The Bell Bomber Plant: A Chronology & Image-Based History Trip

[As of 7.7.22] 80-Min Total Read Time.

Please note this is a non-revenue generating, personal blog and not a commercial endeavor. So, it has not been professionally edited and you may find typo’s and grammatical errors, never mind potential minor errors with dates, numbers and the like. Please feel free to let me know of any and I’ll fix them. The images and quoted material contained herein is, in many cases, from copyrighted sources, but is done so under the legal, Fair Use Doctrine.

Introduction & Overview

This past March I decided to re-direct my interests and writing energy to something more productive, essentially local history beginning with how Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park came to be in April, and by March was digging-into and writing A Chronological History of Marietta, Cobb County & The State of Georgia. And, earlier this month I created a virtual, photo-based walk around the Marietta Square, adjacent streets and a few other areas of interest that provides images of what Marietta looks like today, and back in time using historic photos entitled, Marietta, Georgia: A Photo Compilation of “Now & Then”.

However, it was impossible to study the history of Cobb County and Marietta without taking time to learn more about Air Force Plant 6 (originally Government Aircraft Plant 6) and Dobbins Air Reserve Base (originally Rickenbacker Field). The history of the airfield and plant is directly tied to several key individuals involved in local politics during the 1930’s, who successfully secured support and funding for both the airfield and the plant in the early 1940’s. The two, parallel programs brought much-needed, new work on two major construction and associated infrastructure projects, as well as a huge boost in the local economy and commerce from the thousands of men and women who built the airfield and plant, and then the tens-of-thousands of people who worked at the Bell Aircraft Corporation leased and operated plant during World War II, from 1943 through 1945.

Perhaps even more important has been the subsequent, re-opening of Air Force Plant 6 in 1951 by the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. Unlike its first life that only created a three-year injection of economic growth and prosperity to the local community, under what is now the Lockheed Martin Corporation’s Aeronautics business area’s site at Air Force Plant 6 in Marietta, Georgia, the plant has remained in continuous operation for 71-years and been an important part and partner to Cobb County and the City of Marietta for all of those years.

Having worked at Lockheed from 1984 through 2018, and at the Marietta plant from 1991 until I retired in 2018, I knew quite a bit about the history of the F-22 and C-130, as they were both programs I worked-on in a program management capacity. However, once I started to dig-into the history of the plant, I realized just how much I didn’t know or appreciate about it, or even many of the aircraft that were produced at Air Force Plant 6 by both Bell and Lockheed.

Therefore, this is the product of that research, something I took on as a personal project in my spare time over the course of the past two-weeks, and as a follow-on to the aforementioned virtual, photo-based walk around Marietta, Georgia using historic photos. My goal was to try and capture in an internet-enabled, visual history trip with historic photos from the past, some married with more current images of the same places and buildings, to create an interesting, enjoyable and attention-holding retrospective on “The Bell Bomber Plant” as it’s always been known. And, it was hard to not include information regarding the amazing aircraft built at the plant since 1943 by tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people who have worked at the plant over all of those years, and who might want to either revisit the history they helped create, or learn the history they never knew.

The format I’ve used is intended to be both read and viewed, as there is a lot of written material here — 26976 words — but also a lot of images — over 350 — I’ve tried to arrange in subject-specific collections that have their own story to tell. Therefore, the history I’ve compiled can be read and viewed in part or its entirety, or simply looked-through using the images to tell the story, as most have detailed descriptions that explain what viewers are seeing. I’ve also included a hyper-linked index so readers can jump to sections or subjects that are of most interest, eliminating the need to scroll through all of the words and images to find the content that’s most interesting to them.

So, with that, here is my retrospective, chronology and image-based history trip.

Index of Featured Areas / Photos: Click on Links to Jump to Section

A Chronological Recap of the Origins of Marietta Airfield & Government Aircraft Plant 6

During 1933 – 1940, attorney James V. Carmichael, born and raised in Cobb County, Georgia, forms a legal practice with future Marietta Mayor Leon “Rip” Blair. He also runs unopposed and serves two-terms in the Georgia legislature, establishing himself as a key member of the Cobb County business and political community.

1942 photo with McMillan (2nd from Left). Carmichael, and Blair (4th & 5th from left)

In 1940, Carmichael, then the Cobb County Attorney, his legal partner and now Marietta Mayor Blair, as well as former Cobb County Sheriff and then Cobb County Commissioner, George McMillan teamed-up to gain support from Marietta native and then U.S. Army Air Corps Major Lucius Clay, for a new airfield in Marietta.

  • Major Clay was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in September to head up the Civil Aviation Administration’s (CAA) expansion of U.S. airfields as the U.S. prepared for potentially going to war.
  • Carmichael’s group successfully secured support, government approval and CAA funding to establish and build a civil airfield at Marietta, initially to be called Rickenbacker Field. The approved plan to build the airfield was announced in October 1940.

In 1942, following the attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into World War II, Carmichael’s group leveraged the recently approved, future airfield and secured the government’s acquisition of additional land and construction of Government Aircraft Plant 6 at Marietta, to be used for co-production of Boeing B-29 Superfortresses by the Bell Aircraft Corporation.

  • The selection of Marietta for Government Aircraft Plant 6 was announced on 19 February, and construction of the Government Aircraft Plant 6, as well as what would now be Marietta Army Airfield, both began in March, with ground-breaking at the Government Aircraft Plant on 30 March 1942. Although construction began at what would now be Marietta Army Airfield in 1942, its official ground-breaking ceremony took place in May 1942, with Captain Rickenbacker present.
James Carmichael with cane to right of CEO Larry Bell and Marietta Mayor Blair

Also in 1942, Bell Aircraft Corporation CEO, Larry Bell, appointed Carmichael who was just in his early 30’s at the time as chief legal counsel for Bell’s Georgia Division. He would later be named as Bell Aircraft’s Georgia Division vice president and general manager in 1944.

In 1943, Government Aircraft Plant 6 was completed on 15 April, and the renamed Marietta Army Airfield was completed on 6 June.

In 1945, following Japans surrender in August, production of B-29s at Government Aircraft Plant 6 and the Bell Georgia Division was halted in September, with surplus materials being dispositioned and residual tooling and equipment stored in Building B-1.

Timeline for Marietta Army Airfield and Government Aircraft Plant 6

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Resources: More about the Bell Bomber Plant History

For those who don’t have a lot of time to read this blog, or who prefer to get their information via video, the following image is linked to a movie produced by Bell Aircraft in 1944 that provides a good overview of the Bell Bomber Plant history and many of the things covered in my photo collection and comments.

The following are great resources for the full history of the Bell Bomber Plant and Government Aircraft Plant 6, built back in 1942 and 1943 when Bell Aircraft Corporation produced 668 B-29 Superfortress bombers under license from the Boeing Aircraft Corporation. And, in so doing, gave an immediate infusion of much needed life to the city of Marietta and Cobb County, which were still trying to gain their footing following the Great Depression of the 1930’s that had been exceptionally hard on small communities in the south.

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Construction: Building Government Aircraft Plant 6

And, so it begins: building Government Aircraft Plant 6, aka, The Bell Bomber Plant. The objective is to raze farm fields and the small, low-income, rural community of Jonesville that sat south of Marietta into an airfield and Air Force Production Plant to be leased and operated by the Bell Aircraft Corp. producing B-29’s under license from Boeing during World War II.
The blank sheet of paper, farmland and the small community of Jonesville located just south of Marietta’s center city & Cobb County’s seat of government that became Marietta Army Airfield and Government Aircraft Plant 6. This was, in no small part, due to Marietta being the home town of U.S Army Air Corps General Lucius Clay, who held key positions in the Army Air Corps during and after World War II, and just happened to be the son of Senator Alexander Stephens Clay of Georgia. Bear in mind, the contract to build Government Aircraft Plant 6 was awarded in February 1942, ground was broken on 30 March 1942, and the plant opened on 15 April 1943, noting the airfield’s approval only preceded the approval to building Government Aircraft Plant 6 by a few months and their major construction under two different funding sources and agencies ran essentially in parallel.

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The 1906 Big Lake Dam at Fourth Street

As an interesting bit of local history, the Big Lake Dam that had supplied water to businesses in Marietta from 1906 until the 1920’s was, and still is on Dobbins Air Reserve Base property, not Air Force Plant 6. However, given the Rickenbacker / Marietta Army Airfield project was directly associated with the creation of Air Force Plant 6, I’ve decided to include the mention and photos.

This was something I discovered through Facebook postings on a personal FB page that’s since been commercialized. The discovery was somewhat surprising, as having worked at Air Force Plant 6 in different roles that enabled me to cover a lot of ground at both the plant and Dobbins, I did not know this particular “lake’s” tie-in with Marietta, or the background of the dam. It’s somewhat hidden, just south of Atlantic Avenue on 4th Street at the Dobbins ITT/Landing and Recreation Area, has a fascinating history, and is just southeast of where the Jonesville Cemetery is located.

From other sources: “This straight-crested gravity storage dam demonstrates an early use of concrete construction in Georgia and is perhaps the earliest identified concrete dam in the state. The dam measures some 550′ in length, making it one of the longest dams in the state as well. The dam and the lake it impounds were built to provide water to the city of Marietta and water and power to the Marietta Paper Manufacturing Company, an entity owned by the dam’s builder (Densmore), Glover Tannery, Georgia Manufacturing & Public Service Company.

The dam and reservoir operated for less than 20 years and only provided water to the city of Marietta for about three years. The standpipes, pumps, underground pipes, associated machinery, and plant in Marietta no longer survive. Big Lake Dam and Big Lake are a rare example in Georgia of a fairly large-scale water impoundment facility constructed for a small municipality.“

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Site Work

Site work on the massive, main assembly building begins with survey markers being installed, more grading and then excavation of the underground network of tunnels / fall-out shelters and below-ground work spaces begins. A total of 8 million cubic yards of earth were moved, with hills and valleys leveled in the process. A lot of dynamite had to be used when excavating the tunnels and, as a former friend at Lockheed reminded-me, when they were adding under-ground utilities to support the F-22 production area at the southwest corner of building B-1 in the 1990’s or early 2000 years,they found unexploded dynamite charges from the 1940’s while they were doing so: a definite surprise.

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Excavating & Creating the Sub-Level & Tunnels

Work on the tunnels and below-ground work spaces begins in earnest. Take note that the lighting poles run west to east across the B-1 main assembly building project. The small white diamonds highlight Kennesaw Mountain to the Northwest.
With the primary excavation work complete, the tunnels and below-ground work spaces are formed-in and built using concrete-reinforced steel rebar, along with the foundations for the massive, reinforced concrete basement columns that will support the main production floor and steel superstructure for the above-ground walls and roof. 45 acres of concrete were used.

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Enclosing 3.2 million square feet 

Putting up the steel skeleton… the first steel support was erected September 1, 1942, By November 1942., looking from the southwest corner of the B-1 main assembly building. A total of 32,000 tons of steel were used; however, steel shortages caused the original roof to be made out of wood, replaced in 1964 with a metal roof, coated with tar and gravel, as originally intended. A 1,000-foot ramp from the hilltop parking lot to the roof was built to facilitate the movement of new roofing materials and removal of the old roofing using specially designed tractors, farm wagons, and a 7-ton forklift. It required approximately 26 trips per day to move the 10 million pounds of decking and 4.5 million gallons of asphalt used to cover the roof, while work continued below in the assembly building with no delays during the 17-month project.
Fully-enclosed, with utilities installed and now engaged in the early stages of installing tooling for the B-29 Superfortress on the main assembly building’s all-wood floor. The wood block floors were an amazing alternative to the harsh and unforgiving concrete that sat a mere 2-inches below the 10’s of thousands wooden blocks dipped in creosote and oil that are clearly visible in the photos when they are enlarged to full-size.

The wood block flooring helped to prevent back problems among workers who spent prolonged hours standing at their work stations, and also allowed for easier relocation and movement of equipment. It was a standard feature on all of the Government Aircraft Plants built during the 1940‘s, e.g., Government Aircraft Plant 1 at Offutt AFB, Nebraska (the Glenn Martin Plant), Government Aircraft Plant 2 at Fairfax Airfield near Kansas City, Kansas (the North American Aviation Plant), Government Aircraft Plant 3 at Tulsa, Oklahoma (the Douglas Aircraft Plant), Government Aircraft Plant 4 at Carswell AFB, Texas (the Consolidated Aircraft Plant & now headquarters for Lockheed Martin Aeronautics), Government Aircraft Plant 5 at Tinker AFB near Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (also a Douglas Aircraft Plant), and many others.

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The Finished Factory: 1943 vs 2022 Aerial Views

At left, and looking northwest with Kennesaw Mountain in the distance, is how the original Government Aircraft Plant 6 looked just after being completed and opened on 15 April 1943, adjacent to the runway at recently renamed Marietta Army Airfield in the early 1940’s. The airfield was renamed Marietta Air Force Base in 1948, and then renamed again in 1950, to Dobbins AFB. At right is how Air Force Plant 6 looks today, nearly 80-years later, noting it too was renamed in 1956 after the USAF was established as its own U.S. military department in 1947.
The aerial photo at left was taken around the same time, but looking to the southwest.
This aerial photo at left was taken also shortly after the plant was finished, but looking to the southeast with Marietta Army Airfield and its runways clearly visible. One of the biggest clues that all three photos were not taken at the same time is the number of vehicles sitting in the B-1 parking lot at the time the photos were taken.

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Marietta Army Airfield: Timing’s Everything

Looking to the northwest, Marietta Army Airfield is clearly visible with its three paved runways, as well as the aircraft parking ramp & hangars just to the east of the runways in this photo. Government Aircraft Plant 6 sits well up and to the northwest of the runways and Marietta Army Airfield, linked to the runways by a long, downward sloping taxiway at the west end of the main runway.
The North-South and Northwest-Southeast runways are no longer in use and, in fact, what was the south end of the North-South runway became the aircraft parking-ramp & taxiway for production flight operations hangars. It is now surrounded by other facilities on land acquired by Lockheed, adjacent to government property many years ago, known as the “South Campus” of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, something that didn’t exist when Government Aircraft Plant 6 and the Marietta Army Airfield were built. The same is true for the Northwest-Southeast runway that was converted into a parking ramp and used for other purposes by U.S. military tenents at Dobbins AFB.

For those who don’t know the full history of Dobbins Air Force Base and the runway it shares with Air Force Plant 6, it too is somewhat interesting. When Bell and then Lockheed were leasing Air Force Plant 6 to support exclusively U.S. government contracts associated with building or refurbishing the B-29 and, later, the B-47 and C-130 aircraft, it seemed to make sense since there was a purely government propriety to the partnership. However, since the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, when the Georgia Division of Lockheed Aircraft Corporation began to produce commercial aircraft at the Marietta plant, first with the L-329 and L-1329 JetStar executive aircraft, and then the L-100 commercial variant of the C-130, the lawyers and accountants had to sort it all out in dual-use agreements. But I digress…

A very detailed history of what is now Dobbins Air Reserve Base can be found on Wikipedia that’s worth a read, as it’s quite revealing with regard to how political and economic leverage play into government investment and development of installations. In fact, a total of 85 different types of “Air Force Plants” were established since the first, Government Aircraft Plant 1 at Offutt Air Field in 1940, which also required the construction of both the Glenn L. Martin bomber plant and a runway.

However, getting back to Government Aircraft Plant 6, in September 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt tapped U.S Army Air Corps General Lucius Clay to head an emergency airport-construction program, under the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA), to prepare the country for possible war. Over the next fifteen months, General Clay shaped plans for construction of over 450 new airstrips, including one in Marietta that was envisioned as handling overflow of commercial traffic for Atlanta’s Candler field but, local officials who were close to General Clay, were clearly aware of the potential for the field to convert to military use in the event of war.

In less than a month after General Clay assumed his role, the CAA offered to fund and build the airport in Cobb County if the local governments provided the land, and by the end of October 1940, Cobb County announced the airport project. By May 1941, Cobb County issued bonds to purchase 563 acres along the new four-lane U.S. Highway 41, linking Marietta with Atlanta, and the CAA allocated $400,000 for construction of two 4,000-foot (1,200 m)-long runways. The bid for construction of the runways was well-below the government’s estimated and budgeted cost and allowed the CAA to add a third runway to the project. Surveying, detailed planning and site work began on 14 July 1941, and in August Gulf Oil Corporation and Georgia Air Services agreed to lease the airport, once completed, for $12,000 per year. In September 1941, retired Army Air Corp Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, then the president and general manager of Eastern Airlines, agreed to have this airport named Rickenbacker Field in his honor, and the U.S. Navy requested permission to use this airport for the flight training of Naval aviators. In October, Georgia Air Services signed a $70,000 contract for two 180×160-ft. airplane hangars to be built. Although far from complete, the airfield was dedicated in October 1941.

B-29s sitting on the Marietta Army Airfield parking ramp to the east of the runways, just west of U.S. Highway 41 when the U.S. Army Air Corps was conducting flight acceptance testing of Bell-built B-29 Superfortresses

On January 23, 1942, the Bell Aircraft Company and the Department of War announced an aircraft factory employing up to 40,000 workers would be built near Marietta. On February 19th, a subsequent announcement advised “Rickenbacker Field” would be renamed the Marietta Army Airfield, with the CAA-funded runway construction beginning in March 1942, its official ground-breaking ceremony took place in May 1942, with Captain Rickenbacker present. The Marietta Army Airfield was activated on June 6, 1943, with the assigned mission of conducting acceptance testing of B-29 Superfortress’ produced by the Bell Aircraft Company at Government Aircraft Plant 6.

Same general area on Dobbins ARB aircraft parking ramp as shown above as it looks today.

The airfield was renamed Dobbins Air Force Base in 1950, in honor of a local Marietta aviator who lost his life in World War II. In 1955, the U.S. Navy finally firmed-up plans to establish a Naval Air Station at Marietta Army Airfield and Congress appropriated $4-million dollars to fund the lengthening of the runways to meet their needs, remembering the original, three runways cost only $400,000 in 1941. In 1957, Naval Air Station Atlanta at the present-day Peachtree-DeKalb Airport, was relocated to new facilities on land southwest and adjacent to the Dobbins AFB runway, and the runway expansion was completed in 1959.

A satellite image can tell you quite a bit how things can change from hour-to-hour, or over decades. This comparison clearly shows how much the runways alone have changed from 1943 until today, as the North-South runway has been lost to time and become merely a parking ramp used by Lockheed, while the northwest to southeast runway had a similar fate and goes almost unused. The now 10,000-foot main runway is also obvious when you compare the 80-year-old overhead photo with how the runways looked just after being completed in the early 1940s. As for the south campus… there wasn’t one. But, by the 1960’s it had been developed, with the L-10 building and Low Speed Wind Tunnel both being built in 1967, well after the north-south runway had become additional parking ramp space with several hangars.

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Government Aircraft Plant 6: Five Buildings & 4.2 Million Square Feet

Building B-2: Administration

The highly-integrated, B-2 administration operations buildings have become a mere shadow of themselves over time, abandoned and razed in 2007 a piece at a time after becoming structurally unstable after nearly 60 years. Only the middle, central sections of the B-2 buildings remain, supporting an alternate, south main building entry where the original main entry and lobby were once located, “legacy hall” with a small company store near the entrance to the main, and the North Campus cafeteria that supports the line-workers who still do final assembly work in the B-1 main assembly building on the C-130 Hercules and F-35 Center Wing Segments were still in use when I was last there in June 2018.
These are photos of the building B-2 main entry & lobby in the 1950’s, after Lockheed Aircraft Corporation’s Georgia Division re-opened the plant to support refurbishment of B-29 Superfortresses for the Korean conflict, production of the Boeing B-47 Stratojet bomber under license to Boeing, and fabrication, and production of the Lockheed designed C-130 Hercules.
Again, after most of the building was razed around or shortly after 2008, what remains of building B-2 is a mere shadow of the immense engineering, administration and executive offices that were located to the south of and linked-to the B-1 main assembly building and functioned as the main, visitor entrance to the plant.
Air Force Plant 6’s main entrance has since been moved to the north side of Building B-95, a building added to the northwest corner of Air Force Plant 6 likely during the C-141 andn early C-5 yeras that now houses the U.S. Government’s Defense Contract Management Agency along with Lockheed Martin Aeronautics business area’s Marietta, Georgia site executive offices and other administrative functions.

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Building B-1: Main Assembly

Now nearly 80-years old, those who have worked at “the bomber plant” easily recognize these buildings first occupied in 1943. Note that the B-1 main assembly building was originally designed to support assembly flow of the B-29 Superfortress from west-to-east, and there were no doors on the west end of the massive hangar. Hanger doors were added to the west end of the building in the 1950’s to support the B-47 Stratojet final assembly line that was set-up to run east-to-west with the C-130 line, although the C-130 final assembly line eventually ran from west-to-east, rolling out of the original hangar doors used by the B-29’s… as best as I can tell just looking at the photos.

With regard to its size, from Jeffery Holland’s book, Under One Roof – The Story of Air Force Plant 6:

The 3.2-million square foot B-1 main assembly building was designed with two parallel final assembly lines, each a half-mile long. It is 20,000 feet long, by 1,024 feet wide and 45 feet (four-and-a-half stories) tall with widely-spaced interior supports due to the wingspan of the B-29 bombers.

Construction of the steel superstructure began on September 1, 1942, and ultimately some 43 acres of concrete and 28,000 tons of steel were used. To address the risk associated with a potential, nighttime air raid, B-1 was a “blackout” facility with no windows so work could proceed 24 hours a day. The latter, in part, was made possible since the building was air-conditioned, a rarity in the South at that time. The air-condition was also needed to keep the building’s temperature constant to prevent metal material and components from expanding, contracting or warping. The ventilation system moved 4 million cubic feet of air per minute through the plant and, while the tunnels and basement were not air conditioned, 14 ventilators were used to circulate the cooler factory air through the lower levels of building B-1. Aa separate ventilation system in the building’s also indoor, blacked-out railroad bay & freight platforms that ensured smoke and dust from trains and off-loading of materials was kept out of the factory.

In terms of its size, some of the more common analogies used when it was built included: The B-1 building contained sufficient railroad tracks beneath its roof to have sheltered a dozen passenger trains. It was the equivalent of 63 football fields in dimension. And, it had room for 20 battleships, 69 submarines and 24 PT boats.

The rail entrance to Building B-1 was at the northwest corner of the building, and still is: the tracks were removed.

As noted above, building B-1 included a railroad bay used to support the delivery of parts and materials at a time when most freight movements were heavily supported by rail, and switching engines were operated by the plant.

The last Air Force Plant 6 Switching Engines is retired

Switching engines were used well into the latter part of the 1990’s as rail cars routinely transported C-5 and C-130 empennage parts in support of the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Air Force Plant 6 production lines. In the past, several rail cars delivered large autoclaves for the B-1 sub-contract work and even an Abrams M-1 tank for the Georgia Tech research facility.

The last of the Baldwin switch engines at Air Force Plant 6, #1248, was retired in December 2016, originally built in the early 1950’s. It was surplused to Kirby Family Farm near Williston, Florida… a facility that provides educational, historical, recreational, agricultural, and community enrichment programs for at-risk and special needs children.

The main plant employee walk-in entrances, sat at the south end of the massive B-1 parking lot and streetcar terminal, and at the northern-most end of the underground tunnel system or tunnel heads, hence their more commonly-used name of “head houses.” At left is Entrance 4, and at right Entrance 3. Nearly all of the employees who worked in building B-1 would enter and leave the plant via the head houses, passing through turnstiles with guards at each one inspecting hand-carried bags. Ramps led to and from the underground tunnel system and accessed the production floor via stairwells located on all the undergrown tunnels.

The tunnels were also used for vehicles, shuttling materials to and from the under-ground work area to the factory floor via three massive freight elevators at Tunnels 2, 3 and 4, but only the Tunnel 3 freight elevator went to the two upper floors of the central mezzanine complex inside of building B-1. The tunnel system also served as a bomb shelter for employees working in the main assembly and adjacent buildings.

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Buildings B-4, B-3 & B-6

The building 4 (B-4) flight test hangar & radar/radio installation, building 3 (B-3) paint and armament assembly building & building 6 (B-6) back shops & maintenance buildings to the east of the B-1 main assembly building

Parking Lots, Streetcar Service & South Cobb Drive

Employment Office on Walker Street, where Streetcar Tracks Are Being Laid in Foreground.

The lower left and center photos appear to be of the cars parked to the west of the B-1 parking lot at the construction management building and eventual 1940’s employment offices, and to the east of the Aviation History & Technology Center: Marietta Aviation History / old T-400 parking lot. This was likely, before the B-1 building was finished, as the B-1 parking lot appears to be empty.

That said, parking was always a problem in the early days of the plant, with nearly 28,000 people working at Government Aircraft Plant 6 at its peak levels during World War II.

The highly efficient streetcar service that existed during World War II was discontinued after the war, so parking became even a bigger problem following the plant’s re-activation for the Korean conflict and during the 1970’s and 1980’s with the C-130, C-141, and C-5A & C-5B production programs when employment reached nearly 33,000.

Reference the photo at right, if you look closely you’ll an observation tower at the northeast corner of the B-1 parking lot, near the intersection of Gibbs and Tinker Street with Blackjack Mountain in the background that was used to provide security surveillance of the massive parking lot, similar to how the portable units are now used by the Marietta and Cobb County Police Departments during special events or other places when appropriate.

When the plant opened on 15 April 1943, the Marietta Streetcar Company service between Atlanta and Marietta was highly integrated with a large streetcar stop at the Bell leased and operated Government Aircraft Plant 6. The Streetcars went away in 1947 when privately-owned vehicles had become ubiquitous, as urban-sprawl began and public transportation no longer served the purpose or provided the needed financial returns needed to make it viable. The lasting legacy at the old Bell Bomber Plant is the grassy courtyard area at the northwest corner of Building B-95 where the streetcar loop & stop next to head house #1 were once located.

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Other Buildings & Features

The original security gate built when the world was at war was located well inside the plant, at the southwest corner of the B-1 main assembly building, where access past that point was only afforded to salaried employees who worked in the B-2 building and visitors, Later-on, the majority of the parking at the recently completed builidings B-27/B-28 iniitially built and used to store all the excess World War II materials that had been stored in building B-1 were built by the U.S. Government, fenced-off from the plant in later years, and the hilltop parking area was created to accommodate more employee parking. A smaller guard post / drive-in gate was eventually established at the northwest corner of building B-1, just beyond the train tracks at Walker Street where it remained for many years. Today, the drive-in entry for the North Campus is now at the northeast corner of the complex and building B-95 and is a state-of-the-art, multi-million-dollar two-portal structure with a multitude of security features created many years after, but as a result of the 9/11-attacks in 2001.

To the east of the main plant was Building T-400, built as a “Temporary” structure (hence the T) in the 1940’s. It was still in use for the employment offices, personnel functions and several other administrative functions into the 1990’s but has has since been razed. The land and parking lot is now home to the Marietta Aviation History & Technology Center.

The north end of the Building B-4 Test Center is where the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Fire Department had been located since the plant first opened, which was eventually where the industrial & plant security management offices were co-located in the 1990’s after building B-6 was condemned and eventually razed. I have no idea where those functions are now located, as I suspect both the fire protection and security functions had outgrown that building and there is no visible firefighting apparatus parked in the area in recent satellite images.

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The Marietta Army Airfield’s Officers Club & Lockheed Proposal Center

Prior to being included in the eniment domain / condemnation of the Sibley farm on which parts of Government Aircraft Plant 6 was built, was the the Gardner-Sibley Home built well before the Civil War on the hilltop overlooking Atlanta Road and the Western & Atlanta Railroad, just west of building B-1. Known as “Cottage Hill,” noting many of the grand old homes in the south were given names and at a time when Marietta was considered a resort town where the southern elite congregated to spend leisurely summer evenings, even during the Civil War when it was far removed from the front lines of the war between the states. The home was purportedly battle scarred by the war as the Battle for Atlanta moved through Marietta and the Union Army occupied the city for several months before moving on and, in their wake, burning all the public buildings and any other structures that could be used to help the Confederate war effort, but otherwise spared from destruction.

The property would stay in the Sibley family until 1941, when the land was obtained through the eminent domain process and condemned along with several other homes and the community of Jonesville, to make way for the Marietta Army Airfield and Government Aircraft Plant 6 . When Government Aircraft Plant 6 was built and in operation during World War II, the home was converted for use as the Airfield’s Officers Club and Mess. After the new Dobbins Air Force Base Officers Club was built, the home and former officers club was used by Lockheed for business meetings and as a proposal development center. Sadly, it was allowed to fall into disrepair, was abandoned and eventually razed in 2015 and is now a vacant, hilltop lot.

A history of Josiah Sibley at the “Old Marietta (O.M.)” Facebook Page

Other Related Developments

The Lanham Act, Marietta Place & Public Housing

Housing was a pressing issue for Marietta throughout the 1930’s and into the 1940’s due to the Great Depression and assocaited economic downturns that took a heavy toll on Marietta. Many old neighborhoods near the Marietta Square devolved into slums that were in need of redevelopment and qualified for public housing, such that Marietta established a Housing Authority and applied for federal aid.

Hollandtown, SE of the Marietta Square in the late 1930’S before being razed and replaced by Clay Homes

The first two Marietta Housing Authority projects for the City of Marietta were established just east of the Marietta Square. A 132-home public housing project called Clay Homes was built in 1940 to deal with the “slums” that had developed on the southeast side of the Marietta Square in the Hollandtown community for the white poor of Marietta, a separate, 120-home public housing project called Fort Hill Homes was also built in 1940 to replace the slums on the northwest side of the Marietta Square for the black poor of Marietta, remembering the U.S. south was still mostly segreated in the 1940’s.

Marietta Place was completed in 1943, just three-years after the Marietta Housing Authority was established to deal with the need to redevelop deeply depressed, in-town communities coming out of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Both projects have since been razed as of 2012 and recently replaced by upscale, $500k – $900k townhomes and single-family city homes. (Pulled from my article Marietta, Georgia: A Photo Compilation of “Now & Then”)

Housing was a pressing issue for many of the employees at Bell who had commuted from Atlanta or outlying areas sought more convenient housing near the plant, so the public housing plans already being developed by the Marietta Housing Authority were greatly expanded, such that before the plant was
completed, projects were under way for the development of over 2,000 housing units in Marietta. An October 1943 special “Bombers for Victory” edition of the Cobb County Times featured advertisements for a number of new apartments and housing developments in and around Marietta.

One of the largest of these was Marietta Place, located primarily to the southeast of the intersection of Fairground and Clay streets. Five hundred units were built by Hardin & Ramsey, an Atlanta contracting company under contract to Marietta Housing Authority. The single-story apartments were typically one-bedroom units grouped in four- to eight-unit buildings.

During the years when the Bell Bomber Plant was building the B-29’s, Fairground Street would be one-way in each direction at the beginning and end of work shifts to deal with the traffic that passed-by the Marietta Place Apartments. The lower image provides a rough overview of the proximilty of Marietta Place ust north of Government Aircraft Plant 6, across froom Cobb County Fairgrounds, that enabled them to walk-to and from work. Larry Bell, the CEO of Bell Aircraft, made an arrangement with the city of Marietta to build a recreation center, ball fields, a pool, and other amenities for use by Bell Aircraft employees and other members of the community while the plant was in operation on north end of the otherwise vacant, city-owned land used for the annual North Georgia Fair.
These photos show Marietta Place, as as they looked from the ballfields at Larry Bell Park, across Fairground Street all at the base of the 58-step, concrete stairway to the plant.
The 500-unit, Marietta Place housing project established in February 1943, was classified as temporary war housing built under the Lanham Act to support the operation of Government Aircraft Plant 6, aka, the Bell Aircraft Corporation Plant. It was subsequently razed and redeveloped into commercial property. Land that was designed as Bell Bomber Park is still located at the south end of Fairground Street where the 58-step stairway used by employees from Marietta Place. Larry Bell Park remains and continues to be used to support a variety of recreational resources for the city of Marietta and Cobb County, and the original baseball fields are still there.
And, for some added context on Marietta Place, as late as the 1950’s when Perry Parham Memorial Park has been established just south of Larry Bell Park’s baseball fields, the “old” Marietta Place housing projects were still standing on the east side of Fairground Street, where the former Lockheed Georgia Employee’s (LGE) Federal Employee Credit Union building was built, now occupied by the Cobb County Police Department who uses it as their headquarters building.
Pine Forest and some of the other, more upscale, new communities built to house workers at the Bell Bomber Plant were just a bit further north of the Marietta Place Public Housing Project that could easily been seen from the plant. Many of these communities are still there.

Another one of the more upscale project was Westpark, “The Subdivision in the Trees,” located northwest of the plant, and adjacent to the Marietta Country Club. The single-family homes featured Westinghouse electric ranges, Cold Spot refrigerators, and built-in cabinets. Unlike some of the “cookie cutter” housing projects for Bell workers, the Westpark developers touted the “variation of architectural design and landscape planting.”

Most of the Westpark homes were still there up and until a few years ago, when the neighborhoods to the north, east and south of the former Marietta Country Club, what is now the Atlanta/Marietta Hilton & Conference Center at the Marietta City Club Golf Course, began to be redeveloped into much higher-end, city and townhome developments. It’s just a matter of time before the very distressed 1940’s small home are all razed and the land is redeveloped.

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Larry Bell Park

Bell Aircraft Corp. CEO Larry Bell and the City of Marietta established a mutually-beneficial relationship as Government Aircraft Plant 6 and the Marietta Place Housing Project were being built to create what was named Larry Bell Park on the land used to host the annual North Georgia Fair. The park featured a recreation center that included a basketball court / area floor, had a bowling alley in the basement level and many other features, including the installation of a public pool directly behind the recreation center. There were ball fields, a track and many other features that still accommodated the use of the green space for the North Georgia Fairgrounds through the 1950’s. The North Georgia Fair was then moved further west to the open area that then existed near the intersection of Powder Springs & Chestnut Hill Streets where Marietta Fire Station 54 and Tumlin Park are now located, before moving to Jim R. Miller Park where it’s been since the 1970’s.

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South Cobb Drive / Georgia State Route 280

From my, Chronological History of Marietta, Cobb County & The State of Georgia and a Cobb County Courier article entitled, “Road and Bombers: The creation of South Cobb Drive.”

One of the more unusual roads in Cobb County is South Cobb Drive, Georgia State Route 280 (GA-280), and its creation is directly tied to the Bell Bomber Plant in Marietta.

Following the announcement that Marietta had been chosen as the location for the new “bomber plant” over potential sites in East Point and Stone Mountain in a competition for the plant, Georgia’s Department of Transportation determined the main road between Marietta and Atlanta, the Atlanta – Marietta Road, was inadequate for expected volume of traffic that would be needed to transport workers and goods between Atlanta and the main railroad “hump yard” at Inman in northwest Atlanta and the Government Aircraft Plant 6.

A Marietta Streetcar crosses the overpass built as part of the Georgia State Route 280 Project, just west of the Atlanta-Marietta Road, now just Atlanta Road in 1947.

The 12-mile road was originally called “the new Marietta Highway” and completed in the summer of 1943, leading from Bolton Road in Atlanta across the Chattahoochee River, skirting Smyrna and Fair Oaks, and connecting to the old Atlanta-Marietta Road, about one fourth mile from the Marietta city limit. At that point, it turned east and then south, heading to the entry gates at the Bell plant and then on to the “four lane” U.S. 41, giving it the distinct shepherd’s crook turn at its north end.

So, while it has become an important transportation corridor and commercial highway for dozens of communities in Cobb County, GA-280 was originally built as a single-purpose road, to connect Atlanta with a wartime bomber factory. It was subsequently extended at both ends and now links Interstates 20 and 75.

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The Product: The B-29 Superfortress

A movie that appears to have been made at Government Aircraft Plant 6 in Marietta, Georgia, leased and operated by the Bell Aircraft Corporation that provides a very good overview of the B-29 fabrication process can be found on Facebook that I’ve linked to the following title shot image. Just click on the image and the Facebook video will launch, however, you may need to un-mute the audio.

Click Image to Launch Video

The Photo Compilation Continues

A small collection of photos taken of major sub-assembly and final assembly work in the B-29 main assembly building. Once again, a movie that may have been made at Bell Aircraft in Marietta providing an overview of the B-29 fabrication process can be found on Facebook at the following URL: https://www.facebook.com/wrhstol/videos/376769276575489/.

However, if there’s one thing I’ve learned while doing research on this project, the five Government Aircraft Plants producing the B-29 at Washington state, Kansas, Nebraska and Georgia were all built around the same time using the same effort, materials and designs and look about the same. So, with few exceptions, any of these production line photos could have been taken in any one of the five plants unless you want to spend a lot of time studying the photos to identify something that clearly suggests which plant it was.
Every once and a while a photo and description are provided that seem to match-up, such as the B-2 engineering area at the upper left. In other instances, there are times where something like Marietta’s B-1 main assembly building’s 1st and 2nd Mezzanine Levels and open east-end hanger doors look so familiar that I can, with great confidence, know where a photo was taken. Marietta’s B-1 K-wall is another key feature that sometimes help to peg the location of a photo.
Nearly all fabrication of the B-29s structure was completed inside the main assembly buildings, hence the reason for the massive 3.2-million square foot floor areas.
The Bell Aircraft B-29 Superfortress Final Assembly Line at the east end of Building B-1
Following roll-out from the B-1 main assembly building, the B-29s would cycle through the building B-3 paint and armament installation building before moving into building B-4 for radar & electronics final installations, and then on to flight acceptance testing, first by Bell Aircraft and then by the Army Air Corps at the Marietta Army Airfield (now Dobbins Air Reserve Base) at the east end of the runway.

Bell P-39 Aerocobras were used as chase planes. It is interesting that one of the two Bell XP-77 prototypes, a simplified “lightweight” fighter aircraft using non-strategic materials, was at the Bell Bomber plant long enough to have photos taken alongside one of the Bell-built B-29 Superfortresses.

Also take note that the four B-29’s on the Northeast Parking Ramp are B-29B models without upper or lower fuselage gun turrets, just the rear, radar-operated tail gun. The latter change was made on 311 Bell-produced B-29B models as data analysis had showed nearly all fighter attack risks during World War II were from the aft. Eliminating the other four turrets provided a significant weight savings and simplified production and maintenance without significant increased risk given the mission profiles they were using in the Pacific Theater and fighter defense threat.

Size Comparison of the B-29 Bomber and the C-130 Transport

Just to add a little context to both the size of building B-1’s main assembly floor, above are two dimensioned drawings of the B-29 and C-130 in roughly the same scale. The B-29 has a wingspan of 141.3 feet, is 99 feet long and 22.4 feet tall. The C-130 has a wingspan of 132.5 feet, is 98.7 feet long (114 feet for the C-130-30) and 38.5 feet tall. To put the C-130 into context, I’ve added the illustration at right and below, along side some other well-known aircraft.

The Enola Gay was built by the Glenn L. Martin Company at its Bellevue, Nebraska, plant, at what is now known as Offutt Air Force Base, and was one of 15 B-29s with the “Silverplate” modifications necessary to deliver atomic weapons, which included an extensively modified bomb bay with pneumatic doors, special propellors, modified engines and the deletion of protective armor and gun turrets.

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The B-29 Superfortress: A Complex, Large Aircraft & Production Program

Fabricating and assembling the B-29 was complex and was performed at five main-assembly factories. There were Boeing leased and operated Government Aircraft Plants at Renton & Seattle, Washington and another in Wichita, Kansas, the Bell plant at Marietta, Georgia, and a Martin plant at Omaha, Nebraska with literally thousands of subcontractors.  A total of 3,970 B-29s were built & delivered to the U.S. Army Air Corps.

The five different Government Aircraft Plants leased and operated by Boeing, Martin & Bell producing B-29s

The XB-29 prototype made its maiden flight at Boeing in Seattle on 21 September 1942, and was plagued by setbacks caused by many factors. The YB-29, second prototype was fitted with a Sperry defensive armament system using remote-controlled gun turrets sighted by periscopes, and first flew on 30 December 1942. On 18 February 1943, the second prototype, which had been having engine system issues, experienced an engine fire and crashed, killing the 10-man crew and 21 people on the ground.

B-29 Changes in Defensive Armament

By the end of 1943, given all of the issues and needed design changes, although almost 100 B-29s had been delivered, only 15 were airworthy. General Hap Arnold personally intervened to address the problem that resulted in 150 aircraft being modified in the five weeks between 10 March and 15 April 1944. The most common cause of maintenance headaches and catastrophic failures was the engines that plagued the B-29 until after the war was over.  

The B-29 was never deployed to the European theater for a variety of reasons and only saw use in the Pacific. From a practical perspective, the huge amount of space taken up by individual B-29s would have severely constrained the number of aircraft that could have been based at most British airfields, and the lack of long-range escort fighters in the European theater would have hampered B-29 operations, as much or more than it did those of B-17s. So, while the U.S. Allied Forced would have been able to attack German & Axis targets with more bombs per aircraft while putting far fewer crewmembers at risk, the production issues delayed B-29 introduction to the fleet until European Theater use became secondary.

B-29 Changes in Exterior Finish / Paint

However, In the Pacific theater, the distances to be covered essentially mandated the use of the B-29’s with their significantly longer-range than B-17s. And, again, the B-29 would have been of little use in Europe by the time they were finally being produced in numbers sufficient to support operational units.

The variants of the B-29 were outwardly similar in appearance, but were built around different wing center sections that affected the wingspan dimensions. For example, the wing of the Boeing / Renton-built B-29A-BN used a different subassembly process and was a foot longer in span than the other four factory-produced B-29S. The Bell / Georgia-built B-29B-BA weighed less through armament reduction.

With regard to the last 311 of 668 Georgia-built B-29Bs, in early 1945, Major General Curtis Lemay –-commander of the Marianas-based B-29-equipped bombing force—ordered most of the defensive armament and remote-controlled sighting equipment removed from the B-29A and Bs under his command. This gave the aircraft reduced defensive firepower, but an increase in range and bomb loads, which was ideal for the change in missions from high-altitude, daylight bombing with high explosives to low-altitude night raids using incendiary bombs. Based on this change, Bell’s Marietta plant produced 311 B-29Bs beginning in February 1945 that had turrets and sighting equipment omitted, except for the tail position, which was fitted with AN/APG-15 fire-control radar. This was the 3rd generation of defensive armament for the B-29, the first being more-like the B-17, the second a more advanced remote, streamlined turret system and then tail gun only, as show in the five upper right photos.

Similar to changes in the defensive armament, the first B-29s exterior finish was changed over time. Initially, B-29As were given the same olive drab painted-on finish as the B-17s operating in Europe. However, that was quickly changed to leaving them unpainted in their natural aluminum finish once it was realized they’d never be used in Europe and, instead, operate primarily over the Pacific Ocean where the dark-colored aircraft would be easier to spot than the dull grey of their aluminum surface panels. However, when the employment tactics were changed to night raids, the bright silver-grey aircraft became easier to spot against the dark skies, the lower half of the aircraft were painted black as a form of camouflage, something the Bell-Marietta factory began to use on it’s reduced armament B-29Bs. For some missions flown by certain units flying only nighttime missions, the black camouflage was extended to the entire empennage and tail section, as shown on a B-29B operating during the Korean conflict (bottom photo from above right).

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The End of B-29 Production in Marietta

At its height in February 1945, Bell Bomber reached its peak employment of 28,158. About nine in ten employees were southerners, with the vast majority coming from communities in north Georgia. Some 37% were women, 8% black, and 6% physically disabled. Opportunities for advancement were limited for women and blacks, and the job sites were segregated. Yet, Bell’s equal-opportunity record was no worse than other southern industries of that era, and its pay scale was substantially higher.

By mid-1945 the plant began scaling back production and workers in preparation for the end of the war. As soon as the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, contracts for production of war materials were cancelled, including the on-going production of the B-29 Superfortress bombers at the Boeing plants in Washington & Kansas, the Martin plant in Nebraska, and the Bell plant in Georgia. Production of already in-work B-29Bs ended in mid-September 1945 when the last plane rolled off the line. By the end of September, the Georgia Division was down to a few thousand workers.

A surplus B-29 from the Bell Bomber Plant was donated to the City of Marietta and was towed out of the plant’s main vehicle gate on Walker Street, above right, to where the second photo was taken on Fairground Street, but it’s not clear what route it may have taken to get there. It also appears to be an earlier B-29 model vs. one of the last B-29Bs to be produced with the deleted armaments, as an upper fuselage, 4-gun turret is visible above the cockpit, while the lower half of the aircraft was painted black with the natural aluminum topside. I’ll venture a guess that it was one of the early, first-production articles used for testing that remained at the plant throughout the production program. Regardless, it purportedly sat at Larry Bell Park for several years on static display to the east of the Bell Recreation Center, but had not been preserved before-hand and quickly deteriorated to the point where it needed to be scrapped in place.

The local economy slowed slightly after the plant closed, but Marietta avoided serious unemployment, and the percentage of occupied houses and apartments remained high. The government used the B-1 main assembly building to store machine tools, and the Veterans Administration and other agencies took over the B-2 building.

The K-Wall is to the right in the photo at left. The photo at right was apparently taken at the same time, from the floor, just behind the long, light-pine crate at the lower corner of both photos. While this seemed like a good idea at the time, by 1951, the start-up of the B-28 rebufurbishment program could not begin until the factory floor was cleared of all this material
To address the storage problem, buildings B-27 and 28 were quickly built by the Army Corps of Engineering in 1951 as warehouse space to store all of the excess World War II equipment pending disposal, and operated by another government-contractor firm named Tumpane. Notice that during World War II there were no builidngs immediately to the south of building B-2, land that became warehouse space nearly as large as the B-1 main production floor that was filled-up with excess equipment.

The population of Cobb County reached 62,000 by 1950, up more than 60 percent from the total a decade earlier. In that year, the United States found itself in an undeclared war in Korea, and in January 1951 the air force invited the Lockheed Corporation to reopen the plant, with its first task being the refurbishment of B-29s for the conflict. What Bell had started, Lockheed continued… turning a formerly sleepy county into one of the most rapidly growing industrial communities in the country. In fact, Lockheed remained one of the largest employers in Georgia, Cobb County and Marietta up and until the end of the C-5 program, by which time government had become the largest employer in all three.

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The Lockheed Years: Air Force Plant 6 Gets a New Lease on Life

1951 Plant Re-Activation to Refurbish B-29’s for Korean Conflict

During the latter part of 1950, as already noted, the U.S. Air Force invited the Lockheed Corporation to reopen and Government Aircraft Plant 6, just recently re-named Air Force Plant 6 at Marietta, Georgia, for the purpose of refurbishing and upgrading Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers that had been in storage since the end of World War II, as well as the potential co-production of Boeing B-47 Stratojet bombers as war broke-out in Korea during June.

Carmichael at left & Haughton at right in 1951

4 January 1951, Lockheed accepted the Air Force’s invitation to re-open Air Force Plant 6 at Marietta, Georgia and appointed James Carmichael, vice president and general manager, who takes a two-year leave of absence from his post-war leadership role as president of the Scripto Company.

  • Daniel J. Haughton, an Alabama native who had risen into the top management of Lockheed Corporation in Burbank, California, is appointed Carmichael’s assistant general manager and relocates to Georgia.
  • In 1952, Haughton succeeded Carmichael as vice president and general manager of the Lockheed Georgia Division until 1956, when Haughton was named Lockheed Aircraft Company executive vice president, with authority over all operating divisions and subsidiaries.
  • In 1961, Haughton succeeded Courtland S. Gross as president of the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, and in 1967 also succeeded Gross as chairman and chief executive officer.

The following headline appeared in the New York Times on 4 January 1951, and signaled the beginning of a new chapter in the Air Force Plant 6, Marietta and Cobb County history:

ATLANTA, Ga., Jan. 4–The former Bell Aircraft plant at Marietta, Ga., which cost an estimated $73,000,000 and turned out nearly 700 B-29’s in World War II, will be reopened by the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation at the request of the United States Air Force.

Again, Lockheed accepted the invitation and was put under contract to re-activate Air Force Plant 6 to support the refurbishment of 120 B-29 bombers produced and operated by the Army Air Corps during WWII, which subsequently became the United States Air Force in 1947. Beginning in the spring of 1951, Lockheed pilot Joe Gabriel and others began to ferry the 120 stored bombers to Marietta that had been “cocooned” to seal out the elements, and otherwise kept in flyable, reserve storage at Pyote Air Force Base, Texas,

Building B-2 front entrance and parking lot in early 1950s, prior to construction of buildings B-27/28 warehouses in the latter-part of 1951 to the south, at a time when with the Marietta streetcar service ending in 1947, most employees had to travel to work by car.

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Why Lockheed?

The Lockheed Aircraft Corporation based in Burbank, California, collaborated-well with rival manufacturers Boeing and Douglas in building the B-17 Flying Fortress during World War II, establishing a model for cooperative, licensed co-production. In early 1951, Lockheed had also put on contract to develop a master plan for converting the Palmdale Army Airfield into a Government Owned / Contractor Leased and Operated (GOCO) facility that would meet the requirements of full war mobilization and augment the industrial production potential of the major airframe manufacturing industry in southern California. To the current Air Force leadership, this positioned Lockheed as the ideal company to reopen the Marietta plant, as its initial tasks would be refurbishing Boeing B-29s and co-production of Boeing-designed B-47 bombers.

The first general manager of the Lockheed Aircraft Corporations newly created Georgia division was Cobb County native son James V. Carmichael, who was instrumental in securing support for establishing Rickenbacker Airfield in 1941, and leveraging the soon-to-be-built airfield to secure support for selection of Marietta for construction of Government Aircraft Plant 6 and the Bell Aircraft Corporation’s B-29 bomber plant. With his close ties to local business and political leaders, coupled with his business acumen and legal experience, he was subsequently hired as an attorney for the Bell Aircraft Corporation’s Georgia Division by Bell Aircraft’s president, Lawrence D. Bell, as was Rip Blair. In November 1944, still in his early 30’s, James Carmichael was elevated to general manager of the 28,000-employee plant when the original plant manager, Carl Cover, was killed in an aircraft crash.

In 1952, James Carmichael, turned over the general management of the plant to his assistant manager and successor, Daniel J. Haughton, an Alabama native who had risen into top management at Lockheed Aircraft Corporation’s headquarters in Burbank, California. It’s noteworthy that James Carmichael remained on the Lockheed board of directions until his death in 1972.

As an interesting aside, when Lockheed was re-activating Air Force Plant 6 in the 1950’s, re-hiring many of the former Bell Aircraft Corporation’s B-29 workforce in all of the needed disciplines for the refurbishment and upgrades was critical and Entrance 1 was reconfigured and used as the Employment Office. As hoped, many of the employees hired to work on the B-29 refurbishment program had previously worked for Bell Aircraft during the original production program.

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The Plant Re-Opens and the First B-29 Arrives from Texas

The first B-29 to be ferried from Pyote Air Force Base, Texas, to Air Force Plant 6 at Marietta for refurbishment by Lockheed Aircraft Corporation’s newly created Georgia Division nicknamed “Early Bird” landing on the Dobbins Air Force Base Runway, 13 April 1951.
Perhaps the same, first B-29 to arrive sits by itself undergoing the reconditioning process sits in the B-1 main assembly building during May 1951. The reconditioning involved partial disassembly, inspection, repair, replacement and cleaning while also undergoing avionics and system upgrades to current, USAF operational specifications. A total of 120 B-29s were reconditioned and upgraded by Lockheed at Air Force Plant 6 between May 1951 and January 1953.
A photo taken during an All-Hands meeting with B-29’s lined up along the K-Wall at the southeast corner of the B-1 main assembly building during mid-1951, as more B-29s were ferried-in from Texas. The number of employees on the payroll had grown from a skeleton crew of 86 to 4,500 by August 1951.

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“The Incident, November 1951”

Engines headed back to Texas

In November 1951, one plane crashed, ship 065: Joe Gabriel and Joe Sedita were the flight crew and both survived. The cause of the crash was the poor condition of the original engines on the stored B-29s. Several ship sets of engines were overhauled and then used as a rotable-pool on all future ferry-flights from Texas to Georgia, whereby the “good engines” would be installed on the aircraft before departing Texas, removed upon the aircraft arrivals in Georgia, then shipped back to Texas to be used again. There were no further catastrophic incidents.

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The B-29s in Korea and the Arrival of The Jet Age

Up and until the Russian-built and provided MIG-15s joined the war, the B-29s were effective during day time bombing missions. However, once the MIGs began to demonstrate the vulnerability of piston-engine, prop-driven aircraft to the speed of jets, B-29 missions had to be limited to night time bomb runs. In terms of how much emphasis the U.S. war planners put on strategic use of heavy bombers and both their ability to inflict physical and psychological damage on an adversary, B-29s flew missions on all but 21 days of the 37-month war, completing some 21,000 sorties and dropping over 167,000 tons of ordinance and using their defensive armaments to shoot down 16 jet-powered MiGs and 17 piston-powered fighters. However, those mission came at a cost, with 16 B-29s shot-down over North Korea, and 48 lost to crash landings or written-off due to heavy damage. In addition to supporting strategic bombing missions, B-29 variants were also used for reconnaissance, weather, and rescue missions.

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Lockheed’s Airlift Legacy – Beyond the B-29 Refurbishment Program

A Brief Introduction & Lockheed Aircraft Corporation’s History

Lockheed Martin

The narrative, written content of this following section is, for the most part, heavily-quoted material from the New Georgia Encyclopedia and a few other sources, in some cases paraphrased or edited, but not my original material.

However, the layout and integration of the photo collection / time capsules is of my own design and effort, and what I suspect many who may find this material will find of most interest. This would likely be of more interest to readers who grew-up, lived or worked in and around Air Force Plant 6 and “The Bomber Plant” since the 1950’s when Lockheed Aircraft Corporation’s Georgia Division first came to Marietta, Georgia, to re-open Air Force Plant 6 and decided to find a way to keep it open and keep on producing aircraft for as long as they could.

So, here we are some 72-years later, and sure enough, the leadership at what is now the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics business area has stayed in Georgia and continues to develop, sell, produce, deliver and support both commercial and defense aerospace products and services, mostly underpinned by its highly successful C-130 Hercules production line at Air Force Plant 6 in Marietta, Georgia.

Only the Beechcraft Bonanza, which had its first flight in 1945, has been in production longer, but did have a break in production between 2020 and 2022, as none were produced in 2021. The other “grey beard” military aircraft include the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress heavy bomber which had its first flight in 1952, the last one being produced in 1962 with 52 of the original 744 built still operational and 18 in reserve as of 2022. The Northrop T-38 Talon trainer that first flew on 10 April 1959 and entered the USAF fleet on 17 March 1961, and the Lockheed U-2 Dragon Lady high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft that first flew on 1 May 1954 and 31 of the 104 U-2s built remain in service. A total of 841, Boeing 707-based KC-135s, C-135/7s, EC-137s, RC-135s and E-3s were built with many remaining in service.

Lockheed Martin may have gotten its feet on the ground in Georgia because of the B-29 refurbishment program in 1951, and to a certain extent the forthcoming Boeing B-47 Stratojet, licensed co-production program that was also on the table and a likely certainty when the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation re-opened the plant. However, those two programs would only provide a few years of production base through the mid-1950’s.

Interesting enough, the potential long-term production program opportunity presented itself on 2 February 1951 — just one month after the United States Air Force announced Lockheed would be re-opening Air Force Plant 6 — when the USAF issued a General Operating Requirement (GOR) and Request for Proposal (RFP) for a new transport to Boeing, Douglas, Fairchild, Lockheed, Martin, Chase Aircraft, North American, Northrop, and Airlifts Inc., noting Fairchild, North American, Martin, and Northrop declined to participate.

A Lockheed Corporation Ad from the early 1950s

Lockheed would submit it’s proposal in April 1951 and win the development and two-prototype production contract with its Model L-206 airlifter design in July 1951, redesignated the YC-130 and the rest, as they say is history.

In September 1952, while the YC-130s prototypes were being designed and fabricated at the Lockheed California Division plant in Burbank Califorina, Georgia Division Vice President and General Manager, Dan Haughton, succeeded in making the business case to submit the C-130 full-scale development and production proposal based on doing the work at Air Force Plant 6 and the Lockheed Georgia Division’s plant in Marietta, Georgia.

In January 1953, the last of the 120 B-29’s refurbished by Lockheed’s Georgia Division in Marietta was delivered, and on 10 February 1953, the U.S. Air Force issued the first production contract for seven (7) C-130s, AF33(600)-22286), nearly a year-and-a-half prior to the YC-130’s first flight on 23 August 1954, followed immediately by the relocation of the program to Georgia, in parallel with the YC-130 prototype design and fabrication and flight test program development in California.

Lockheed’s California-Division finished designing and building the YC-130 “Hercules” prototypes, with first flight on 23 August 1954 and went on to exceed all of the USAFs stated performance requirements during flight testing and the rest, as they say, is history.

I’d created another blog/article entitled A C-130 Hercules History Trip that provides the full chronology of how the establishment of Rickenbacker Airfield and Government Aircraft Plant 6 was, in no small part, due to the efforts of James Carmichael and something of another image collection and time capsule regarding the initial C-130 move to Georgia and subsequent production history. However, I’ve since migrated all of that content into this document, and that history comes just a little later in this document.

Another “then and now” photo of how Air Force Plant 6 looked from the south, well into the 1950’s after being re-activated for B-29 refurbishment by Lockheed Georgia Division during the Korean conflict. As mentioned earlier, Start-up of the B-28 rebufurbishment program could not begin until the factory floor was cleared of that material, and buildings B-27 and 28 were quickly built by the Army Corps of Engineering in 1951 as warehouse space to store all of the excess World War II equipment that had been stored in building B-1 to the south of the B-1 production and final assembly building as Lockheed was re-opening the plant. After the excess materials were finally dispositioned by another government-contractor firm named Tumpane, buildings B-27 and B-28 were repurposed, many-times over, from being used as receiving docks, to back-shops, facilities engineering work spaces and shops, offices and engineering spaces, and continue to be used and evolve to this day.

But, in terms of the Lockheed Georgia Division legacy, every production C-130 Hercules airlifter — more than 2,600 delivered as of 2022 — has been produced in Marietta since 1954. While far-lower than it’s employment level at 28,145 in 1945, there are ~4,500 employees currently working at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Marietta site, supporting work on the C-130J Super Hercules final assembly and the F-35 Lightning II center wing assembly production lines. With 3.4 million square feet of production space, the Lockheed legacy at Air Force Plant 6 will always include the C-130/L-100 Hercules, the L-329/C-140 JetStar, C-141 Starlifter, C-5 Galaxy and F-22 Raptor as all the production models were produced in Marietta.

Lockheed Employment Levels

Up and until the C-141 Starlifter was phased-out by the Boeing C-17 beginning in July 1993, and completed in May 2006 when, after 43-years in service, the last operational C-141 was retired… Lockheed moved the U.S. military.

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However, it’s not all been sunshine and roses during these 72-years

Mind you, much of Lockheed’s later success in Marietta was achieved despite reaching and surviving near bankruptcy in the early 1970’s, driven mostly by the financially ill-fated, commercial L-1011 TriStar program at Lockkheed’s California Division. While the L-1011 was a highly successful program in terms of its technical achievement, it was woefully poor and ill-timed business failure that made the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation the first and the only business to apply for the Emergency Loan Guarantee Act of 1971 to rescue it from insolvency.

  • Due to cost overruns, the number of orders needed to break-even on the L-1011 program had jumped from 300 to 500, at a time when they only had 244 orders and were also bleeding cash from the problem-plagued C-5 Galaxy airlift program. And, as if that weren’t bad enough, there were a series of bribery scandals that came to light do to the close attention and scrutiny Lockheed received associated with its government-backed loans.
  • The investigation by the Security and Exchange Commission, hearings by Congress, findings and settlements led to the creation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act signed into law by President Carter back in 1977, in response to Lockheed’s use of what were deemed illegal payments associated with aircraft sales practices going back to the late 1950’s through the 1970’s.
  • Although the urban legend lingers that taxpayers bailed-out Lockheed, that was not the case and, in fact, no taxpayer dollars were used. In reality, the fees paid by Lockheed and its banks to the Emergency Loan Guarantee Board for administering the loan program netted the government ~$30 million, which was sent to the U.S. Treasury. 
  • However, then-Lockheed chairman of the board Dan Haughton and vice chairman and president Carl Kotchian resigned from their posts on February 13, 1976 as a result of the scandal. However, Kotchian was adamant, “Lockheed was the scapegoat for over 300 companies the S.E.C. knew were involved in the very same practices… Some call it gratuities. Some call it questionable payments. Some call it extortion. Some call it grease. Some call it bribery. I look at these payments as necessary to sell a product. I never felt I was doing anything wrong.”
  • According to Ben Rich, director of Lockheed’s Skunk Works: “Lockheed executives admitted paying millions in bribes over more than a decade to the Dutch, to key Japanese and West German politicians, to Italian officials and generals, and to other highly placed figures from Hong Kong to Saudi Arabia, in order to get them to buy our airplanes. Kelly [referring to Clarence “Kelly” Johnson] was so sickened by these revelations that he had almost quit, even though the top Lockheed management implicated in the scandal resigned in disgrace.”
  • Coincidentally, it was in 1977 when the name Lockheed Aircraft Corporation was changed to just the Lockheed Corporation, to better reflect non-aviation activities of the company that dated back to 1954 when Lockheed formed a Missile Systems Division in Van Nuys, California, under the leadership of Lockheed Aircraft design team leader, Willis Hawkins.

The recently re-named Lockheed Corporation was also targeted and survived an attempted, corporate takeover in the 1980s, when leveraged buyout specialist Harold Simmons conducted a widely publicized, but unsuccessful takeover attempt, having gradually acquired almost 20 percent of its stock. It was believed Lockheed was attractive to Simmons because, at that time, Lockheed’s pension fund had a $1.4-billion surplus, which was his real target. Then Chairman and CEO Daniel M. Tellep and his board of directors were able to garner enough votes to retain control of the Corporation.

And, for better or worse, in the 1980’s Lockheed Corporation and the few remaining, large defense contractors, were put on notice by the Department of Defense that there were more contractors than future business available, to the point where major programs like the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) Demonstration / Validation (Dem/Val) program essentially required the two companies who won the ATF Concept Development Investigation (CDI) program — Lockheed and Northrop — to form teams with other contractors, leading to the Lockheed-lead teaming arrangements with Boeing and General Dynamics and Northrop teaming with McDonnell Douglas, two aerospace defense contractors who merged in 1967.

Since then, Lockheed Corporation acquired Metier Management Systems in 1985, Sanders Associates in 1986, the General Dynamics Corporation’s Fort Worth Aircraft Division in 1993, and then merged with the Martin Marietta Corporation in 1995, after further consolidations were “encouraged” by the U.S. government. Some might argue that ,over time, much about Lockheed Martin Corporation has become more like the former Martin Marietta Corporation, and its Aeronautics busines area — the former, combined California and Georgia Divisions — more like the former General Dynamics Fort Worth Aircraft Division in terms of business practices and, to a certain extent, culture as well. Although, there remains some elements of the “old” Skunk Works and Georgia Division culture that had not totally vanished when I retired in 2018.

It’s worthy of note, McDonnell Douglas was merged-into Boeing in 1997 and, out on the west coast, Lockheed Corporation CEO Dan Tellep had already begun a major reorganization, closing the historic Burbank plant, the Rye Canyon Reserach & Development Facility in Valancia, California, the Ontario Air Services Company at the Ontario International Airport, and consolidating operations at Lockheed’s Plant 10 in Palmdale, California, on land adjacent to Air Force Plant 42 and leased from the Air Force next to the Palmdale Regional Airport.

  • As a brief history, the 1930’s emergency U.S. Civil Aviation Administration (CAA) airstrip at Palmdale was bought and converted to the Palmdale Army Airfield in World War II. It was bought-back by the City of Palmdale as an airport after the war, then re-acquired by the U.S. Air Force in 1946 and became Plant 42.
  • In early 1951, The U.S. Air Force put the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation on contract to develop a master plan for its new Air Force Plant 42, almost within a month of putting Lockheed Aircraft Corporation on contract to re-open Air Force Plant 6 in Georgia.
  • In 1956, Lockheed leased what was designated as Air Force Plant 42’s Site 10 in its master plan, which it has since developed into its Plant 10 research, development, manufacturing, test and production facility, where the L-1011 TriStar production line was established in the 1980’s.
  • Lockheed has also ocupied Sites 2 & 7 where the U-2, SR-71 and other operational overhaul and maintenance programs have been located.
Satellite images of Air Force Plant 6 over time, from before Lockheed Aircraft Corporation was asked in 1951 by the Air Force to develop a plan for full-development of the site . The Air Force’s goal was to create Air Force Plant 42 as, more or less, an extension of Edwards AFB to support U.S. aerospace defense contractor – aircraft development & flight testing that needed to be moved outside of the urban sprawl that had started to squeeze-out aerospace development programs at Air Force and contractor-owned aircraft plants in Los Angeles County.

The first photo at left is from the1953 after the 1930’s emergency CAA airstrip had become the Palmdale Army Airfield in World War II and had been acquired as a civil airfield, The 1980’s photo was taken when Lockheed was producing the L-1011 TriStar commercial passenger aircraft at what it called “Plant 10,” where Lockheed built building 601 — the L-1010 main production and assembly building clearly visible in the lower-left hand corner of the photo — and to the north, building 602, the L-1011 flight test center and hanger. The photo at right is how Plant 42 looks today with my best-guess at which firms are occupying or using which of the sites.

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The Boeing Designed, Lockheed Georgia Division-Built B-47 Stratojets

During the 1950s, under now leased and operated by the Georgia Division of the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation under the leadership of James Carmichael and his vice president and assistant general manager, Daniel Houghton, Air Force Plant 6 saw a surge in production. Employment rose to 20,000 employees while Lockheed refurbished World War II vintage B-29Bs for the Korean conflict, and also produced 394 Boeing-designed B-47 Stratojets under license from Boeing.  It was during this same period of time when the U.S. Navy relocated it’s U.S. Naval Reserve Station from Peachtree-DeKalb Airport, a move that required a runway expansion to 10,000′ to handle its U.S. Naval jet aircraft.

The first eight B-47’s produced by Lockheed were B-47B models, building using major assemblies produced at other B-57 factories, with the first flight by December 1952, which nearly coincided with the delivery of the last of the 120 B-29’s refurbished in Marietta. . By April, Lockheed was fully-producing the B-47B models, B-47 Stratojet and C-130 production lines were repositioned several times during the 1950’s. And, in addition to having chase planes supporting flight test operations at Air Force Plant 6, Boeing B-97 Stratotakers assigned — a derrivative of the B-29 bomber — to support aerial refueling test and operations with the six-engine, turbojet-powered B-47 nuclear capable bomber/
Initially, the B-47 assembly line was set-up to run west to east for the eight B-47B & E models, just as the B-29 and recently completed B-29 refurbishment program, and by April 1953, were producing the more advanced B-47E in blocks, that were cycled back-through the plant for subsquent modifications, essentially two different B-47 production lines. In 1954,, a west-end hangar door was added to accommodate running the B-47E line and the new C-130 production line side-by-side at first in the opposite direction from each other, with the B-47E line running east-to-west. Eventually, the C-130 line was also re-positioned and also ran east-to-west. The first C-130A production model rolled out in March 1955, and the 386th and last B-47E rolled-off the line in December 1957.
The eight-plane modification hangar, building B-54, was errected in 1956 on the aircraft parking ramp to the west of building B-4 to better-accommodate the B-47 and C-130 modification programs.

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The Lockheed YC-130 / C-130 / L-100 Hercules Program

To the surprise of many people who don’t know the history of the C-130, the aircraft design and prototypes were both created by the Lockheed California Division’s “Skunk Works” using Skunk Works practices, and the two YC-130s were the only C-130s not produced in Georgia. However, Lockheed was able to successfully stand-up the full-scale production program across country at its fledgling Georgia Division where, to date, over 2,600 C-130s, including over 500 of the latest C-130J-models have been produced and delivered, and over the 67 years it’s been in production, has operated out of over 70 different nations at one time or another.

“I think the concept was good, it demonstrated our ability to hand it off to another production organization who took it and made it work.” Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson

The YC-130 Program Chronology

Fairchild’s C-119 Flying Boxcar

On 2 February 1951, the United States Air Force issued a General Operating Requirement (GOR) and Request for Proposal (RFP) for a new transport to Boeing, Douglas, Fairchild, Lockheed, Martin, Chase Aircraft, North American, Northrop, and Airlifts Inc., noting Fairchild, North American, Martin, and Northrop declined to participate. The purpose was to develop a new tactical airlifter to replace the recently developed and still in-production Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar that was already proving to be inadequate for the evolving, larger and heavier U.S. military needs in the early stages of the Korean conflict. Proposals were due by April and oversight of the Lockheed proposal effort was assigned to Willis Hawkins, who managed Lockheed’s preliminary design department at the Lockheed Aircraft Company and its Skunk Works in Burbank, California.

In April 1951, the five competing companies submitted a total of ten designs: Lockheed two, Boeing one, Chase three, Douglas three, and Airlifts Inc. one. Lockheed responded to the 7-page request for proposal with a 130-page document for what was at the time the Lockheed model L-206-1, later changed to model L-82. Lockheed also submitted a second model L-206-2 design that looked similar to the L-206-1, but with a smaller wing area.

Note: There was a third L-206-3 design that evaluated the feasibility of a packet-aircraft concept that was not submitted. If Kelly Johnson thought the L-206-1’s design was un-Lockheed and ungainly, I can only imagine what he thought of the L-206-3. I’ve since seen independent confirmation of the existence of the L-206-3 concept, which was greatly appreciated.

Lockheed Model L-206-3: The Packet Concept that never got off the Ground?

On 2 July 1951, Lockheed was selected to move forward with its L-206-1 design and build two prototypes, based on a 2-month long evaluation by the Air Force, where its closest competition had been the four-engine turbo-prop design submitted by Douglas Aircraft.

On 11 July 1951, Lockheed was awarded contract AF 33 (038)30453 calling for the construction and flight testing of two prototypes of what had been designated as the YC-130 and was eventually given the name “Hercules” based on an employee competition to come up with a name following the contract award.

In September 1952, Georgia Division Vice President and General Manager, Dan Haughton, succeeded in making the business case to propose and establish the full-scale development and production program at Air Force Plant 6 and the Lockheed Georgia Division’s plant in Marietta, Georgia.

  • The rationale was sound, as production lines for Lockheed’s T-33 Shooting Star jet trainers, C-121 and commercial Constellation airliners, as well as the P-2 Neptune maritime patrol and anti-submarine aircraft were already running at capacity and the Lockheed California Division’s Burbank plant did not have the additional capacity to support C-130 full-scale production program.
  • Lockheed had just re-opened Air Force Plant 6 in January for the short-term refurbishment of 120 Boeing B-29s and licensed, co-production production of the Boeing B-47 Stratojet. However, after cleaning-up then establishing the B-29 and B-47 production lines, Air Force Plant 6 clearly had the additional capacity required for a C-130 production line.
  • A widely-needed, tactical transport with an international export market would potentially give the Georgia Division at Air Force Plant 6 a longer production horizon in Marietta, an underlying goal of Carmichael when they agreed to re-open the plant. It was a vision that was shared by Haughton, who was an influential and rising star at Lockheed and would become Chairman and CEO in 1967.

In October 1952, Lockheed announced its decision to establish the C-130 full-scale production program at the Georgia Division in Marietta, with Al Brown as the program Manager.

  • Brown moved temporarily from Marietta to Burbank and along with a team of Georgia Division engineers who worked side-by-side with the California Division during the prototype design, manufacturing and assembly process.
  • At the same time, the portions of California Division’s design team were temporarily moved to Marietta to oversee and work with the Georgia Division on the production proposal. The combined design team made a few changes to reduce the unit cost of the C-130, but the visual difference between the prototypes and first production articles was not noticeable.
  • Note: Willis Hawkins — the man credited with the design of the C-130 — during an interview regarding the C-130 program recalled how most of California Division personnel sent to Georgia, “…went kicking and screaming, because they didn’t want to have anything to do with Georgia. Two years later, we tried to bring them back to California and they were kicking and screaming again because they liked Georgia so much that they didn’t want to come back.”

On 10 February 1953, the USAF issued the first production contract for seven (7) C-130s, AF33(600)-22286), nearly a year-and-a-half prior to the YC-130’s first flight on 23 August 1954.

During 1953, the C-130 personnel moves continued and asset transfers from the California to the Georgia Division began, to include the move of the 50-ton, wood and metal full-scale C-130 mock-up. The massive mock-up was placed on a U.S. Army barge and had to pass through the Panama Canal on its way from the port at Long Beach, California, to the port at Savannah, Georgia, and be trucked 270-miles to Air Force Plant 6 in Marietta.

On 23 August 1954, the second YC-130, LAC 1002 and USAF SN 53-3397, successfully completed its first flight, an hour-long flight from the Lockheed plant adjacent to the Burbank Airport to the Air Force Flight Test Station at Edwards Air Force Base, California, 51 miles north-northeast of Burbank, with a Lockheed-built PV-2 Neptune flying chase and Kelly Johnson aboard, now an advocate for the C-130 design.

  • Pilots Stan Beltz and Roy Wimmer reported good handling characteristics and considerably better-than-expected performance. The latter was due in part to the basic guaranteed mission weight of 108,000lbs having been reduced by 5,000lbs, allowing cruising speed to be ~20% higher, takeoff distances to be ~25% lower, ceiling and initial climb rates to be ~35% higher, landing distances ~40% shorter, and single-engine-out climb rates were a stunning 55% higher than predicted.
  • The first YC-130 built, LAC 1001, SN 53-3996, was initially used for structural ground tests and did not achieve its first flight until 21 January 1955.
At left is the first YC-130 prototype (c/n 1001, sn 53-3396) being fabricated in Burbank, Califorina, immediately after fuselage mate was completed back in July 1954, and in the middle is the second YC-130 (c/n 1002, sn 53-3397) taking-off from Burbank Airport: First Flight for the YC-130 on 23 August 1954. At upper right is a photo taken much later in the program of 53-3397 taking-off from Palmdale with wing tanks now attached that is often-times mis-identified as the YC-130 First Flight take-off. The first prototype, c/n 1001, was scrapped at Warner Robins AFB in October 1960. The second prototype, c/n 1002, was scrapped at Indianapolis, Indiana in April 1962. 

In 1954, and shortly after the successful first flight, the Air Force increased its C-130 production order from seven to 75 airplanes.

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Interesting Developments: Full-Scale Models & Hydrostatic Testing

Upper row of photos shows the 50-ton, Model L-206 Full-Scale wood and metal Mock-Up moved from California to Georgia via the Panama Canal, being trucked from Savannah to Marietta, and dropped-off in Building B-4 where it was used to support full-production model design after being re-assembled.
The lower row of photos includes an illustration of the water tank erected near B-4 for hydrostatic testing of a full-scale production fuselage and center wing box, and then the man-made basin that was built to support hydrostatic testing of the empennage and other major components, which still sits near side South Cobb Drive.

The First Articles & First Flights

At right is the 3rd C-130A production aircraft (53-3132) in final assembly at building B-1 in Marietta, Georgia, and in the middle is the 1st production article. “The First Lady” C-130A (53-3129) sits on the B-4 ramp with a pair of B-47s, while in the background the west-end of the runway is extended ahead of the Naval Air Station move to Marietta. At the lower-right, the First Flight of the First Lady on 4 July 1955. “The First Lady” (53-3129) was later inducted into the first AC-130A mod program and remained in service until being retired to the Eglin AFB Museum in 1995 where it still can be seen.

The First Lady & Fire on Number 2

The upper four images were all taken of C-130A 53-3129 on 14 July 1955, during the 3rd flight where it did a photo op at Stone Mountain Georgia, but experienced a fuel-fitting failure on Engine #2 during final approach to Dobbins AFB. The leaked fuel collecting aft of the engine erupted into a fire when the aircraft slowed to a stop and fuel flowed-forward where it was ignited by the engine. In a case of bad timing, the Locheed Board of Directors were at the plant on 14 July for their board meeting and to see “their new airplane, and future of Lockheed Aircraft Corporation’s Georgia Division” when the incident occured: it was purportedly a somber board meeting and dinner.
The lower row of images illustrate how, like the mythological Phoenix that rose from ashes, “The First Lady” C-130A 53-3129 received a new center and outer wings and was cycled back into production during 1956, being delivered to the USAF in 1958 where it supported test operations. In 1968, the first AC-130A conversion prototype was flown by Raytheon, and 53-3129 was one of the first 10 C-130A’s to receive the modification. It went on to serve another 27-years until it was retired to the Air Force Armament Museum at Elgin, AFB, FL, in 1995 where it sits today

The C-130A Is No Trash Hauler

The C-130A final assembly line ran in parallel but eventually opposite directions as the B-47 assembly line in Building B-1, noting the hangar doors on the west end of the building were added in the 1950’s. The first C-130A models were, like the B-29s and B-47s, unpainted aluminum, but with international-orange tail and wing markings to help support mid-air crash avoidance until radar system development and TCAS made it unnecessary.

The photo at right is of the “Four Horsemen” C-130A Aerial Demonstation Team based at Stuart AFB, Tennessee. Yes, there was such a unit, and you can read more about them here. You can also find a Lockheed-produced video from the 1950’s here.

A Plane for All Reasons & Missions

Almost as soon as C-130A models began arriving at units, the significant and transformational improvements the C-130A’s provided with their four jet-age, turbro-prop engines, outstanding flight characteristics and other capabilities caused variants to be developed almost immediately. One of the first was the LC-130A “Ski Bird” modification that enabled the large cargo aircraft to support U.S. Navy support re-supply missions to bases in Antarctica. The photo at the lower left by one of the newer LC-130H Ski Bird models that replaced the older LC-130Fs, essentially US Navy C-130E models with ski modifications.

Moving from the upper right to left, once again the U.S. Navy was a C-130 operator from early-on and fielded the EC-130Q electronic combat variant to support the TACAMO (“Take Charge and Move Out”) mission. The TACAMOs provided airborne Very Low Frequency (VLF) communications to the U.S. submarine fleet via a long, trailing antenna that could be deployed and recovered during flight. Above center is a USAF C-130J-30 with the MAFFS fire-retardant dispersal system supporting wildfire suppressionmissions, and at right is a Drone Control C-130 (DC) used to launch target and other drones used by the U.S. military.
At the lower left is a U.S. Navy KC-130F that was used to demonstrate carrier operations in Octover and November 1963 by successfully landing and taking off from the U.S. Forrestal: KC-130F BuNo 149798, loaned to the U.S. Naval Air Test Center, made 29 touch-and-go landings, 21 unarrested full-stop landings and 21 unassisted take-offs on Forrestal at a number of different weights.. In the middle is an HC-130H fitted with the Fulton airborne recovery system (aka, skyhook) used for various types of special missions.

The L-100 Commercial Variants

A commercial variant of the C-130, the L-100, was developed initially as a de-militarized version of the C-130E and first flown in 1964. Most commercial freight operators felt the basic C-130 fuselage cargo box did not have the volume needed for the aircraft to take full-advantage of it’s full-payload capacity to be economically feasible so, early-on, as shown in the middle row of photos, the first L-100 “house bird” was stretched 8.4′ with a pair of fuselage “plugs” installed fore and aft of the center wing, designated the L-100-20. This was a 1959 design option that Lockheed offered to C-130 customers back in 1959, but was not actually developed until Delta requested additional information which lead to the Lockheed “house bird” receiving the prototype stretch mod in 1964. A subsequent, 2′-longer front plug was developed for the L-100-30 model, which eventually was offered on the military C-130 variants, aka, C-130H-30 and C-130J-30. L-100’s were sold until 1992 and operated by both commercial and military services. SAFAIR has historically operated one of the largest fleets of L-100s, but Lynden Air Cargo based in Alaska has also emerged as a key L-100 operator, and also serves as a service center for other L-100 operators. In 2016, the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics developed an update of the L-100 re-designated the LM-100J, and obtained its FAA Certification in November 2019. The LM-100J is now in production and being flown by new operators, like Pallas Aviation in Texas at the lower right.

The C-130J Variants in Production

The C-130J model was developed in the early 1990s and achieved first flight on 5 April 1996. Rather than including a lengthy section on the development program, I’ve decided to include several links to excellent on-line resources for those interested in learning more.

As as June 2022, over 500 C-130Js have been built and delivered since 1999, making it one of the most widely-used, military airlifters. Despite being a nearly 30-year old redesign of the 71-year-old original, the C-130 continues to perform a wide variety of missions and high-levels of inter-operability by the nearly 50 nations with C-130s or L-100s, of which 16 operate the C-130J.

As of June 2022, the USAF active-duty, reserves and guard units have the largest C-130 fleet with 279 airframes, of which 163 are C-130J models, but plans to reduce that number to 255 in the near term. It’s important to note, C-130J-30 long-body models are being procured to replace national guard operated, older C-130H “short-body” models which will likely account for the ability to make those planned reductions in airframes without a significant reduction in airlift capability, given the vastly increased payload and performance of the C-130J models.

The above nine photos represent the primary, current C-130J variant models that are in production. The C-130J with its increased power, range, payload and advanced systems is even more capable than its predecessors, with the USAF perhaps gaining the most of its fleet recapitalization since it replaced all of it’s active-duty unit C-130E & C-130H “short” models with the C-130J-30 and its vastly increased payload capacity and performance. The USAF Special Forces and Air Rescue & Recovery units gained additional capabilities with their USMC KC-130J tanker-based aircraft and various other key in-line modifications like the universal aerial refueling receptacle slipway installation (UARRSI), IR optics and many other features with the inherent, improved systems, range, performance and payload of the J-models.

The Embraer C-390 Millennium, The First Serious Alternative

The two-engine, turbofan powered Embraer C-390 on which development began in 2009 with the first flight on 3 February 2015. It also received Brazilian civil type certification on 23 October 2018. It was developed to provide an modern alternative to the four-engine, turboprop C-130, targeting nations with smaller fleets of aging, older-model C-130s or Russian-produced medium cargo aircraft. At present, Embraer has sold aircraft to its home country and launch customer Brazil, as well as Portugal, Hungary and most-recently the C-390 was selected over the C-130J by the Netherlands. A total of eight (8) C-390s have been produced to date, with the first customer delivery to Brazil in 2019 who, as of June 2022, has five (5) of the aircraft in service.

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The Lockheed Skunk Works Designed, Georgia Built L-329 / C-140 JetStar Business Jet

In something of a reprisal of the C-130 program model, in the 1950’s Kelly Johnson’s Skunk Works decided to create the business jet market with a cutting-edge, Lockheed Skunk Work’s design: the CL-329 JetStar, the first business jet.

What’s amazing, and perhaps says a lot about Kelly Johnson’s drive, determination and leadership, is that the new project was started while the Lockheed-California Division was already in the midst of running production lines for the T-33 Shooting Star jet trainers, C-121 and commercial Constellation airliners, as well as the P-2 Neptune maritime patrol and anti-submarine aircraft, while also developing the L-1649 Starliner airliner (the final version of the Constellation), L-188 Electra airliner, U-2 Dragon Lady high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, and F-104 Starfighter interceptor. Ben Rich’s book, Skunk Works, captures a lot about Kelly Johnson’s influence and personality in his book that’s well worth a read: I worked with a lot of the amazing people mentioned in the book at Lockheed over the years, and all of them were quite humble with regard to their work and accomplishments, but all were brilliant, focused and committed.

Development of the L-329 JetStar

Like the L-206 / C-130 Hercules, the aircraft was designed by the Lockheed California-Division’s Skunk Works using a Skunk Works design team and practices in Burbank, California. Two-prototypes were built and had first flights that began at the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation-owned, Burbank-Hollywood Airport and ended 51-miles away at the Edwards Air Force Base test center.

The following are extracts from an excellent article on the UTX and UCX Programs that ultimately led to the development and production of both the Lockheed JetStar and the North American Saberliner.

In 1956, the US Air Force (USAF) issued a “general design specification (GDS)” for two light jet transports, including a twin-engine machine with four passenger seats, for the training / utility role, designated the ” Utility-Trainer Experimental (UTX)”; and a larger, four-engine light airliner / utility transport, the “Utility-Cargo Experimental (UCX)”. The GDS was not really a request for proposals, in anticipation of a contract award; the Air Force it had no money to issue a development contract, and any companies working on the UTX or UCX would have to do it on company funds. The most that could be said, if not really promised, by the USAF was that the service would be interested in buying a quantity of aircraft in both categories if companies developed them on their own funds — suggesting a buy of 1,500 UTX and 300 UCX aircraft.

The quantities were tempting, the lack of commitment discouraging. However, US aviation companies had been interested in developing a light jetliner for the civil market anyway, and the UTX-UCX requirement was more or less just a prod in the right direction.

Utility-Cargo Experimental (UCX) Program:

The Lockheed Company decided to move ahead on a design for the UCX specification. The program was under the general direction of Clarence “Kelly” Johnson, Lockheed’s chief designer. The first of two prototypes of the “L-329 Jetstar” performed its initial flight on 4 September 1957, with test pilot Ray Goudey at the controls.  The Jetstar was a sleek aircraft, of all-metal construction, with low-mounted swept wings, tricycle landing gear, and turbojet engines mounted on each side of the rear fuselage. It was a configuration that would become all but universal for executive jets.

The McDonnell Aircraft Company also developed a small four-jet airliner for the UCX specification, the “McDonnell 119”; when the UCX effort faded out, the company tried to push the design for commercial service as the “Model 220.” The Model 220 looked like a “baby” version of a 707 or DC-8 jetliner, with low-mounted swept wings and its four engines — Westinghouse J34-WE-22 turbojets with 13.3 kN (1,350 kgp / 2,980 lbf) thrust each — on individual pylons under each wing. It could carry two pilots, a flight attendant, and ten passengers in luxury accommodations; or it could carry 26 passengers in a high-density configuration.

Utility-Trainer Experimental (UTX)

When the USAF came up with the UCX-UTX specification in 1956, the North American Aviation company decided to pursue the smaller UTX trainer, having been working on concepts for a small twinjet transport aircraft from 1952. Even if the UTX business didn’t amount to much, North American still felt their small twinjet had potential in the civil market. The initial prototype — the “NA-265” — performed it maiden flight on 16 September 1958, with test pilots J.O. Roberts and Gage Mace at the controls. It was called the “Sabreliner”, because it leveraged off the design of the flight surfaces for the North American F-86 Sabre fighter. Since no other companies chose to compete for the UTX, NAA won the contest by default.

The UCX & UTX Programs Go Nowhere….

The original UTX/UCX programs fizzled, but both the Lockheed L-1329 JetStar which was provisionally chosen over the McDonnell 119/220 (only 1 ever built) for the UTC program and the North American Saberliner, the only offering for the UTX program ended-up being procured to meet other restated requirements.

The Lockheed Jetstar I

Of the 300 aircraft envisioned by the Air Force for the UCX, the USAF only bought sixteen Jetstar I’s, in two variants:

  • C-140A: Five Jetstars for the Air Force Communications Service, being equipped to test and calibrate airport navigation aids. They went into service in 1962, and served to the early 1990s.
  • VC-140B: Eleven Jetstars as liaison / VIP transports, flown by the Military Airlift Command as part of the presidential flight, carrying high-ranking government officials. They were actually among the first Jetstars to be delivered, in 1961, with five actually obtained as near-stock “C-140Bs”, and then promptly upgraded to VC-140B spec.
  • The US Navy also ordered two “C-140C” Jetstars, but the order was canceled; the Air Force also considered a trainer version of the Jetstar, the “T-40”, but it didn’t happen.
  • The Jetstar was obtained by a number of foreign military services, including Germany, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia, for use in liaison, utility, and VIP transport roles. The Jetstar was said to have carried an unusual number of heads of state. One was used by the US National Aeronautics & Space Administration as a testbed aircraft, in one instance with an experimental turboprop engine on a pylon mounted on the back.

The North American Saberliner

What became the USAF T-39A was intended for the multi-engine pilot training role, but could also be used as a four-seat utility / VIP transport and 143 T-39As were built for those purposes, far more than the Lockheed JetStar.

Air Force Saberliners:

  • Some T-39As were configured as cargo / personnel transports, being designated “CT-39A”, while one T-39A modified as an avionics trials platform was designated “NT-39A”.
  • Six T-39s were obtained by the USAF in parallel with the T-39A as “T-39B” trainers for the Republic F-105D fighter-bomber, these Sabreliners being fitted with the F-105’s R-14 NASARR main radar, accommodated in a larger nose, and AN/APN-131 doppler radar, plus workstations for three trainees.
  • The Air Force also contemplated a similar “T-39C” to provide systems training for the McDonnell F-101B Voodoo interceptor. It didn’t happen — but some Air Force Sabreliners were converted to “T-39F” configuration, being fitted with electronic warfare kit for the Republic F-105G Wild Weasel defense-suppression aircraft. They were known as “Teeny Weeny Weasels”.
  • All Air Force T-39s, incidentally, were delivered with two passenger windows on each side of the fuselage. It is possible to find photos of “T-39s” with five windows on each side from airshows, but these appear to be stretched, turbofan-powered civilian Sabreliners simply redone in military colors.
  • In 1987, Sabreliner Corporation got a contract from the USAF for support of Air Force T-39 fleet. The exercise involved a service-life extension of eight T-39As and two T-39Bs.

Navy Saberliners:

  • * The Navy obtained the Sabreliner as well, the initial variant being briefly designated “T3J-1”, though none were delivered with that designation; the Navy actually obtained them with the designation of “T-39D”, as a consequence of the Pentagon’s unification of aircraft designations in 1962.
  • The T-39D was originally envisioned as a radar trainer for the McDonnell F3H-1 Demon carrier-based jet fighter, though the Demon was out of service by the time the T-39D came up to speed.
  • The Navy obtained 42 T-39Ds, in three configurations: One with no radar, being used as a navigation trainer; One with the AN/APQ-126 terrain-following radar from the Vought A-7 attack aircraft; and One with the AN/APQ-94 radar from the Vought F-8D/E Crusader fighter. As delivered, they all had two triangular windows on each side, just like all the USAF T-39s.
  • In 1967, the Navy ordered 7 Series 40 Sabreliners — by that time, with the three windows — for the global fleet support role, being fitted with long-range military navigation systems. These machines initially being designated “VT-39E”, but quickly redesignated “CT-39E”.
  • Navy also obtained 13 larger “CT-39G” cargo-transport machines, based on the Sabreliner Series 60, with some of them modified to “T-39G” standard for mission training; they only had weather radar. These were the only stretched Sabreliners obtained by the US military.
  • In the early 1990s, Sabreliner Corporation also modified 15 Series 40 machines, obtained from the civil market, to “T-39N” standard for use with the UNFO program; they had AN/APG-66 multimode radar, allowing them to be used for air-to-air radar training, and radar navigation. In sum, total Saberliner production included 211 military aircraft and 426 commercial.

Follow-On Development & Production of the Lockheed JetStar

After a successful flight test program, Lockheed established the production program in Lockheed’s Georgia-Division’s Building B-1 main assembly building at Air Force Plant 6 in Marietta, Georgia. Production began in the late 1950’s with the production model first flight on 21 October 1960. In addition to the first two prototypes, another 202 JetStars were produced in Georgia, along with 16 C-140 military versions by the time the last JetStar was delivered in 1978.

Starting in the Upper left is the 1st JetStar Prototype in final assembly at Burbank, with Kelly Johnson facing the camera in the foreground while the crew huddles under the wing. In the middle is the first / ferry flight from Burbank-Hollywood Airport to Edwards AFB on 4 September 1957. At right is what I believe to be a photo taken at Edwards AFB, ahead of a subsequent flight with  Ray Goudey (pilot), Bob Schumacher (co-pilot), Ernie Joiner (flt engineer),
Kelly Johnson (designer & VP of Skunk Works), Jim Wood (USAF) and Tony LeVier (P-80 chase pilot). Note: Many folks who worked at Lockheed in later years may have worked with former Lockheed Vice President of Production, Paul Schumacher, who was Bob Schumacher’s son. I had the priviledge of meeting Paul’s father, Bob, when he visited Paul in Marietta at Building L-22 during the early days of the F-22 EMD program.

The lower three photos are the newly-built, JetStar production aircraft in Marietta. Initially, the Jetstars were built in Building B-1, but in 1966 the production line and 700 employees were relocated to the recently finished L-11 Jetstar production building, to make additional factory floor space available in building B-1 for the C-5 program. At the center is first flight of the production JetStar at Marietta on 20 October 1960, and at lower right, the 1st three production JetStars (unpainted) with the 2nd prototype (white tail, registered N329K) at the ramp at Marietta in 1960. After the test program was completed, the nearest to the camera JetStar (N9201R) was delivered to the Federal Aviation Administration while the next aircraft went to NASA. In the background at the left is the C-130B Hercules modified as a boundary layer air control test aircraft (US Air Force serial number 58-0712) while at right is the second US Marine Corps KC-130F tanker (US Navy Bureau Number 147573) built.
In the upper left, the first two JetStar prototypes, and the only two JetStars to be fitted with the Bristol Orpheus turbojets, all other JetStars were fitted with four turbojets of a few different manufacturers, despite the center image of an ad for the JetStar that suggested buyers could chose between 2 and 4 engines. At the upper right is a VC-140 JetStar used by President Johnson who used it extensively and called it Air Force One/Half, as well as presidents Nixon, Ford, Carter and Reagan.

Starting at the middle left, the first JetStar prototype at Edwards during the initial tests and then, in the center, when the same aircraft had become Kelly Johnson’s personnal aircraft (note the Skunk on the tail). At center right is Elvis Presley’s 2nd JetStar, a 1960 Lockheed L-1329 JetStar 6 (sn5004, Reg. N777EP) nicknamed Hounddog II, purchased for $899,702.60 on September 2, 1975 while he was awaiting delivery of CV-880 “Lisa Marie.” Both aircraft remain on display at Graceland in Memphis, TN.

At the lower left is a Lockheed JetStar house bird used in filming the James Bond movie Goldfinger, as it a different one at the lower-right, and in the center is a model of the JetStar used in the film.

For Elvis Fans, there is purportedly a Hounddog 1, a 1961 Lockheed L-1329 JetStar 8 C/N 5016 (N20TF and 8 other Reg. No’s including its last one N440RM issued in 1983) that Elvis purportedly acquired, but became tied-up in some type of legal investigation and could not be used. As the story goes, he purchased the 2nd, 1960 JetStar 6 N777EP to replace it, while the 1st one sat at an airstrip in Roswell, New Mexico, un-preserved where it was stripped of key components and fell into unsalvageable disrepair. It surface in 2008 and was auctioned-off, but still sat there and was put up for auction again in 2017, and again in 2018. It’s likely still there. But, it’s engine nacelles are at the Tennessee Museum of Aviation in Sevierville, TN, on display which is, well, interesting. Personally, the time lines don’t line-up, as the aircraft would have still been owned by a firm in Saudi Arabia at the time of Elvis’ death in 1977. The only possible scenario I could imagine is if the aircraft was part of a business deal for a concert tour in Saudi Arabia that never came to pass despite several attempts.

The first JetStar II, serial 5201, is shown at left on the assembly line on the south side of L-11, the JetStar Engineering, Production & Assembly building built in 1966 to make room for the C-5A in building B-1. This photo was likely taken in early 1976, well after JetStar production was moved to L-11, along with the 700 employees who worked on the program and were relocated in 1966. Ship 5201 rolled-out of the L-11 assembly building in June 1976, shown at right.

An Iconic Aircraft In It’s own Right

The Lockheed JetStar has an amazing history of its own and, rather than even attempting to summarize all of the facts, stories and tales, I’ve included several links to what I think are informative websites with additional information for folks like me who have always admired the JetStar, having somewhat grown-up with it when it was clearly the cutting-edge in business jet technology during the 1960’s, never mind becoming an overnight pop-culture icon with its appearance in the 1964, third Ian Fleming novel-based James Bond motion picture, “Goldfinger.”

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Other Resources:

The Lockheed-Georgia Designed & Built L-300 / C-141 Starlifter Airlifter

The next major project was the first Lockheed Georgia Division-developed, designed and produced aircraft, the L-300 / C-141 Starlifter, so you’ll forgive the extra-long entry as it was perhaps one of the most important achievements by the Lockheed Georgia Division.

The USAF Requirements & Lockheed’s Proposed Design

Douglas C-124 Globemaster II

The program’s genesis was the USAF’s need to modernize the Military Air Transport Service (MATS) stratetic airlift capability by replacing its now obsolete, properller-driven heavy-lift transport, the Douglas C-124 Globemaster II with a jet-age transport. MATS initially attempted to fill the need with the Boeing 707-based C-135 Stratolifter, but its side-loading cargo doors would not accomodate the U.S. Army’s oversized equipment or allow for cargo airdrops.

Therefore, in the spring of 1960, the USAF released Specific Operational Requirement (SOR) 182 outlining the functional and performanace requirements for a new aircraft with the ability to perform both the MATS strategic and tactical airlift missions. The strategic role required the aircraft be capable supporting missions with a 3,500 nautical mile radius while carrying a 60,000 pound load. For the tactical role, the same aircraft had to be able to perform low-altitude air drops of supplies, as well as carry and drop combat paratroops. Several companies responded, to include Boeing, Lockheed, and General Dynamics.

Lockheed Aircraft Corporation gave the Georgia Division the lead on developing a design concept, response to the SOR and proposal. The design team took a clean-sheet of paper approach using its experience with the smaller, purely tactical C-130 Hercules airlifter by starting with the cargo box: it needed to have a much longer, unobstructed cargo floor that could still accomodate the standard-size intermodal container in terms of height and width, and leverage the benefits of jet propulsion and improvements in aircraft planform and wing design.

What they developed was the Lockheed Model 300 with the ability to carry 154 troops, or 94,510lbs of cargo in a jet-powered aircraft with a swept wings mounted above the fuselage and four, pylon-mounted, Pratt & Whitney TF33 turborfan engines with a rear-opening set of clamshell doors and ramp below a T-tail, to keep the horizontal stablizers out of the jet exhaust flow,

Lockheed was notified the USAF had selected and was put on-contract to develop the Lockheed Model 300 on 13 March 1961, and produce five aircraft that could meet both military and civil airworthiness standards for test and evaluation, with the official designation of C-141.

Initial Production

The detailed design and prototype, sn 61-2775, was fabricated and rolled-out of the Air Force Plant 6 Building B-1 main assembly building 29-months later, on 22 August 1963. It was also the first aircraft to be designed and produced at the plant that would go into full-rate production. First flight was achieved on 17 December 1963, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the Wright brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina: probably not a coincidence. The first production aircraft was delivered to the USAF in April 1965, and a total of 284 C-141A models were produced at Marietta, with the final aircraft being delivered in February 1968.

In the first row, upper left, is a row of C-141’s on the final assembly line at the K-wall in Building B-1 at Air Force Plant 6’s B-1 main assembly building, the middle and right upper photos were also taken of the C-141 final assembly line in B-1 And, this is just a guess, but I suspect in the photo at the upper right you can see the canvas-walled enclosure that was erected inside B-1 (aka, the tent) behind the C-141 assembly line where the two XB-70 Valkyrie mid-bodies were assembled. . At the second row are photos of the 1st C-141 that rolled out of the B-1 building on 22 August 1963, and then taxiiing out and taking-off on it’s first flight at Marietta on 17 December 1963. At the lower left row, is a photo of C-141As on the Marietta flghtline, and then a color photo from the same location with the only commercial L-300 version of the C-141 in the same company livery as the L-100 commercial variant of the C-130. At the lower right, is the 1st C-141 with an early C-130 and Boeing C-47 transport on the B-4 ramp during the C-141 roll-out event.

The C-141, like the L-100, “Bulked-Out” & Gets Stretched

While meeting all of the USAF’s requirements, the C-141A tended to “bulk out” before it “grossed out,” in much the same way the original, L-100 commercial version of the C-130E did, i.e., it often had additional lift capacity that went wasted because the cargo box was full before the plane’s weight capacity had been reached. Lockheed’s engineers and production team converted the Lockheed L-100 “house bird” into the first L-100-20 “stretch” model by adding fuselage “plugs” fore and aft of the center wing box.

In 1978, the USAF put Lockheed on contract to do the same stretch modification to 270 of the 284 C-141As, and a major modification line was established in the B-1 main assembly building where the C-141s had originally been built. The C-141 stretch modification added a total of 23.4-feet to the cargo box in what was designated as the C-141B model. Stretching the 270 C-141As provided the USAF with the equivalent lift capacity of 90 additional C-141’s. During the stretch-mod program that ran until 1982, a universal aerial refueling receptacle slipway installation (UARRSI) was also added to the C-141B which enabled air-to-air refueling, giving it virtually unlimited range, notwithstanding aircrew limitations.

At the upper left is a color photo of C-141A models on the C-141B “stretch mod” on the B-1 assembly line in Marietta where they received their 23.4′ plug mods and UARRSI systems. In the middle is a photo of a C-141A (upper) and a completed, stretched C-141B (lower) side-by-side to the east of the B-1 assembly building. At right, is a C-141B during aerial refueling testing with a USAF KC-135.

C-141 Finishes & Paint Schemes

And shown in the upper left, the C-141 was initially produced in the weight-saving, natural aluminum finish. The aircraft in the center is the only L-300, non-military version of the C-141 produced in the red and white house livery colors. Having been unable to sell the L-300, it was donated to NASA. At the upper right is the NASA-operated, sole L-300 with its new, uniquely NASA all-white paint scheme and blue stripe. In the middle are the three finishes most may remember, the original Military Airlift Command (MAC) grey and white that was also used on the original C-5A models, the European camouflage scheme that was used on the C-5Bs and C-130s, and then the now ubiquitous flat grey used on all USAF airlifters. Along the lower row are some family photos.
The C-141 may have been the most photogenic of Lockheed’s airlifters, shown in the upper left along side a C-130E and a C-5A on the Air Force Plant “South Campus” flightline, below that sitting along side one of the two XB-70 Valkyries and an SR-71 at Edwards AFB for testing at the same time as the C-141, and the upper right also at Edwards AFB, CA, in a family photo with the Lockheed designed and built SR-71 Blackbird, F-104 Starfighter, the U-2 Dragon Lady, a T-33 Shooting Star, and HC-130 test article for the Fulton Recovery System. In the lower left, the stretched C-141B model that flew to every demonstration site is shown with five USAF F-16 Thunderbirds it supported, and at the lower right is C-141A, ship 66-0186, which became theYC-141B stretch mod prototype presently on display at the Marietta Aviation History & Technology Center in Marietta, Georgia.

The SOLL II, C-141 “AMP” and Eventually Replacement by the Boeing C-17

There were two other major modifications to the C-141Bs, as 13 were given a Special Operations Low-Level II (SOLL II) capability to support Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) missions in the early 1980’s, and a total of 63 C-141Bs received essentially an AMP-like upgrade of their avionics and navigation systems as well as “glass cockpit” displays during the 1990’s, with the last upgrade completed in late 2001: the 63 C-141Bs were re-designated C-141Cs.

In a somewhat ironic historic scenario, Lockheed’s C-141 Starlifter was replaced by the McDonnell-Douglas-designed and built C-17 Globemaster III, remembering it was the C-141 that replaced the original Douglas-designed and built C-124 Globemaster II. The C-17 was essentially a larger-version of the recently-mergerd, McDonnell-Douglas YC-15 prototype airlifter, developed when the USAF took a run at developing a replacement for the C-130s in 1970’s with its Advanced Medium STOL Transport (AMST) competition.

At left, is the McDonnell-Douglas YC-15 prototype, and at right is the now Boeing C-17 Globemaster III.

The C-17 was chosen over Lockheed’s entries into late 1970’s C-X program– updated variants of the C-5 and C-141 –and, today, it’s now the Boeing C-17, after McDonnell-Douglas was mereed into Boeing in 1997, shortly after it had merged-in Rockwell’s North American Aviation division in 1996. Phase-out of the C-141s began with the initial C-17 deliveries in July 1993, and was completed in May 2006 when, after 43-years in service, the last operational C-141 was retired.

Other Milestones & Resources

Three other historical notes of importance during the C-140, C-130, C-141 and early C-5 years of the 1960’s include:

  • The Lockheed Georgia Division was re-organized and given the distinction of being a separate operating company when it was made the Lockheed-Georgia Company.
  • The Lockheed-Georgia Company played a key-role in southern de-segrigation when, on May 25, 1961, corporate executives met with President John F. Kennedy at the White House to sign the nation’s first Plan for Progress between a major corporation and the federal government. In what Kennedy called a “milestone in the history of civil rights,” the Lockheed-Georgia Company agreed to integrate assembly lines, recruit and train Black managers, and be a pilot plant in the South to test Kennedy’s equal opportunity policy.
  • By 1969 the workforce reached an all-time peak of 32,945 employees, and the Lockheed-Georgia Company had become the catalyst in the growth of modern Cobb County and the north Atlanta suburbs.
  • The ratio of houly-rate-payed employees to salaried employees was 27-to-1 during B-29 production in February 1945 when the Bell Aircraft Corporation reached its peak employment of 28,158, but was reduced to just under 3-to-1 during the 1960’s when total employment was as similar levels.

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Other Resources:

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The Lockheed-Georgia Designed & Built L-500 / C-5 Galaxy Airlifter

Douglas C-133 Cargomaster

During 1961, as Lockheed’s C-141 was just beginning to be transformed from a paper-airplane into the first five pre-production test articles, the USAF signaled the need to replace it’s Douglas-built C-133 Cargomaster, Strategic Transport, with a new and larger transport to carry outsized equipment.

After several design studies, in April 1964 the USAF released a request for proposal for the Heavy Logistics System (CX-HLS), and airframe proposals were received in May from Boeing, Douglas, General Dynamics, Lockheed, and Martin Marietta, with the desired turbofan by-pass engine proposals being submitted by General Electric, Curtiss-Wright, and Pratt & Whitney. Boeing, Douglas, and Lockheed were given year-long study contracts for the airframe, along with General Electric and Pratt & Whitney for the engines.

The Proposed Designs & Cost-Based Decision Making

Boeing (top) and Douglas (bottom) CX-HLS / C-5A Concepts
Boeing’s CX-HLX Design with Lockheed C-5A

All three airframe designs shared a number of features. The cockpit was placed well above the cargo area to allow for cargo loading through a nose door. While the Boeing and Douglas designs used a cockpit pod on the top of the fuselage, the Lockheed-Georgia Company design extended the cockpit profile down the length of the fuselage, giving it an egg-shaped cross section. All of the designs had swept wings, as well as front and rear cargo doors, allowing simultaneous loading and unloading. Lockheed’s design featured a T-tail similar to the C-141’s, while the designs by Boeing and Douglas had conventional tails designs.

While the USAF considered Boeing’s design to be superior to Lockheed’s, the Lockheed design was selected in September 1965 due to the lower, total-cost and awarded a contract in December 1965. General Electric’s TF39 engine was selected in August 1965 to power the new transport plane.

The lower-cost aspect of Lockheed and all of the other bids submitted in this competition became a serious issue for Lockheed.

The Cathouse and The C-5 Flight Test Center, Building L-10

To accommodate C-5A production at Marietta, two unique new large structures had to be built. One was an empennage mate building where the vertical and horizontal T-tail assembly could be installed to the wingless fuselage, as the B-1 main assembly building could not accommodate the 65-foot height of the tail. The other was the L-10 C-5 final assembly, flight test center and hangars where the wing-mate assembly process could be completed. L-10 at the time it was built it was the largest cantilever building structure in the world, and able to fully-accommodate four C-5s.

Building B-102, the C-5 Cathouse

I sheepishly make mention of the nickname for the empennage mate building, if only because that was one of the first things I was told during my initial visit to Air Force Plant 6 and built in 1967: building B-102 also known as the cathouse. Based on what is now an off-color, politically-incorrect metaphor from the 1960’s, it was called the cathouse since it was where the C-5 “cigar” — the nickname for the main fuselage that rolled-out of the B-1 main assembly building without its wings or empennage — was taken to have the tail added, e.g., “It’s where the C-5 goes to get a little tail.”

In the upper row of photos, the C-5 cab-top and foreward fuselage move through sub-assembly in the Building B-1 main assembly buidling. In the center row is the cabt-op in sub-assembly, with the C-5 wing sub-assembly shop in the middle, and the final assembly line for the C-5 “cigar” fuselages in Building B-1. In the lower row of photos is “a cigar” following tailmate at building B-102 on the north campus on the south campus flightline. In the middle is a photo from inside the L-10 C-5 wing-mate and flight test center where two “cigars” are in queu to move into the closer, wing-mate position in L-10. At right, C-5’s on the Marietta south campus flightline.

Like The 1st C-130 , The 1st C-5 Falls Victim to a Fuel Fire

The first C-5A Galaxy (serial number 66-8303) was rolled out on 2 March 1968 and first flight was achieved on 30 June 1968. Tragically, 29-months later on 17 October 1970, during de-fueling following a test flight, fuel vapor caused an explosion and fire that totally destroyed the $50-million aircraft.

The upper photo is ship 66-8303 taxiing-out for 1st flight on 2 March 1968, and below it are two photos of what remained after a tragic fuel system explosion and fire on 17 October 1970 on the Air Force Plant 6, south campus flight line.

First Flights & Different Paint Schemes

A total of 81 C-5As were produced and delivered between 1969 and 1973; however, by the mid-1970’s wing-cracks were discovered that caused cargo weight restrictions to be imposed, impacting the mission capability of the C-5A. A total of 77 C-5As were subsequently “re-winged” between 1981 and 1987 with a strengthened wing using a new aluminum alloy that did not exist when the C-5A was originally designed.

At the upper left is an overhead photo of the L-10, C-5 Flight Test Center building on the Lockheed-owned land adjacent to Air Force Plant 6’s south campus flightline, and in the middle is the C-5A first article rolling-out of building L-10. At the upper right is an interior photo from the upper, central engineering building core observation platform of L-10’s west bay with two C-5 aircraft sitting side-by-side what I suspect is the west bay. In the middle row is a photo of the C-130A first flight on 30 June 1968, the C-5B first flight on 10 September 1985. and first flight of the C-5M on 19 June 2005. In the lower row are the three paint schemes worn by the C-5: the Military Airlift Command’s white over grey original paint scheme from the 1960’s used for C-141 and C-5 aircraft, the European camouglage used in the 1980’s, and the flat grey that’s been used ever since the European camo-finish was phased-out.
A recently re-winged C-5A model nearest the camera on the Air Force Plant 6, south campus flightline with the L-10, C-5 Flight Test Center / hangar where the wing-replacement mods were completed in the background during the 1980’s.

C-5 Size Comparisons

C-130J-30, C-5M, C-17A

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The C-5B, C-5C, AMP & RERP and C-5M Model Designations

As a follow-on program, 50 improved C-5B versions that incorporated the new wings, upgraded TF-39 GE turbofan engines, avionics and other improvements that had been developed for the C-5As were produced and delivered to the USAF from 1985 to 1989.

68-0216 at Travis AFB, July 1983

There were also two C-5A models that were converted into what were designated as C-5C Space Cargo Modified (SCM) variants in 1988. The modification entailed creating additional rear overhead cargo loading height and volume for satellites and other outsize payloads by removing the upper, rear troop deck that contained a galley, two lavatories, and 73 passenger seats, splitting the rear cargo door in the middle, and installing a new movable aft bulkhead. The two C-5As used for the mod had recently been damaged in separate incidents: serial number 68-0216 had a gear-up landing at Travis AFB, CA, in July 1983 and serial number 68-0213 experienced a fire in the upper rear troop deck during depot maintenance.

Beginning in 1998, the C-5 Avionics Modernization Program (AMP) to upgrade the avionics for compliance with Global Air Traffic Management standards, a glass cockpit, and various other systems, with the first article (C-5A, 85-0004) began, achieving first flight on 21 December 2002. A total of 27 C-5As, all 50 C-5Bs and both C-5Cs received the AMP upgrades, with the last upgraded aircraft being redelivered on 27 April 2012.

Beginning in 2006, a C-5 Reliability Enhancement and Re-engineing Program (RERP) began that replaced the General Electric (GE) TP-39 engines with the GE CF6 engines, engines that developed 22% more thrust, as well as the engine pylons, auxiliary power units, and various other upgrades to aircraft skin and frame, landing gear, cockpit and pressurization systems. The engine system upgrade yielded a 30% shorter takeoff, 38% higher climb rate to initial altitude, and an increased cargo load and a longer range. The C-5A, C-5B and both C-5C models that received the RERP upgrade were redesignated as a C-5M Super Galaxy, somewhat akin to the C-130J Super Hercules introduced in the mid-1990s when the C-130H production model was given a similar technology, engine and performance upgrade. Only 1 C-5A, the 49 remaining C-5Bs, and the two C-5Cs received the RERP upgrade, with the final RERP upgraded aircraft being redelivered on 2 August 2018.

Retirement of the C-5As & the Success of the C-5M Super Galaxy

The last operational C-5A was retired on 7 September 2017, leaving a total of 52 C-5Ms in the USAF fleet. The C-5M fleet has exceeded all expectations and validated the value of the C-5 modernization. A joint active-duty US Air Force/Air Force Reserve Command crew, flying a C-5M Super Galaxy, set forty-five new world aeronautical records on a single flight from Travis AFB, California, on 3 April 2015. In deployed airlift operations, the C-5M is demonstrating a new era of highly capable, reliable and affordable airlift with departure reliability rates greater than 90% and payload increases of 20% over legacy C-5s, the C-5M’s added capabilities with a substantial improvement in range, with a reduction in fuel consumption by as much as 20%.

C-5 Payloads: In the upper left is a U.S. Navy SEALs, Mark V Special Operations Craft, in the middle is a a C-130 fuselage, and at right is a U.S. Marine CH-47F Chinook being loaded in C-5s, noting a C-5 can carry two of the Chinooks. In the middle left is an F-22  being off-loaded at the Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards AFB, California, CA, in the middle an A-12 Blackbird being loaded onto a C-5 at Palmdale on October 27, 1991 for transport to the San Diego Air & Space Museum, and an Abrams M1 tank being loaded, noting a C-5 can carry 2 of the tanks designed by Lockheed C-130 designer Willis Hawkins. In the lower left, U.S. Navy Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle 2 (DSRV-2) is loaded, in the middle an F-117 Nighthawk is loaded for transport with the wings removed, and at lower right a demostration test of the C-5’s ability to air-drop a nuclear, Miniuteman III missile.

The Technical Marvel was not an early Financial Success

As noted at the beginning of this section on the Lockheed years at Air Force Plant 6 and the “Bell Bomber Plant,” while Lockheed-Georgia’s successes with the C-130 and C-141 programs positioned it well for securing the C-5 contract in 1965, it did not come without issues.

It was immediately clear Lockheed’s lower-cost bid that enabled it to be selected over Boeing’s better technical approach and design — as well as all of the bids submitted by Boeing, Douglas, General Dynamics,  and Martin Marietta — had all been far too low. Therefore, inevitable cost overruns, management errors coupled with the Pentagon’s inflexibility made it impossible for the program to be profitable, never mind break even.

Ultimately, the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation was forced to renegotiate its contract with the Pentagon and, in 1970, the U.S. government agreed to pay all planning and development costs, less a $247-million write-off by Lockheed.

However, the C-5 even with it’s wing issue — something the USAF shared responsibility for –– and other challenges, was an engineering marvel and of immense value and importance during the early Vietnam conflict (1964-73), the Iraq War (2003-11) and become a far-greater asset with vastly-improved reliability, capability and performance given the more recent AMP and RERP upgrades.

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Other Milestones & Resources

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The Airlift Years & Aircraft – What’s Next?

So, at this point we’ve covered the airlift products through present day, but still untouched are some small development programs like the Lockheed VZ-10 / XV-4 Hummingbird, the LASA-60. And, there were the two mid-fuselages Lockheed-Georgia buillt for the ill-fated, North American Aircraft’s XB-70 Valkyrie prototypes at Air Force Plant 6 inside a free-standing circus tent erected on the building B-1 main assembly floor, a make-shift “Closed Security Area” for what was then a classified project. A program that held great promise for much-needed, new work until the expensive and controversial program was cancelled.

And then, there was the little known Air Force Plant 67 in Dawsonville, Georgia, leased and operated by the Lockheed-Georgia Company, where the feasibility of nuclear-powered aircraft and nuclear radiation effects were studied from the 1950’s until the facility was closed in 1971.

Getting back to aircraft, there was the Lockheed Corporation’s P-3C Orion Maritime Patrol Aircraft Program that produced 749 aircraft in California before being moved to Georgia where only 8 P-3CKs were produced for Korea but, more importantly, Lockheed initiated the highly-successful P-3 Service Life Extension Program (SLEP) that has included the production of new outer wings for the P-3 aircraft in Building B-1 at Air Force Plant 6 in Marietta.

There was also the F-22 Raptor production program that brought me to Georgia. I worked-on the ATF program in the mid-1980’s and the YF-22 Dem/Val Program in California, then helped move the program to Georgia in 1991 to support the start of the F-22 Engineering Manufacturing Development (EMD) and full-scale production programs. During that time I had the good forture to have a role on the program that put me at the roll-out and on the runway for the first flights of both YF-22 prototypes at Palmdale, and present at the 1st production F-22 roll-out and it’s first flight in Georgia. Today, there is now the F-35 center-wing production still on-going at Air Force Plant 6 in building B-1, and the Lockheed Skunk Works has started to occupy production floor space in Marietta to support its robust portfolio of programs.

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History Simply Repeats Itself

As already noted, there have been several times during Lockheed’s years in Marietta, Georgia, where history has repeated itself. Be it leveraging one business move to achieve another — Rickenbacker Field, begets Government Aircraft Plant 6 — or, stepping-in to re-start or establishing Government Owned / Contractor Leased and Operated facilities — now redesignated Air Force Plants 42 and 6 in 1951 — or developing a product at one location, and then moving across it country to a different location — the C-130, JetStar and F-22. It’s almost as if there is a Lockheed version of the mythical “Presidents Book of Secrets” made famous in the movie “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” that executives share as they consider options to adapt to changing business needs and opportunities.

It’s perhaps the coast-to-coast moves that caught my attention, beginning with Dan Haughton’s success and fortuitous trifecta…. where Lockheed Aircraft Corporation leveraged the former Jim Carmichael to re-open the Bell Bomber Plant that he essentially helped to bring to Marietta in the first place, with Dan Haughton placed at his side, a Lockheed rising star…. who saw a need to bring a big aircraft production program to the Lockheed Georgia-Division to add base and could see the C-130 opportunity for what it was given Burbank was already running a full capacity while Georgia’s massive B-1 building would be idle in a few short years… and leveraged that to bring the C-130 to Georgia, along with a pool of Lockheed talent and knowledge from California. And, sure enough, it worked well…. really well.

And, in fact, the JetStar appears to have followed that model, but there have now been several of these coast-to-coast moves over the years and even during my years at Lockheed. Perhaps even a few others that I can recall some of the executives who were one-time drafting-board jockeys on the B-1 Mezzanine or in the B-2 Administration Building who moved into leadership roles during the late 1960’s through 1990’s when many of them began to retire, but who had stories to share and passports with many Georgia and California stamps.

So, here’s an event/thought string that immediately comes to mind I personally lived through, and that brought me from California to Georgia in January 1991 during the first, small ripple of the F-22’s California migration through what now appears to be yet-another California migration in support of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics’ Skunk Works.

The F-22 Migration & Closure of the Burbank Plant

  • Following the JetStar and C-130 model of migrations to Georgia, there was a management and technical leadership migration to California during the early days of the Advanced Tactical Fighter Concept Development Investigation (ATF CDI) and follow-on Demostration / Validation (ATF Dem/Val) program.
  • Like the C-130 program, as the YF-22 Dem/Val program prototypes were being designed and built between 1986 and 1990, Lockheed’s F-22 Engineeing Manufacturing Development (EMD) and Full Scale Production (FSD) program proposals were being created based on performing the work at the what was then an under-utilized Air Force Plant 6 leased and operated by the Lockheed-Georgia Company in Marietta, Georgia. This was apparently part of the Lockheed Corporation developed plans to close its original, Burbank facilities.
  • In November 1988, Lockheed announced it would relocate the Skunk Works from its Burbank Plant to it’s Plant 10 adjacent to Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California, beginning in 1989, thus beginning its exit from the now over-crowded Burbank Airport area, somewhat fullfilling the 1950’s U.S. Air Force vision for Plant 42 that Lockheed helped to plan in 1951.
  • In May 1990, Lockheed Corporation formally announced its plans to close the Burbank Plant, having already relocated the Skunk Works operations to Palmdale, California where the two YF-22 prototypes were being built. and would relocate its Aerospace programs to Georgia. The announcement came four-months before the YF-22 Prototype had its first flight from Air Force Plant 42 on 29 September 1990.
  • During 1990, Air Force Plant 6’s B-1 main assembly building in Marietta was now supporting just the C-130H-model production line, while the balance of the B-1 assembly floor space was used to store tooling from the C-5 aircraft, and tooling for the P-3 Orion aircraft that was just recently relocated to Marietta from building 601 at Lockheed’s Plant 10 in Palmdale, California as part of the Aerospace Programs move to Georgia.

The YF-22 Program Moves to Georgia Ahead of the F-22 Contract Award

Building L-22, now owned by Georgia Tech
  • In January 1991, the F-22 program’s physical relocation of some 300 or so key personnel, as well as data, material and assets from Califorina to Georgia began: I was one of the first to arrive along with 30 or so others who were given the task of establishing the initial engineering and program management offices and plans for development of the needed F-22 facilities and support functions at Marietta. It was an interesting time for many reasons, notwithstanding the proposal put-forward to the U.S. Air Force for use of the Marietta plant stated no new facilities would be needed, which proved to be less than accurate. The west coast migration also spawned a popular decal on company vehicles, “I don’t care how you did it in Burbank.”
  • On 23 April 1991, with the relocation of the YF-22 program to Georgia well underway, the YF-22 was announced as the winner of the ATF competition. Later that year it was also announced that the anticipated production number of F-22s had been lowered from 750 to ~650, and by 1992 the Navy had signaled it was withdrawing its interest in an NATF, swing-wing version of the F-22.

The General Dynamics Fort Worth Division & Martin Marietta Mergers

  • On 2 March 1993, Lockheed Corporation acquired the Fort Worth-based jet fighter division of the General Dynamics Corporation — at the time, also known within General Dynamics as its “Fighter Enterprise” — for $1.5 billion.
  • In August 1994, at then the Lockheed and Martin Marietta Corporations announced “a merger of equals” that was completed in March 1995. Following the 1993 and 1995 mergers, both former General Dynamics and Martin leaders moved into key, legacy Lockheed leadership roles in the corporate and well as operating sectors offices, as they were called immediately after the merger, since changed to business areas during subsequent corporate re-organizations.

The Joint Strike Fighter Enters the Mix

  • In 1995, the much anticipated Joint Strike Fighter Program (JSF) gets underway, with the stated goal of replacing various tactical aircraft, including the US F-16, A-10, F/A-18A-D, AV-8B, EA-6B and British Harrier GR7, GR9s and Tornado GR4.  Now part of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics business area, the former General Dynamics military aircraft division’s, “Fighter Enterprise” in Fort Worth takes the lead in developing the Joint Strike Fighter initial proposal and design and, along with Boeing, is selected to develop and build two prototypes on 16 November 1996: Lockheed Martin’s X-35s and Boeing’s X-32s.
  • On 5 April 1996, the Lockheed Martin Corporate-funded, upgraded C-130J Super Hercules intended to be sold as a commercial offering to both the U.S. and international customers achieved its first flight at Marietta. Although the program was beset with several significant technical challenges, financial issues and a prolonged FAA certification / flight test program, after 26-years since that first flight it has proven to have been a highly successful program. Now WITH over 500 J-model deliveries as of June 2022, the C-130 program has remained an on-going source of revenue and manufacturing base for the Marietta plant since the C-130As were first produced in 1954. Moreover, introduction of the J-model extended the viability of the Marietta plant well beyond the F-22, of which only 195 total test & operational articles were produced from 1997 through 2012, and at a very low rate.
  • On 9 April 1997, the first F-22 EMD test article — ship 97-4001 — was unveiled in Marietta, and had its first flight on 7 September 1997. This all followed many U.S. Air Force changes to include the number of aircraft to be procured from 750 to 663 at first, and eventually just 187, changes to design requirements and other aspects of the program that required massive re-phasing, re-scheduling, added costs and delays.
  • The watershed date for Lockheed-Martin was 29 October 1999, when Lockheed earnings fell by more than 31 percent, to $217 million (57 cents a share), compared with $318 million (83 cents) a year earlier. Sales dropped to $6.16 billion, from $6.35 billion a year ago, as the company struggled with delayed orders for its military aircraft and evaporating demand for its satellite launch rockets. As usual, there had to be fall-guys, and Lockheed Corp president and CEO Peter Teets resigned, as well as Aeronautics Sector VP, Mickey Blackwell, with Dain Hancock, the legacy General Dynamics Fort Worth Aircraft Division president assuming Mickey Blackwell’s position. Following those announcements, Lockheed stock dropped to $16.37 1/2 a share, but recovered to close at $20, down $2.93 3/4. The stock has lost almost two-thirds of its value over the past year. Lockheed’s then chairman and chief executive, Vance D. Coffman, and its chief financial officer, Robert J. Stevens, promised that the company would act decisively to control costs, improve troubling quality problems in its space business and repair relations with its key customer–the Pentagon.
  • Following these changes, things got weird, at least for the Lockheed employees and especially the executives in Marietta. I’ll leave it at that. Go read a history book regarding regime change, and what happened over the next weeks, months and years will come as no surprise.

The F-35 Wins the JSF & Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Headquarters Moves to Fort Worth

  • On 24 October 2000, the Lockheed Martin X-35 JSF prototype achieved first flight, a month after Boeing’s X-32’s first flight on 18 September 2000, and was subsequently selected for full-production development on 26 October 2001. The First F-35A acheived its first flight at Air Force Plant 4 in Fort Worth on 15 December 2006.
  • On 4 December 2004, the Lockheed Martin Aeronautic’s headquarters was moved to the former Fort Worth Division at Air Force Plant 4 in Fort Worth, Texas.
The last F-22, Serial 10-4195
  • By December 2012, after the last of 187 F-22’s had been produced in Marietta, the management of the F-22As current and future sustainment and support programs, along with 560 personnel, were moved to Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Headquarters at Air Force Plant 4 in Fort Worth. All of the F-22 tooling was placed into storage for a possible re-start of the program, and the former assembly area at the southwest corner of the B-1 main assembly building was converted into warehouse space.

The End of F-22 Production at Marietta which Becomes an Operating Location & Begins to Sell-Off Land & Assets on the South Campus

  • Following the F-22 move out of Marietta, Air Force Plant 6 and the former Lockheed-Georgia Company, was now essentially an operation location, supporting the still on-going C-130J production line, as well as remaining work on a C-5 upgrade program, production of F-35 center wing subassemblies, and P-3 outer wing kits. Instead of being its own operating company with a dedicated general manager, the most-senior executive and Vice President of Air Mobility & Maritime Missions organization — essentially the legacy C-130/LM-100J, C-5, and P-3 programs — would now also serve as the “site lead” with general management oversight of the Marietta, Georgia, facility, and oversight of sub-assembly sites in Clarksburg, West Virginia, and Meridian, Mississippi, who supported the C-130 production program almost exclusively.
  • In December 2017, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics sold four buildings and 52 acres on its south campus in Marietta and adjacent to Air Force Plant 6 to the Georgia Institute of Technology, noting the planned sale was initially announced in June 2016. Georgia Tech already had five buildings adjacent to the land built over 30-years ago, and is using the additional buildings and land to expand its research and development enterprise. 
  • In May 2021, the U.S. Air Force announced it would begin phasing-out and retiring the remaining F-22s by 2030, as work on the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) aircraft was now well underway.

The Skunk Works Expansion & Migration to Georgia Begins

  • In March of 2021, a new tax-incentive was announced in Georgia specifically targeted towards attracting future, new development by Lockheed Martin Aeronautics at Air Force Plant 6 in Marietta. The latter was followed by the hoped-for, partial Skunk Works migration to Georgia from California, and the former F-22 assembly area has since been walled-in for what is simply referred to as undisclosed, classified work.

So, the history keeps being written as the coast-to-coast mirgration cycle continues; but, at least for now, I think I’ve decided to “stick a fork” in this retrospective and call it done.

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A Bird’s Eye View of Easily Visible Changes at Plant 6 Over Time

North Campus (West)

North Campus Original Building History (Still in Work)
1943: Just after the plant opened, when the threat was espionage & potential air raids. The main aircraft plant lobby used for executive office and visitor entry was located on the front, south-facing side of building B-2, with the main drive-in visitor security office at the southwest corner of building B-1, and the southern-most end of Walker Street. Employees, for the most part, all entered the plant through the five head houses on the north side of the plant and parked in the massive B-1 parking lot or arrived via streetcar at the streetcar stop located on the northwest corner of building B-1. Prior to the construction of Building T-400, a large wood framed construction management building and later, employment office had been built to the west of Walker Street where the B-95 executive parking lot now sits. T-400 was in use to the northwest of the plant, but am unsure if the old Sibley home called “Cottage Hill” located to the west of building B-1 had been converted into the Marietta Army Airfield Officers Club. Georgia Route 280 / South Cobb Drive had just recently been completed with overpasses for the railroad and Dixie Highway / Old U.S. Route 41 just southwest of the old Glover Machine Works (now Cobb County Water). What had been Chestnut Hill Street was now Atlantic Avenue and extended out to GA-280, and functioned as the northwest access road to Air Force Plant 6 and Dobbins AFB.
North Campus Building History Following Re-Opening in 1951 (Still in Work)
February 1993: Just after I arrived, greatly changed since 1943 with the addition of buildings B-27 and B-28 (built in 1951 as a warehouse for all the equipment that had been stored in building B-1 and needed to be moved) south of buildings B-1 and B-2, and with additional parking lots added between those two new buildings and on the hilltop at the southeast corner of the plant. Also added for the C-5 era and completed in January 1966 was building B-95 — The C-5 Project Building — built on what had previously been land used for the B-1 parking lot at the northwest corner of building B-1. The main aircraft plant lobby used for executive office and visitor entry was still located on the front, south-facing side of building B-2, with the main employee drive-in gate now moved to the northwest corner of building B-1, with visitors being directed around Perin, Atlantic and Generals Roads to the B-27/28 parking lot, where a visitor security office was now located. Visitors would be pre-checked at that point, and then directed across Industrial Drive to the main lobby at building B-2 to be met by their hosts and escorts. Building T-400 was still in use, as was the old Sibley home “Cottage Hill” that had become a meeting and proposal center after the new officers club had been built on Dobbins AFB. Atlantic Avenue was still not a public thoroughfare at this point and the Old Glover Machine Works (not shown) was still standing but abandoned and in poor condtion.
April 2002: Following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, all government facilities implemented a variety of physical barriers and safeguards to prevent vehicles from “running the gates” as well as putting concrete barriers around their fence lines. To “harden” the main drive-in entry, it was moved further north on Walker Street where the road could incorporate curves to slow vehicles down, a larger entry building and other features. The main aircraft plant lobby used for executive office and visitor entry was still located on the front, south-facing side of building B-2, but changes were made to the visitor check-in process as I recall, but am at a loss to the specifics at this point in time, but I believe the “old” north lobby of building B-95 was-reactivated as a new entrance. Building T-400 had since been razed, while the old Sibley home “Cottage Hill” may have been no longer in use and falling into disrepair by this point. Note that the antiquated air conditioning chiller system with its large equipment and massive air ducts leading to equally massive chiller units on the ground at the north side of the building that appeared in the 1993 satellite image on the north side of the building B-1 roof has since been replaced.

Also at this point and time, work was now underway to create a railroad overpass and widen Atlantic Avenue between the overpass and GA-280, as well as Butler Street from GA-280 to Atlanta Road to bypass the 1.3-miles of Dixe Highway / Old U.S. 41 from E. Dixie Avenue to Clay Drive, where Dixie Highway/Old U.S. 41 was also being widened into a 4-lane. Once finished, a portion of Atlantic Avenue would become part of the new, four-lane Atlanta Road south of Marietta, and bypassing the problematic railway crossing where the original Atlanta Road / Old U.S. 41 merged with Dixie Highway / Old U.S. 41. Note that by 1999, the Old Glover Machine Works (not shown) had been razed.
February 2006: As a follow-on to the additional physical safeguards, barriers and entry points that had been made in 2002, and in part because the “F-22 Front Office” had moved-out of building B-2 and was now located in the middle of what was then the recently refurbished 2nd Floor Mezzanine’s central, main lobby and conference rooms, co-located with the entire engineering team, the remaining Air Force Plant 6 Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) and Lockheed leadership, business development, and other building B-2 occupants were being relocated along with the main entrance lobby to the northwest corner of building B-95. This coincided with building B-2 falling into serious disrepair. As captured in this satellite image, work to once again relocate the drive-in entry, as well as to greatly enhance the aesthetics of the northwest corner of building B-95 was on-going when this image was taken in February 2006, with the main plant lobby being relocated shortly after. By this time, the truck and alternate entry on Atlantic Avenue to the west of building B-28 and the hilltop parking lot had also received significant enhancements as part of the Atlanta Road improvement project that saw a portion of Atlantic Avenue become part of the widened, 4-lane Atlanta Road that now ran from the Georgia Route 120 South Loop to Windy Hill Road, with a new overpass at the railroad to the best of building B-28 and the hilltop parking lot. A new, northern leg of Atlantic Avenue was added to the east of the new Atlanta Road.
June 2007: By this point in time, the work that was on-going to enhance the main vehicle drive-in entry as well as the main plant lobby and relocation of the DCMA and Lockheed personnel from building B-2 to building B-95 had been completed. Sadly, the beloved lobby receptionist Shannon who greeted visitors for the 16-years I worked at the plant did not move to the new lobby; they eliminated the position and shifted the role to one supported by two plant security guards since the new lobby was now a plant entrance open to the public. I believe that by this time a new cafeteria to support the change in how the very large building B-95 was being used had been completed, whose dining-area served a dual-role as a large conference room which was now sorely-needed on the North Campus. This would, after many, many years, finally reduce the need for the folks who worked in building B-95 to make the long walk over to what was for the longest time, sole cafeteria on the North Campus located in building B-2 that also supported the large, workforce building C-130s, F-22’s and P-3 wings in the building B-1 main assembly building. Also by this point in time, the Marietta Aviation History & Technology Center had now placed its first aircraft at the 15.1 acres of land the U.S. Air Force had leased to Cobb County who, in turn, sub-leased the land to what was then the Marietta Air Museum. The aircraft was the 48th JetStar (Serial #5048) to come off the Lockheed assembly line in Marietta, GA back in 1964 and first purchased by the Union Carbide Corporation.   Later owners included country musician Kenny Rogers and Las Vegas star Wayne Newton.  
January 2014: By this point in time, perhaps the biggest change was the partial demolition of the east and west wings and half of their central larger, middle office areas after the building began falling into disrepair over eight years ago, prompting the C-130 “Front Office” move mentioned earlier. This was followed a few years later by a structural failure and a large portion of the buildings being cleared of personnel and shored-up, which is how they remained for several years until sometime before this photo was taken, being razed. Only the enter segments supporting the old front lobby, legacy hall and the company store, and access to the B-1 Cafeteria were left intact.

As for gaining entry to the plant, that remained unchanged for the most part, other than yet-another major upgrade of the drive-in entry building where a second, and much-larger covered drive-through portal was being added when this photo was taken. The only other change by this time was the significant increase in the number of aircraft on display at the Marietta Aviation History & Technology Center. The naval aircraft located at the south-end of the outdoor museum were previously on display at Naval Air Station Atlanta, to include the pole-mounted, LTV A-7E Corsair II which had been on much taller pole at the intersection of Richardson Road and Dixie Highway / Old U.S. 41 that served as the entry road to the Naval Air Station until the railroad crossing was removed as part of the Atlanta Road improvement project.
Current / October 2021: Aside from the main drive-in entry being completed and the Sibley / Cottage Hill home having been razed in 2015, there are not many visible changes since 2014 to Air Force Plant 6. There are a few new aircraft and a drone now on display at the Marietta Aviation History & Technology Center and restoration of the original YC-141B Starlifter, stretch model prototype as well as their AC-130A model gunship have been completed. Sadly, this photo was taken a month before their 2nd Jetstar was finally moved the 8.5 miles on a flatbed truck with the tail removed from McCollum Airport to the museum where it’s been sitting since December 2019, delayed from making that final move by the pandemic and other issues.

North Campus (East)

1943: Just after being completed, the North Campus was the largest plant of its kind in the Southeast, with the single largest building in the Southeast, a total of 4.2-million square feet under roof. The most obvious departures are most of building B-2, what I believe may be the old fuel station (B-21) to the north of B-4, building B-6, as well as the original construction offices and then early employment office on Walker Street.
2021: The full-details of changes and additions made since then exceed my knowledge and resources, but include the larger facilities that are still standing: The B-27 & B-28 warehouses that have since been repurposed many times over, the B-10 Industrial Waste and Hot Etch Building, the B-102 C-5 Empennage Mate Building, the B-54 Eight Aircraft Modification Hangar, the long-time-ago abandoned C-130 Electrostatic Test Basin, a new Shipping & Receiving building at the corner of Gibbs Street and South Cobb Drive, and a major addition to the B-3 Paint & Finishes building for the F-22 program.

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Then and Now: Atlantic Avenue, Atlanta Road & Dixie Highway

Satellite Views – Looking Northeast with GA-280 in the middle running up and down, and Atlanta Road left to right
Satellite Views – Looking South, with GA-120 Loop at the bottom & new railroad overpass on Atlanta Road at the top
Sanborn Insurance Map from 1923 at left, Google Maps at Right

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A Bird’s Eye View of Easily Visible Changes at Plant 6 Over Time

South Campus

South Campus Building History (Still in Work)
The upper two photos are taken from the north looking to the south, whereas the lower two are taken south looking to the north, as are all that follow.

The construction of L-10 and the Low Speed Wind Tunnel in 1967 is something I mentioned already, but as to when the other newer “B” buildings that were built on Air Force-owned land, the “L” buildings that were built on Lockheed-owned land at what is now called the “South Campus” was not something I’d been able to find a lot of information about, at least with enough specificity to include details. I’ve recently found some new information sources and am once-again adding and correcting information as appropriate.

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 The Georgia Tech Research Institute

And, in regard to the latter, also co-located and on adjacent land to the Navy, Air Force and Lockheed Aeronautics is now Georgia Tech’s Research Institute, making for an interesting collection of neighbors but with its own interesting history and Lockheed legacy, much like their recent acquisition of 52-acres of land and buildings L-22, L-12, L-59 and L-31. This is in addition to another 40 acres that was previously owned and occupied by what originally was the Lockheed Research Center built in 1965.

The following is from Jeffrey Holland’s book, Under One Roof: The Story of Air Force Plant 6, is some pertinent, additional information on the Georgia Tech Research Institution’s Lockheed history:

“In 1965, Lockheed opened a $3.5 million research laboratory on land it had purchased between the flight line area and Atlanta Road, south of the runway used by Air ForcePlant 6 and Dobbins AFB. This property was known as the Lockheed complex, or South Campus, and a number of other buildings were constructed there in the 1960s and 1970s.

The laboratory complex was made up of four buildings on a 20-acre site. The facility featured equipment for all types of scientific and engineering testing, including a hypersonic wind tunnel, electron microscopes, a ballistics range, and a human factors laboratory for evaluating ergonomics and human performance. In August 1962, 10 Air Force pilots emerged from a simulated space capsule in the human factors laboratory where they had spent 30 days testing the psychological effects of working in close quarters for extended periods.

The staff of the research laboratory was drawn from various universities, with over a third of them possessing doctorates. Another 45 percent had earned masters’ degrees. Lockheed scientists worked closely with scientists from Georgia Tech, Georgia State, and Emory universities to conduct testing and development at the laboratory facilities.

Beginning in 1978, Lockheed began leasing the portion of the South Campus containing the research laboratories to Georgia Tech’s Engineering Experiment Station, which used the facilities to conduct electronics research.

In 1983, the Tech facilities, which included five buildings and 45 acres of land, was sold to the Georgia Scientific and Technical Research Foundation, a non-profit organization created to support educational research institutions. The Cobb County Industrial Development Authority funded the urchase with public bonds in order to promote continued research at the facility and attract other high technology companies to the area.

The property as of 2007, was owned by the University Financing Foundation, Inc., who leased the facility to Georgia Tech.”

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February 1993: As for my baseline time-based satellite image, the temporary, massive three building “modular-building-complex” that I believe was called C-50A, C-50B AND C-50C was set-up in the L-11/L-12 parking lot just north of buildings L-11 and L-12, to be used to house the hundreds of engineers and associated staff being hired to design the F-22. This was temporary, while the three-story + one L-22 building could be built, with its attached conference center and hospitality suite immediately to the west of C-50 in the same, former parking lot. Once L-22 was about to open a new plant vehicle entry point was eventually established at the parking lot entry and George McMillan Drive off of Dixie Road, although access into the actual plant was initially controlled at the entry to building L-22. There were three other drive-through gates on the South Campus, the security guard-manned “truck gate” next to Building C-31, the security guard-manned gate where the Haley Road crossed the property line that divided the Lockheed South Campus from the Naval Air Station, and a security-guard manned entry post at the east end of the L-11/L-12 parking lot, next to building L-8 used primarily for pedestrian access and visitor check-in and entry, with a manually operated, rolling fence gate. This entry point was the one that eventually moved to the other end of the parking lot entrance off Dixie Road.
January 1999: The biggest changes to the South Campus you could see from the air were the re-assembly of an engine run hangar moved from another Air Force Base, aka, a Hush House, at the south-end of the old North-South Dobbins Runway that had become an aircraft parking area, right next to where four of the eight Libyan Air Force C-130Hs that had been impounded by the U.S. State Department back 1974 that are still owned by Libya. Across the ramp to the west and next to the large, building B-78 paint hangar are the F-22 paint & finish hangar and an indoor test hangar that had recently been built. And, I would be remiss if I did not point out the establishment of the L-100/C-130 High Technology Test Bed Flight Crew Memorial, just north of the Low Speed Wind Tunnel, in memory of the seven members who lost their lives in a flight test crash at Dobbins AFB on 3 February 2003.
April 2002: A new and state of the art F-22 Air Vehicle Integration Facility (AVIF) had been constructed at the furthest south parcel of Lockheed-owned land used for engineering design, development and testing of equipment and software. Out on the flightline the anticipated need to have vastly improved blast fences as well as an one-ended, aircraft engine-run shelter for the F-22 aircraft has been built, as others were still be planned along with a future F-22 flight operations hanger. And, by this time, two other major changes had taken place at the entry to the South Campus off Dixie Road: Cobb County had widened Dixie Highway / Old U.S. 41 now called Atlanta Road to four lanes, created a railway underpass at the intersection of George McMillan & Atlanta Road, and the Lockheed entry gate received a significant upgrade with a larger building, provisions for visitor check-in, and other security features associated with the post-9/11 era for government facilities.
February 2003: During the next year, on the flightline another hangar had been installed along side the hush-house and the F-22 Flight Operations Hangar was under construction. There were also a number of changes associated with the entry points, both the ones that were manned as well as turnstile entries for access to the South Campus, and by this time the C-31 building may have already been leased or sold which entailed some physical changes to the manned, rear truck entry gate.
April 2010: By this time the two additional F-22 run shelters and well as the F-22 Flight Line Operations Hanger had been built and in use for several years, and the new Flight Line Operations Center (FLOC) built during 2008 was now fully-occupied and in use. C-5 aircraft along with C-130s were now sharing the ramp with the F-22s as the C-5 modernization programs were underway.
November 2018: Taking a look from above 5-months after I’d retired, there really hadn’t been any major changes to buildings that you could see, but following the delivery of the last F-22 back in 2012 and the program being moved to Lockheed Aeronautics Headquarters now in Fort Worth, Texas, the Marietta Plant had actively worked to divest excess now vacant builds and land on the South Campus, to include building L-22 which was no longer the main entry to the South Campus. A plan to physically separate the four buildings being sold and 52-acres of land had been developed and in 2016 Georgia Tech agreed to buy the property, somewhat adjacent to its existing Research Institute, and closed on the sale in December 2017. The buildings and land acquired are enclosed by the yellow, dotted-line: it is definitely a cozy relationship given the shared access off Dixie Road and how closely some of the buildings were located, e.g., L-11 and L-12. By this time an innovative use of a traffic circle and changes to how vehicles would enter and leave the large, former L-22 parking lot were being built.
September 2021: And, here it is today, well roughly today. As you can see, I’ve added a line to reflect where the co-located Georgia Tech & U.S. Navy property borders the Dobbins AFB and Lockheed Aeronautics property. It’s not clear what future changes will be needed to accommodate the Lockheed Martin & Airbus A330-based LMXT being proposed in response to the U.S. Air Force’s KC-Y Strategic Tanker Program. However, at this point it’s not clear if the USAF will move-forward with the program, to it may be a moot point.

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Now and Then, Air Force Plant 6’s B-1 Main Assembly Building

From B-29s to F-22s…. Bell’s 668 B-29’s were but a good start, with Lockheed’s 394 B-47s, over 2,600 C-130s since March 1955, along with 218 Lockheed JetStar/C-140s, 284 Lockheed C-141 Starlifters, 131 Lockheed C-5 Galaxy aircraft, 8 Lockheed P-3C Orions, and 195 Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptors, including 8 test articles and no clear end-in sight, The “Bell Bomber Factory” has definitely carved itself a place in history.

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3 thoughts on “The Bell Bomber Plant: A Chronology & Image-Based History Trip”

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  1. It becomes apparent – the staggering amount of human effort, money, etc. – when it is laid out like this.

    Thanks for sharing

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  2. Obviously a lot of work went into this and I’m looking forward to reading it, but one thing jumped out at me as I was skimming through. The serial number for the first EMD F-22 Raptor was 97-4001. 10-4195 was the serial number for the last aircraft.

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