Linden Blue

Linden Stanley Blue (born 1936) is an American aviation executive.

He is the co-owner and vice chairman of General Atomics, the U.S. military contractor that manufactures the Predator drones used by the United States Marine Corps, Air Force, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

He is also the managing director of the aircraft manufacturer Spectrum Aeronautical.

Blue was born in 1936 in Meeker, CO.

Blue's father was James Elliot Blue, a real-estate developer.

Blue's mother was Virginia Neal Blue, the first female treasurer of the state of Colorado.

His parents owned Blue and Blue Realtor in Denver, a residential real-estate firm.

The family moved from Meeker to Denver when Blue was three, but during his childhood the boy spent part of every summer in Meeker.

"Shortly after the end of World War II,” he later recalled, "the city fathers of Meeker decided they needed an airport.

My grandfather was a member of the Lions Club; they took on the project of clearing a mesa right outside of the city for the first airport in Meeker". This project, which took place "when he was about 8", sparked his lifelong interest in aviation.

Blue and his brother, Neal, who is a year older, graduated from Denver's East High and Yale University, where they were both in the Air Force ROTC.

He earned his private pilot's license on 17 December 1955.

They became known as the "Flying Blue Brothers" and received extensive attention in the U.S. media, making the cover of LIFE magazine on 8 April 1957.

The next year, the brothers started a banana and cacao plantation in Nicaragua in partnership with the family of former President Anastasio Somoza.

He earned his BA from Yale University in 1958, and attended the six-week Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.

An engine failure while flying a single-engine Stinson Voyager over the jungles of Honduras in 1958 made Blue a believer in twin-engine aircraft.

Both the Spectrum S-40 Freedom and Spectrum S-33 Independence are designed to be twin-engine aircraft.

He belonged to the Yale Aviation Club.

He and his brother flew around the U.S. and then flew around Latin America and the Caribbean.

In 1961, during a flight from Nicaragua, he was forced to land in Havana, Cuba and was jailed for 12 days, just prior to the Bay of Pigs invasion.

In 1961, he joined the Strategic Air Command; his brother joined the Air Transport Command.

Linden served for three years as a SAC security officer, stationed in Denver.

After completing his term of service, he and his brother entered the commercial real estate business in Denver with Colorado and Western Properties (C&W).

William Mathews White Jr. sold his entire holdings in Great Western United to C&W on the day he was forced to resign from his company in September 1971.

White Jr. had spent the previous few years turning a pair of flour and sugar companies into a conglomerate, bringing in land marketing companies, Shakey's Pizza, and more.

After the stock deal, James Neal and C&W's Arthur T. Cowperthwaite were then elected to the Great Western board.

By February 1972 White amended the statement, indicating he had sold just under half of his shares, but both James Neal and Cowperthwaite would remain on the board.

Forming the Cordillera Corporation, Blue and his brother branched out "into construction, and then ranching and some natural resources—oil and gas", he later explained.

Blue serves as chairman of the executive committee of the Denver-based firm, which specializes in real estate, gas utilities, and oil and gas production.

Entering politics, Blue was elected Denver councilman at large, serving in that position for four years.

Blue then attended Harvard Business School, where he completed a 13-week advanced management program.

In 1975 Blue was hired by Gates Learjet, where he first worked as head of strategic planning, then as executive vice president and general manager of the aircraft division.

He later ran the avionics division as well.

He stayed at Gates Learjet until 1980, influencing the firm "to be more aggressive in product development and to create higher performance aircraft through aerodynamics".

In the mid-1980s, he and his brother acquired what is now known as the Rocky Mountain jetCenter Network.

Blue was president and CEO of Beech from 1982 to 1984.

While at Beech, he became a director of Raytheon, but left that firm because of "a major disagreement" over the construction of a new airplane model.

In 1986, Blue and his brother Neal Blue purchased General Atomics, a San Diego-based nuclear physics and defense contractor that had been founded by General Dynamics in 1955 "for the purpose of harnessing the power of nuclear technologies for the benefit of mankind".

General Dynamics had then sold the firm to Gulf.

Since 1986, Linden Blue has been vice chairman of General Atomics.