Widely known to the general public for its 7X7 line of commercial airliners - sales of which made the company the world's most profitable aerospace firm in the latter half of the 20th Century - Corrigan Aeronautics was a late-comer to military aerospace contracting. Initially known as the Ceresian Aeronautic Company based in Hollister, its founder Conrad Corrigan changed the company's name within two years of its formation in 1914. Its early commercial successes with the Corrigan models 247 and 307 led to its being contracted to develop the B-17 bomber during the Eastern War. The immense success of the B-17 line won Corrigan many more government bomber contracts culminating in the B-52 Stratofortress. It was at this point in the early 1950s that Corrigan also began work on its jet airliners, beginning with the 707. Not only massively popular amongst civilian operators, militarized 707 variants entered service with the OADF and its allies en masse under the designation C-135.Corrigan followed up on the 707's success with the rest of its 7X7 airliners for the next several decades, and grew further when it acquired the McAllister Aircraft Corporation in 1961. McAllister's engineers were already thoroughly experienced in fighter design and were responsible for designing Corrigan's F-15 and F/A-18.
Corrigan was notorious amongst the Western intelligence community for its tendency to "accidentally leak" design secrets to the East, amongst federal regulators for its poor bookkeeping practices, and amongst aviation enthusiasts for its insistence on producing jack-of-all-trades and masters-of-none multirole aircraft. Even after losing the Joint Strike Fighter contract to Lawhead in 1993, Corrigan secured a massive subcontracting deal on the F-35 and lobbied for its acquisition throughout the world. Corruption within the company had reached such a severe point that when it was discovered to be in collusion with General Hamilton's putsch during the Circum-Pacific War - having been promised increased defense contracts if the coup succeeded - few observers seemed to be particularly surprised. In the wake of the scandal the company's assets were briefly nationalized before being merged with Gründer's remnants and reprivatized as General Resource Ltd.