When Thomas V. Jones took control of Northrop in 1960, it was a secondary aerospace company whose future was uncertain, but the gambles Mr. Jones made over the next 30 years swept the company to the top ranks of the defense industry during the Cold War.

He came from an era when the chiefs of U.S. aerospace companies laid huge bets on future projects, and over a three-decade tenure as Northrops chief executive, he made some of the biggest of any company, winning big and losing big.

Early in his career, he championed the modest T-38 trainer jet and transformed it into a low-cost fighter that Northrop exported to U.S. allies. It became the Volkswagen Beetle of jet fighters, with 3,789 of them used by countries far and wide, from Norway to Turkey and from Chile to Sudan. Early jets cost only $750,000, and their simplicity made them the weapon of choice for nations that wanted an air force but could not afford front-line weapons.

In the process, Mr. Jones hobnobbed with European royalty, befriended the shah of Iran and was close to air force chiefs in nations including West Germany and Argentina. On many weekends, he hosted elaborate parties with a long list of foreign dignitaries at his mansion in Bel Air, Calif. He courted the politically powerful, including President Ronald Reagan and the influential widow of Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese general who lost the civil war against the communists.

After stepping down as chief executive of Northrop Grumman in 1990, he became a respected maker of fine wines from his vineyard on his 16-acre Los Angeles estate. Mr. Jones died there Jan. 7 of pulmonary fibrosis, said his son, Peter. He was 93.

Thomas Jones somehow survived an astonishing succession of personal controversies that accompanied his long tenure.

There was his felony conviction for illegal campaign contributions to President Richard M. Nixon, a securities consent decree that stemmed from allegations that he paid foreign bribes to sell jet fighters and even a censure from his own board of directors for concocting an unusual hotel investment in South Korea that backfired into a political scandal.

When he stepped down in 1990, the company was under a federal indictment alleging the false testing of a nuclear armed cruise missile.

In an era when the Defense Department increasingly controlled its suppliers and their products, Mr. Jones attempted to exercise the vision of earlier aerospace pioneers, who would develop their own technology and then try to interest the military in it.

Northrop invested heavily in exotic guidance systems, pioneering the concept of a gyroscopic ball that could float inside a fluid-filled sphere.

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Thomas V. Jones, Northrop CEO, dies at 93