USAAS) had a lot of technological catching up to do. Airplanes were scarce. Aircraft that could compete over the Western Front were nonexistent. A crash program commenced to mobilize an air arm, both by copying or modifying proven foreign designs and by creating original warplanes.

Amid the flurry of activity, a unique airplane emerged that proved to be in a class by itself. Late in 1918, former merchant marine officer Captain James V. Martin unveiled what he described as a ‘high-altitude fighter.’ Powered by an A.B.C. Gnat engine with two horizontally opposed cylinders generating a puny 45 hp, the little machine was designated the K.III by its creator. But it was also known as the Martin Kitten, a term that gives some insight into what might have inspired Martin to come up with such an unlikely contraption.

At the end of 1916, the British were trying a number of methods for combating the German zeppelins that had been bombing their cities. Hoping to intercept the enemy airships before they could reach England’s shores, the Admiralty set about designing a small fighter capable of taking off from flight platforms mounted on the gun turrets of battleships and cruisers, or even from warships as small as torpedo boats. Toward that end, two different aircraft emerged, from the Royal Naval Air Service Experimental Construction Depot (ECD) at Port Victoria and from the Experimental Flight at Eastchurch. Both were diminutive, lightweight planes, each powered by 35-hp A.B.C. Gnats and armed with a single Lewis machine gun.

The ECD’s design, the P.V.7, was also referred to as the Grain Kitten because of its diminutive size and the fact that it was test-flown from the Isle of Grain. The Experimental Flight’s P.V.8 Eastchurch Kitten was tested at Martlesham Heath. Both the P.V.7 and P.V.8 were flown in October 1917, and both were rejected. Zeppelins were no longer a serious threat by then, and heavier-than-air bombers such as the Gotha G.IV and Zeppelin-Staaken R.VI were taking their place in the skies over Britain.

On March 13, 1918, an official instruction arrived at the Isle of Grain. It called for the P.V.8 Eastchurch Kitten to be dismantled and shipped to the United States for evaluation. There is no confirmation that it was ever sent across the Atlantic, but evidently some Americans had taken an interest in the ultralight interceptor. James V. Martin was one of them.

Little is actually known about Martin’s background, other than that he served as a merchant ship’s captain for about two years prior to tinkering with flight. In 1916, he applied to the United States Patent Office for, among other things, a retractable landing gear mechanism and a K-shaped interplane strut. He talked his way into a job at McCook Airfield early in 1918, but he is alleged to have distinguished himself there mainly by his maliciousness and dishonesty.

The basic concept behind Martin’s Kitten was clearly the same as that of its British counterparts–a small, lightweight, low-powered airship interceptor. In contrast to the structurally conventional Grain and Eastchurch Kittens, however, Martin got somewhat more creative with the K.III–most notably by giving it semiretractable landing gear.

Retractable landing gear was by no means unheard of in World War I. In 1916, a German designer, Oskar Ursinus, designed an experimental seaplane fighter whose twin floats could be drawn up flush with the bottom of the fuselage. The U.S. Patent Office recorded its first application for a retracting mechanism on November 3, 1911, from one F. McCarroll. His patent, issued on November 7, 1915, was the first of a dozen such patents issued between 1911 and November 1918.

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