TBM

TBM may refer to:

Music and entertainment:

Grumman TBF Avenger

The Grumman TBF Avenger (designated TBM for aircraft manufactured by General Motors) was an American torpedo bomber developed initially for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, and eventually used by several air and naval aviation services around the world.

The Avenger entered U.S. service in 1942, and first saw action during the Battle of Midway. Despite the loss of five of the six Avengers on its combat debut, it survived in service to become one of the outstanding torpedo bombers of World War II. Greatly modified after the war, it remained in use until the 1960s.

Design and development

The Douglas' TBD Devastator, the U.S. Navy's main torpedo bomber introduced in 1935, was obsolete by 1939. Bids were accepted from several companies, but Grumman's TBF design was selected as the replacement for the TBD and in April 1940 two prototypes were ordered by the Navy. Designed by Leroy Grumman, the first prototype was called the XTBF-1. It was first flown on 7 August 1941. Although one of the first two prototypes crashed near Brentwood, New York, rapid production continued.

SOCATA TBM

The SOCATA TBM 700 (also marketed as the TBM 850 and Daher TBM 900) is a high performance single-engine turboprop light business and utility aircraft manufactured by DAHER-SOCATA. An aerodynamically refined version of the 700N is marketed as the TBM 900 from March 2014.

Design and development

In the early 1980s, the Mooney Airplane Company of Kerrville, Texas designed a six-seat pressurised light aircraft powered by a single 360 hp (268 kW) piston engine, the Mooney 301, which made its maiden flight on 7 April 1983. Mooney was purchased by French owners in 1985, which resulted in talks between Mooney and the French company SOCATA to build a turboprop derivative of the 301. The result of these discussions was the TBM 700, which was much heavier than the 301 with more than twice the power, with a joint venture, TBM International, being set up in June 1987 between Mooney and Socata's parent company Aérospatiale to design and build the new aircraft. In the designation TBM, "TB" stands for Tarbes, the city in France in which Socata is located, the "M" stands for Mooney.