Historic Context - Vought Aircraft Division

Transcription

I N T E G R AT E D C U LT U R A L R E S O U R C E S M A N A G E M E N T P L A N
HISTORIC CONTEXT
INTRODUCTION
NWIRP Dallas is an aerospace manufacturing complex constructed
in 1941 as part of the U.S. World War II Industrial Mobilization
Program. Known as Plancor #25, NWIRP Dallas initially consisted
of 85 buildings and structures spread out over 153 acres in rural
Dallas County, near the city limits of both Dallas and Grand Prairie,
Texas. The original project owner, the DPC, was a governmental
body assigned to fund and build a variety of industrial facilities
across the United States that produced essential military goods for
World War II. North American Aviation Inc. leased the governmentowned plant from 1941 to August 1945, producing nearly 30,000
aircraft of three different types for the Army, Air Force, and Navy.
NWIRP Dallas has been leased to six different tenants over the past
six decades: North American Aviation, TEMCO, Chance Vought
Aircraft Corporation, LTV, Northrop Grumman, and Vought Aircraft
Industries. Today, the complex consists of 343 resources on 314.66
acres. NWIRP Dallas has a complicated but important history that
details the role it played during the Second World War and its
significance throughout the Cold War. Its history is not only the story
of an aircraft plant but also of the growth of Dallas County and the
aircraft industry in North Texas communities.
WORLD WAR II
In the mid-1930s, there were definite signs that the peace established
in Europe following World War I was tenuous. The first indication of
trouble appeared in 1933 when Germany elected Adolf Hitler as its
Chancellor and demanded equality with France and England, not
disarmament. Germany withdrew from the League of Nations and
secretly began to rebuild its military, a clear violation of the Treaty of
Versailles. In an effort to renew its strength and demonstrate its
power, Germany turned to every available technological advance in
weaponry to ensure that it would never again be subjugated by
Britain, France and the West. On 10 March 1935, Germany’s Defense
Minister Herman Göring formally announced his country’s military
rearmament program, which included all the latest technological
developments in ships, tanks, guns, ammunition, and aircraft. Britain
likewise began to rearm, and by the end of the year, all the major
European powers and Japan had begun remilitarization programs.
It was not only Germany’s aggressive acts and rearmament that
threatened peace in Europe; it was also the emergence of
dictatorships in Italy, Spain, and Japan. All four countries appeared to
NAVAL WEAPONS INDUSTRIAL RESERVE PLANT DALLAS, DALLAS COUNTY, TEXAS
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prefer force, propaganda, and fear to effect political change and gain
power. Germany took full advantage of its early military
preparedness by participating in the Spanish Civil War of 1936–39
and annexing both Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938. The
performance of the German military machine, especially the air
force, or Luftwaffe, sent a clear message to Great Britain and France
that they had underestimated Germany’s strength. The presence and
large numbers of the German airforce in Spain and Czechoslovakia
gave Europeans the perception that the Luftwaffe was much larger
than anticipated.
Following the events of 1936–38, Great Britain, France, and other
European allies began to rearm at a frantic pace. In order for
European nations to achieve military supremacy over Germany, they
would need help. France and Great Britain turned to the United
States and its mass-production capability as early as 1935 in hopes of
achieving military preparedness, but quickly found out that what they
needed most—aircraft—was difficult to procure. America had been
the leader in aviation since the late 1910s, but its industry had never
mass produced aircraft. For decades, American aircraft companies
fabricated each individual plane virtually by hand for a small and
elite domestic and foreign market. The number of orders from
European nations overwhelmed burgeoning aircraft and engine
manufacturers. Fortunately for the aircraft industry and unfortunately
for Europe, current American isolationist policy and neutrality laws
required belligerent nations to pay cash for military goods, leaving
the industry a brief period of time to prepare for the production
demands of a large-scale, world war.
It was only in May 1939 when a loose— but public—diplomatic
alliance developed between the dictatorships of Germany, Japan, and
Italy that American leaders began to display and share France and
England’s concerns for world peace and stability. The combined
strength of the Axis coalition, the quick pace of overseas
developments, and the defense needs of European allies provoked
American leaders to develop a plan of action and turn away from its
isolationist stance toward military preparedness. Any plan developed
by the United States would have to balance and integrate foreign
requirements and domestic needs without sacrificing or straining
productive capabilities, resources, materials, facilities, and
manpower.
In May 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt took the first steps
toward mobilization when he ordered his Assistant Secretary of War
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and Assistant Secretary of the Navy to create a War Resources Board
to manage the $11 billion defense budget and the newly formed
Industrial Mobilization Program. Once planning had begun, the
President declared a state of unlimited national emergency in an
effort to prepare the American people for the demands of
mobilization, which involved an unprecedented level of defense
production. The Industrial Mobilization Program called for major
changes within the country’s economic and governmental structure
and altered the relationship between the private enterprise and the
government, forcing them to coordinate activities in order to meet
common goals (Kane 1995: 29; Vatter 1985: 10; U.S. Civilian
Production Administration 1947: xiii).
The Industrial Mobilization Program’s main goals were the nation’s
speedy transition from peace to war and back to peace. The program
evolved through three major phases: The initial defense period,
1939–41, was characterized as the period when the United States was
not actually at war but was compelled to rearm and help its allies,
and itself, through weapons production and materials for defense.
The second phase occurred from December 1941 until August 1945,
and was characterized as the war period, when the entire American
economy was directed toward winning the war through the
procurement and production of ships, submarines, guns, ammunition,
tanks, and aircraft. Finally, the third phase, from August 1945 to
December 1947, was characterized as the transition period from
World War II to the Cold War (U.S. Civilian Production
Administration 1947: xiii, 3).
INDUSTRIAL MOBILIZATION: THE DEFENSE PERIOD, 1939–41
The President and a new managing agency, the Office of Production
Management, began implementation of the Industrial Mobilization
Program in the summer of 1939, prior to Germany’s invasion of
Poland. The first step of the program was the formation of the
National Defense Advisory Committee, or NDAC. Legislation
allowing for the formation of NDAC can be traced to the Army
Appropriation Act of 20 August 1916, in which NDAC assumed the
responsibility of coordinating industries and resources for the
country’s national security and welfare (U.S. Civilian Production
Administration 1947: 22). President Roosevelt invoked the law on 29
May 1940 in response to conflicts in Europe and the Far East. The
key players of NDAC included the secretaries of War, Navy Interior,
Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor, Office of Production
Management, and seven at-large members. The President served as
head and final arbitrator of NDAC, but he also relied closely on the
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advice of its permanent and at-large members. The Army
Appropriation Act allowed the President to nominate seven civilian
members with “special knowledge of some industry, public utility, or
the development of some natural resource, or otherwise specially
qualified” (U.S. Civilian Production Administration 1947: 23).
Roosevelt’s selections included industry officials, international
dignitaries, economists, and financial experts to manage and run the
entire program.
The President decided that only three members of NDAC needed to
serve the Commission on a full-time basis: Danish-born William S.
Knudsen, former president of General Motors Corporation (GM),
advised on industrial production; Lithuanian-born Sidney Hillman,
president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, advised
on employment; and Edward R. Stettinus, who was associated with
the United States Steel Corporation, advised on industrial materials
and was former chairman of the War Resources Board. Stettinus also
had family connections with two of the biggest and most influential
businesses in America—E.I. DuPont de Nemours, Inc. and J.P.
Morgan & Company (U.S. Civilian Production Administration 1947:
19, 20). The remaining members of NDAC—the commissioners on
prices, farm products, transportation, and consumer interests—served
only part-time positions.
Most of NDAC’s powers were de jure or de facto, and came either
directly from the President or through the Office of Production
Management. The most significant of NDAC’s powers was the
ability of the group to approve or reject any defense-related contracts
and procurement requests. On the subject of contract authorization,
the President relied heavily on the advice of William S. Knudsen,
who had been his ally, friend, and advisor throughout the Great
Depression and had developed some of the most innovative and
successful New Deal programs. Knudsen came to the President in the
summer of 1940 and identified some of NDAC’s challenges. The
Commission needed to procure supplies and materials on an
enormous scale that was beyond the capacity of private industry, and
the rationing of essential goods was not enough to offset the
productive deficiencies of American industry. Knudsen asserted that
industrial expansion was the nation’s “Problem Number 1” and
additional facilities were required in order for America to meet the
manufacturing demands of war (White November 1949: 159).
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THE CREATION OF THE DEFENSE PLANT CORPORATION
The Industrial Mobilization Program’s budget was insufficient to
cover the costs of building new factories and plants, so President
Roosevelt turned to another trusted advisor, Jesse H. Jones, the head
of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), for input on how
the nation might meet its production needs and goals in the event of
war (White 1980: 16). The RFC had been responsible for the funding
of much of President Roosevelt’s New Deal programs during the
Great Depression and was the governmental body that located
adequate funding for the federal construction requirements.
Jesse H. Jones, along with Hans Klagsbrunn and Clifford Durr of the
RFC’s legal staff, drafted legislation in May 1940 that amounted to
an amendment to the existing Reconstruction Finance Act. The
amendment asked Congress to grant the RFC the authority to make
loans and purchase stock in corporations for the purpose of national
defense; to purchase strategic and critical materials; and to authorize
the construction, expansion, and equipment of industrial plants
(White 1980: 16). Congress approved the legislation, and on 25 June
1940, the President signed Klagsbrunn and Durr’s amendment, which
explicitly authorized the RFC to lend money and form new
companies to finance a $9 billion facility expansion program (U.S.
Civilian Production Administration 1947: 77, 78; White 1980: 18).
The RFC first established a Site Location Board to work with the
Office of Production Management’s Plant Site Board to recommend
general criteria for the location of defense plants. Factors to be
considered were availability of raw materials, transportation, supply
and destination of the product, housing, power and utilities,
abundance of labor, and sewage. A conscious effort was made to
avoid highly congested, metropolitan areas with established industrial
centers, and instead select rural, underdeveloped locations (U.S.
Civilian Production Administration 1947: 162; Smith 1959: 450).
Both boards agreed that the majority of all the sites selected should
be located deep within the interior portions of the United States and
away from either the east or west coasts, considering their existing
high concentration of industry and vulnerability to attack. NDAC’s
preferred zone was “between the Appalachians and the Rockies”
(U.S. Civilian Production Administration 1947: 79). Dispersal of the
new defense industries was a favored policy of the Industrial
Mobilization Program because the War Department genuinely feared
that the Axis Powers might sabotage or attack American industrial
facilities; the more scattered the defense plants, the less likely they
were to be damaged or destroyed by such aggressive acts. By 30 June
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Table 8-1.
1940, both the Site and Plant Location boards had acquired 2,116,862
acres of land on behalf of the War Department.
The second issue that the RFC dealt with during the summer of 1940
involved project financing. Klagsbrunn and Durr envisioned four
potential sources of funding when they formulated the amendment to
the Reconstruction Finance Act: 1) private financing with the aid of
tax amortization, 2) government reimbursement of private capital
outlays (EPF), 3) government ownership with the option of private
purchasing, and 4) outright government ownership (Smith 1959:
440).
NDAC, and not the RFC, offered the first two options, which
attempted to get private banks or companies to finance the expansion
of individual industries on land provided and selected by the Plant
and Site Location boards. If a bank or company paid for construction
costs up-front, the government and the NDAC offered the corporate
entity special tax incentives through amortization to offset
construction, capital, equipment, and machinery costs. In this manner
of financing, the company not only retained complete ownership of
the facility, but it also recouped all costs after a few years of
operation by taking advantage of available tax credits.
Despite such incentives, NDAC’s financing options were the least
attractive to both banks and private enterprise. Tax incentives did not
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eliminate, reduce, ensure, guarantee, or affect a company’s loan
payments. On the other hand, banks were extremely hesitant to loan
billions of dollars without assurances from the government that the
applicant would not default on its payments. The country had not yet
fully recovered from the devastating effects of the Great Depression,
and most companies were simply not stable enough nor were they in
a financial position to provide sufficient capital to fund mobilization
and related construction costs. By the end of July, NDAC failed to
reach a deal with any American company for industrial expansion.
The most attractive type of financing was the third type offered in
Durr and Klagsbrunn’s legislation in which the U.S. government
would fund, construct, and then own a factory that would be leased
and operated by a private contractor under a management-fee
agreement (Jones & Angly 1951: 341). The RFC had independent
borrowing authority and did not rely on Congress for its funds
(White November 1949: 160). Private banking institutions preferred
loaning the millions, and ultimately billions, of dollars, to the federal
government rather than to private enterprises. The RFC presented
this third type of contract and financing to several well-established
companies, including the Packard Motor Company, Curtiss-Wright
Aeroplane & Motor Company, General Motors, and Ford, in 1940.
With only minimal modifications and negotiation, all parties agreed
to RFC financing agreements and entered into contracts to build
manufacturing plants.
This third type of financing ultimately proved the most successful
method to execute the facilities construction program. Once a few
initial deals were in place and ready for financing, the RFC and the
President implemented Section 5d of the revised Reconstruction
Finance Act and established the DPC to be responsible for brokering
deals between the RFC, banks, and private enterprise for the
construction and operation of new industrial facilities. On 22 August
1940, the RFC organized the DPC as the instrument by which the
majority of World War II factories and plants would be financed,
constructed, and operated, including NWIRP Dallas (White 1980:
18).
DPC BEGINS OPERATIONS
The DPC was established purely as an interim program that derived
all its authority, power, board, personnel, office spaces, supplies, and
money from its parent organization, the RFC. Because the DPC was
created to perform an emergency job, the DPC was given great
flexibility to fulfill the erratic construction and procurement demands
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of the Industrial Mobilization Program (White 1980: 50; White
November 1949: 158). The DPC’s intent was to offer financing to
promote each lessee’s maximum freedom during the construction,
equipping and operation of its DPC-funded facility. So long as the
lessee met its production requirements, the company paid only $1 a
month in rent.
The actual financing process was not rigid. The Office of Production
Management, War Department, Navy, Maritime Commission, and
other governmental agencies came to the DPC with preferred
location, type of facility needed, operator, and the type of product to
be manufactured (Table 8-1). The nominating agency provided the
DPC with several types of qualifying documentation: the first was a
certificate of necessity that declared the facilities of “emergency”
status and necessary to the national defense; the second was a
certificate of government protection that guaranteed that the
contractor would be reimbursed by the government for all or part of
the cost, thus protecting the government from contractors seeking
additional and unwarranted payments in addition to the decided-upon
cost; the last requirement for DPC financing was a certificate of
nonreimbursement that required the lessee to pay the cost of supply
in excess of the decided-upon expenditures (U.S. Civilian Production
Administration 1947: 27).
In the type of contract offered by the DPC, the contractor constructed
or purchased facilities as an agent of the DPC, which arranged the
financing with private lenders. Once the funds were available or
dispersed to the company by the bank/lender, the DPC— essentially
an agent of the government—repaid the bank and assumed the loan
on behalf of the nominating industry. Next, the agency paid 40% to
50% of the total cost to the DPC at the beginning of construction and
the remainder when the funds became available (Building the Navy’s
Bases 1947: 385–86). The title of the plant or factory would be
vested in the DPC as soon as repayment was made to the bank, and
then later transferred to the nominating agency once it made full
payment. In isolated instances, the lessee/contractor chose to
purchase the plant on completion of construction. In those cases, the
nominating agency was reimbursed for its initial investment and the
DPC was paid the remainder of the loan (Building the Navy’s Bases
1947: 386).
By the end of 1940, DPC contracts totaled $250 million and were
largely the result of word-of-mouth advertising within the business
community. The types of industries selected for this program varied
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from manufacturers of ammunition and weaponry to tanks, clothing,
food, ships, and aircraft. Private industry was overwhelmingly
pleased with the speed and terms of the DPC-style contract and
enthusiastically promoted Industrial Mobilization Program activities.
Companies did not approach the DPC or the RFC for expansion and
supply contracts because it was the nominating federal agency, not
the DPC/RFC, that determined which companies received specific
jobs. It was probably no coincidence that each of the companies
selected for financing had representatives or contacts within NDAC,
the Office of Production Management, or the RFC/DPC, and was
generally considered by the nominating agencies as manufacturing
the best possible products. The list of DPC-financed industries reads
like a the Who’s-Who of American business: Chrysler, GM, Ford
Motor, Studebaker, Wright Aeronautical and Curtiss-Wright Aircraft,
Dow, Packard Motor, DuPont, and North American Aviation (Table
8-2). “Of the more than $11 billion in contracts awarded by the
[Armed] Services during the months from June to December 1940,
60% went to 20 firms and 86.4% to only 100 companies” (U.S.
Civilian Production Administration 1947: 63).
The single most heavily DPC-funded industry was aircraft, which
included contracts for the construction of new facilities, equipment,
and machinery for the manufacture and production of thousands of
aircraft (Table 8-3). The aeronautical-facilities program contained a
higher percentage of DPC contracts than any other program because
it was among the most important and critical elements to
mobilization and subsequent war effort. Moreover, the aircraft
industry was least capable of meeting production goals, especially
considering its position in September 1939, just months after the
Industrial Mobilization Program began. The U.S. Air Corps, the
forerunner to the Air Force, had only 2,400 combat aircraft of all
types available for service, and most were obsolete. as compared
with the German Luftwaffe, which U.S. intelligence knew to be
8,000-planes strong (Eltscher & Young 1998: 86). The successful
Nazi drives across Europe stemmed, in large part, from Germany’s
vastly superior aircraft. During this prewar period, the United States
had only three manufacturers of high-powered aircraft and engines
and only 13 significant plants, comprising 7,335,000 square feet of
floor space and employing 45,000 workers (White 1980: 19; U.S.
In May 1940, President Roosevelt gave his famous “50,000 Planes”
speech, in which he announced $900 million in appropriations to
transform the armed forces into a two-ocean Navy with 50,000 of the
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Table 8-2.
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Table 8-3.
newest and most advanced aircraft. T. P. Wright, Vice President of
the Curtiss-Wright Aeroplane & Motor Company and NDAC aircraft
advisor, informed the commission that it would take nearly five years
to reach the President’s goal and would require a 400% expansion of
the existing aircraft industry (U.S. Civilian Production
Administration 1947: 40). Compounding the pressure to produce
50,000 planes, the President modified the order only days later for
the manufacture of an additional 12,896 ‘follow-on’ aircraft to cover
the need for heavy bombers (U.S. Civilian Production Administration
1947: 126). As of December 1940, NDAC finalized plans on an
82,890-plane program to be completed by June 1943. To achieve
President Roosevelt and NDAC’s goals, manufacturers would have to
mass-produce planes at an unprecedented scale.
NORTH AMERICAN AVIATION AND ITS EXPANSION INTO TEXAS
When industrial mobilization and the aircraft manufacturing boom
began in early 1940, North American Aviation was a relative
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newcomer to the industry, having actively produced aircraft for only
six years. Clement Keys founded North American Aviation in 1928
as an illegal holding company to hide his embezzling activities from
the Curtiss-Wright Aircraft & Motor Company, where he served as
president. In the fall of 1931, Curtiss-Wright executives uncovered
Keys’ fiduciary improprieties and quietly removed him as president.
At the same time, the board members of North American ousted
Keys and replaced him with James H. “Dutch” Kindelberger, who
moved the company from Dundalk, Maryland, to Inglewood,
California. In 1933, North American began manufacturing smallengined aircraft and slowly built a solid name for itself. North
American’s steadily increased its business by offering customers a
more diversified product line of small, medium, and large aircraft.
This diversification attracted both foreign and domestic orders, and
the company quickly became one of the top five aircraft
manufacturing companies in the nation.
By the late 1930s, North American was inundated with more orders
than its Inglewood factories could meet, and the company needed to
expand its facilities. Fortunately, North American was in a good
financial position and able to fund the construction of new factory
spaces. North American President Dutch Kindelberger heard about a
pending agreement between Consolidated Aircraft and the City of
Dallas, Texas, for the construction of an aircraft manufacturing plant
on land adjacent to the Hensley Army Reserve Airfield. In early
1940, a failed merger between Consolidated and Hall Aluminum
caused the company to renege on its deal with the City of Dallas.
Kindelberger consulted Consolidated and received permission to
assume Consolidated’s contractual obligations and options to the City
of Dallas for the land. North American promised to build a factory in
the area if the War Department consented to the company’s use of
Hensley Field for the qualification of its aircraft. North American
also requested that the City of Dallas extend two runways as a
condition of the sale (Bilstein & Miller 1985: 94; Barksdale 1958: 3).
North American’s requests to both the City and the War Department
were granted, and by August 1940, contracts were signed. On 23
August 1940 The Grand Prairie Texan, a local newspaper, announced
North American’s intention to build an aircraft plant in Dallas
County. The affordable land prices, moderate climate, diminutive tax
burden, abundance of electric power, and availability of labor and
transportation influenced the company’s decision to expand into
Texas. In addition, the proposed plant site was accessible to two
highways and the Texas and Pacific Railroad, a transcontinental
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system that extended to the company’s West Coast base of operations
(Grand Prairie Texan 23 August 1940: 1).
On 28 August 1940, North American officially acquired the cityowned land, approximately 10 miles from downtown Dallas, two
miles from Grand Prairie, east of Hensley Field, and north of
Mountain Creek Lake. The small plot of land was insufficient for all
of North American’s construction needs, so the company hired local
realtor Paul Carrington to acquire additional lands (Engineer’s Final
Report 1944: 2). Carrington purchased 48 parcels of land in two
different surveys, the J. W. Kirk and E. Crockett Survey that were
adjacent to the Hensley Field site. From August to November 1940,
North American finalized the deals aggregating 152.5 acres and
purchased from landowners Donnie S. Higgins, A. B. Mason, J. B.
Critz, Jon A. Worsham, Dallas Power & Light Company, and the
estate of Mrs. Donna Roberts Fitzgerald Crane (Figure 8-1).
The company hired Allen & Kelley Architects of Indianapolis,
Indiana, to design its factory spaces for the new Dallas plant. Not
much is known about this firm except that they apparently designed
other aircraft and industrial plants following World War II 1. The
January 1948 issue of Progressive Architecture profiled Allen &
Kelley Architects’ plans on a General Motors factory in Grand
Rapids, Michigan because of its integration of design with
equipment. Other than the Progressive Architecture feature article,
little is known about Allen & Kelley Architects except that the firm
designed for North American Aviation in Texas from 1940–42.
Ernest R. Breech, the chairman of the board for North American
Aviation Inc., turned the first shovel of earth at the groundbreaking
ceremony on 28 September 1940. The dedicatory ceremony was held
in a barren pasture northwest of Mountain Creek Lake, and many
local leaders in politics, aviation, and business attended the event,
including Dallas Mayor Woodall Rodgers, Dallas banker J. B. Adoue,
Jr., and the President of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce (Barksdale
1958: 4). Breech announced to the crowd that North American
intended to transfer only a few workers from its Inglewood,
California, operations and hire the majority of its work force from the
North Texas area (Bilstein & Miller 1985: 94).
At the time of the ground-breaking ceremony, the manufacturing
sector was a relatively small component of the local Dallas economy.
Only 16,000 of Dallas County’s 398,564 residents made their living
from manufacturing jobs, which earned them $15 million annually
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(The Handbook of Texas,Vol. I. 1952: 459). The majority of work
available in Dallas County before World War II was in agriculture,
livestock, textiles, women’s accoutrements, and oil and petroleum
(Bilstein & Miller 1985: 94). North American’s annual payroll of $10
million promised to almost double the number of manufacturing jobs
in Dallas County and provide an alternative source of employment in
an area that had little experience with the military aircraft industry.
The new North American plant was expected to affect the small,
rural town of Grand Prairie beyond merely increasing its employment
base. The town anticipated its population of 2,000 to double and
thereby strain available housing. Local real estate experts predicted a
need for 1,000 additional homes. The City of Grand Prairie doubled
its police, fire, schools, water, and sewage and power even before
construction officially began (Price 7 July 1940: np).
THE DPC EXPANDS INTO NORTH TEXAS
North American and Consolidated were not the only aircraft
companies interested in Texas during this period; the DPC Site
Location Board targeted Texas as one of the top states for industrial
mobilization. Texas ultimately ranked fourth among DPC-financed
states in the country. The U.S. Army Air Force (USAAF) nominated
North American and its products for DPC funding in early 1940, and
the Dallas County factory expansion appealed to the USAAF and the
DPC for many reasons, most important of which was the plant’s
proximity to a proposed USAAF base east of Hensley Field.
Construction on the USAAF base in Dallas began in October 1940. It
was soon placed under Navy stewardship and renamed NAS Dallas
because the USAAF already had a base in Fort Worth—Carswell
Army Air Force Base. NAS Dallas was one of 80 air stations
constructed under the authority of the Navy’s Bureau of Yards and
Docks during World War II. The Bureau’s assignment in this period
was to build a system of interconnected air bases capable of
supporting 27,500 airplanes and 200 seaplanes. The Navy assigned
the new NASs a variety of duties and responsibilities, but their
primary mission was to keep aircraft operational and combat ready.
All maintenance, from major to minor work, was performed at these
bases (Building the Navy’s Bases 1947: 227). Other missions
included qualifying and training new recruits and testing aircraft
manufactured for use in the war.
When NAS Dallas was commissioned, it had two primary missions:
the first was the training of naval aviation cadets and enlisted
personnel from the Marine Corps and Coast Guard on the newest and
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Figure 8-1. Real Estate summary map. Source: Defense Plant Corporation.
PAGE 8-15
most up-to-date aircraft. This function supported NAS Corpus
Christi, the second largest aviation-training base in the nation. NAS
Dallas’s second principal mission was to provide mechanical support
and repair and maintenance of both new and used aircraft engines
manufactured at various plants around the nation. In support of this
effort, enlisted personnel at NAS Dallas tested and qualified light
aircraft manufactured by DPC Plancors in and around Texas (NAS
Dallas Historical Record nd: 1).
The DPC found that aircraft manufacturing plants and military bases
could work in cooperation with one another to make the Industrial
Mobilization Program work more efficiently. As a result, the
placement of Plancors close to military bases became a general trend
within the program. Examples occurred in St, Louis, Missouri; San
Diego, California; Columbus, Ohio; Seattle, Washington; Wichita,
Kansas; Buffalo, New York; Memphis, Tennessee; Stratford,
Connecticut; Fort Worth, Texas, and at many other locations (Figure
8-2).
Normally, the DPC did not contract with a company after
construction and planning activities had begun, as it did with the
North American plant in Dallas County. Standard operating
procedures for financing called for a sponsoring agency to nominate
a prospective company and the DPC approached the company with a
deal. The DPC agreement with Curtiss-Wright Aircraft Corporation
for a plant in Hamilton County Ohio, just outside of Columbus and
Cincinnati, illustrates the program’s usual process. In June 1940, the
DPC approached Curtiss-Wright officials with a $37 million
construction deal for the company to manufacture aircraft motors on
200 acres in rural Ohio (White 1980: 20–22). The offer also included
$20 million in additional funds for working capital, equipment, and
machines. Initially, Curtiss-Wright did not agree to the terms, but
after routine negotiations, the company consented and the plan was
formalized on 7 August 1940 (White 1980: 20–22).
The Curtiss-Wright Ohio deal represented the majority of
arrangements made by the DPC with industrial corporations, but,
considering the need for rapid industrial mobilization, the DPC was
willing to change its normal methods and processes for financing,
planning, and construction to meet production and procurement
goals. Factors that interested the DPC in the North American/Dallas
County agreement centered on the plant’s proximity to NAS Dallas,
NAS Corpus Christi, and the company’s sponsorship by the War
Department.
PAGE 8-16
The DPC suspended its normal procedures because the War
Department wanted the Dallas County/NAA factory expansion
included in the Plancor construction program and part of the
Industrial Mobilization Program. The DPC sent Supervising
Engineer, Frank Shaw, to North American Aviation’s corporate
headquarters in Inglewood to discuss the DPC’s taking over the
construction, operation, and ownership of the factory space. On 4
November 1940, Shaw offered North American the basic DPC
financing package in which the DPC would reimburse the company
for its total investment, take over any outstanding loans, continue
construction of the Dallas County plant as DPC-owned Plancor #25,
and lease it to North American for $1 a month. North American and
the DPC negotiated for two days and, on 6 November 1940, they
signed a contract and lease for the construction of a plant, support
structures, and the acquisition of equipment and machinery worth
Figure 8-2. Aerial photo of NAS Dallas and Hensley Field in relation to Plancor #25. Source: United States Naval Air Stations of
World War II: Volume 2, Western States by M. L Shettle, Jr.
PAGE 8-17
$7.9 million dollars (Bilstein & Miller 1985: 94; Engineer’s Final
Report 1944: 2, 3).
Even though North American signed away ownership of Plancor #25,
the company retained considerable rights regarding the construction
of the plant as lessee. First, the company worked with the DPC, the
architects, and engineers on the design and plant layout. North
American insisted that the floor plan be simple but innovative to
maximize speed of production. Second, North American wanted the
DPC to honor its existing contracts with Allen & Kelley Architects
and James Stewart & Company, to design, supervise construction,
and provide engineering services. The DPC agreed to this request
with the stipulation that the architects and engineers comply with
Industrial Mobilization rationing rules and War Department design
criteria.
In 1940, the War Resources Board began a rationing program for
items critical to the national defense and the Industrial Mobilization
Program. War Resources Board restrictions on steel greatly affected
the Industrial Mobilization Program’s national building program and
required architects to use alternative materials, such as concrete and
wood, in the construction of noncritical buildings (Kane 1995: 85–6).
Owing to rationing, the DPC replaced the Mosher Steel Company of
Dallas as the steel contractor for Plancor #25 in an effort to directly
control the amount of steel used during the construction of the plant
(Engineer’s Final Report 1944: 3).
The DPC created a set of construction designations according to the
War Resources Board restrictions that guided architects and engineers
in the design and construction of DPC-financed factories. Assigned
building designations indicated a facility’s overall level of
importance within the operations of the complex and the Industrial
Mobilization Program. Type “A” buildings were considered critical
to the manufacture of war-related products and thus were fireproof
and constructed with steel and concrete. Types “B,” “C,” and “D”
buildings were made of concrete and wood, and Type “E”
designations indicated construction materials of concrete and brick
(Table 8-4). Each major and minor building at Plancor #25 was
assigned a DPC-construction designation (Engineer’s Final Report
1944: 10).
On 16 September 1940, the Assistant Secretary of War, Robert P.
Patterson, forwarded a naval operations memo to the executives at
North American Aviation requesting that they comply with certain
PAGE 8-18
Table 8-4.
PAGE 8-19
design criteria for aircraft manufacturing plants. Following the
company’s contract with the DPC, the request turned into a
requirement. Allen & Kelley Architects were forced to adhere to
DPC specifications and design Plancor #25 as a “blackout” style
plant. This type of design provided a measure of protection against
enemy air attack or sabotage. The War Department developed a set of
blackout criteria for architects and engineers. The first blackout
standard addressed general plant location and the preference for
inland rather than coastal states, and rural over urban areas. Second,
the War Department favored dispersal of buildings instead of a
closely packed factory space. They recommended a distance between
buildings of 100 yards. The War Department justified this second
criterion by postulating that if a bomb were dropped, the destruction
of one or two facilities would not disrupt the production of the entire
plant (R.E. Ingersoll to Chief of Naval Operations 16 September
1940: 1). The third blackout provision included installation of opaque
shutters or mechanical curtains in all windows, skylights, doors, and
other places where interior light might escape. Fluorescent,
incandescent, and mercury vapor lights were installed and pointed
downward in an effort to help reduce the amount of interior light
emanating from the buildings. This provision also included
completely sealing all entryways (R.E. Ingersoll to Chief of Naval
Operations 16 September 1940: 1–2). As an additional measure
against destruction under bomb attack, the War Department’s fourth
blackout criterion included the design and installation of fire and
bomb walls. The final provision of a blackout building incorporated
camouflage techniques to prevent a possible bomber or saboteur from
discovering the plant. Concealment included landscaping, painting
the buildings to match the terrain, and disguising the roofs of
factories by painting designs such as farms, golf courses, or
residential neighborhoods (R. E. Ingersoll to Chief of Naval
Operations 16 September 1940: 2, 4). At Plancor #25, the roofs were
disguised as a golf course (Hanley 1986: 46).
Once Allen & Kelley Architects considered the requirements of both
the owner and the lessee, they designed for the first blackout-style,
DPC-financed, windowless, fully air-conditioned, and artificiallylighted factory space in the United States (Bilstein & Miller 1985:
95; Barksdale 1958: 5). Known as Facility 1, the factory featured an
open and simplistic arrangement that emphasized speed of
production. Its spacious internal layout facilitated the quick
movement of basic materials from storage to production to shipping
and receiving departments (Barksdale 1958: 5). The main
manufacturing area consisted of 900,000 square feet and was
PAGE 8-20
designed to accommodate the production of 325 AT-6 “Texan”
trainers and 250 P-51 “Mustang” combat fighters per month
CONSTRUCTION AND OPERATIONS BEGIN AT PLANCOR #25
The DPC and North American hired several prime contractors and
subcontractors from different parts of the nation to provide a variety
of services in the construction of Plancor #25 (Table 8-5). J. Gordon
Turnball, Inc., of Cleveland, Ohio, was an important addition to this
plant’s construction team as consulting engineer. At the time, the
consulting company provided numerous architectural and engineering
services to the DPC building program for Curtiss-Wright factories in
St. Louis and Buffalo. In addition to these plants, J. Gordon Turnball
designed and constructed facilities for General Motors and several
other engine manufacturing facilities, including the Guiberson Diesel
Engine Company of Texas and Continental Motors Corporation
(Plancor #1504), both in nearby Garland, that supplied North
American with aircraft engines during World War II (Engineer’s
Final Report 1944: 66). James Stewart & Company served as prime
contractor to the plant’s construction and signed a contract for
$1,705,000. James Stewart & Company supervised the general
construction of the entire plant, with J. Gordon Turnball working as a
subcontractor (Engineer’s Final Report 1944: 2).
Beginning 13 November 1940, James Stewart & Company stripped,
graded, and cleared the former cotton and pasture lands into the site
for Plancor #25. The Texas & Pacific Railroad began construction on
a team track and spur along the south side wall of Facility 1 and
placed an additional, but temporary, spur on the building’s east side
(Engineer’s Final Report 1944: 2). Only a few days later, rain began
to fall intermittently, but they continued over a 100-day period,
culminating in 14 inches of rainfall (Engineer’s Final Report 1944:
3). The president of North American, Dutch Kindelberger, recalled
the conditions: “On 2 December 1940, when the first steel was
erected, it was a morass of black mud. It rained so frequently that the
construction crews almost had to take soundings to see just where
their trucks had disappeared” (Barksdale 1958: 6). Despite the rough
weather, James Stewart & Company completed significant
construction activities at the site. Plumbing, electrical lines, heating,
ventilation, and fire protection systems were installed by a variety of
subcontractors in November and December 1940. By 29 January
1941, James Stewart & Company had finished the steel framework
and trusses for the Facility 1 manufacturing building and its seven
ancillary Type “A” facilities (Engineer’s Final Report 1944: 3).
PAGE 8-21
Table 8-5.
PAGE 8-22
Figure 8-3. Interior photograph of Facility 23, the
Foundry, during World War II. Source: NWIRP
Dallas Plant Records.
In only three months,
enough construction was
completed at Plancor #25
that North American was
able to unload and store
machine tools and also
install pieces of permanent
equipment in Facility 1 and
other production spaces,
such as Facility 22, the
Drop Hammer Building,
and Facility 23, the Foundry
(Figures 8-3 & 8-4). During the period
from January to March 1941,
numerous contractors and
subcontractors worked quickly to
construct the Facility 1 manufacturing
factory and its 12 support structures.
On 8 March 1941, before James
Stewart & Company completed
construction, North American began
manufacturing activities on the AT-6
Texan training aircraft in Facility 1
(Figure 8-5). It was vital to the DPC
Figure 8-4. Interior photograph of Facility 22, the Drop
that production operations at Plancor
Hammer Building. Source: NWIRP Dallas Plant Records.
#25—especially on the Texan—begin
as soon as possible so that aviators
across the country, particularly at NAS Dallas and NAS Corpus
Christi, could prepare and train on the type of aircraft most likely to
be flown by the
USAAF and the
Navy. The first fullproduction Texan
rolled off Facility
1’s manufacturing
line on 29 March
1941. North
American
pronounced the
Texan ready for
flight testing and
Figure 8-5. Aerial photograph of Plant “A” facilities under
towed it to Facility
construction, 8 July 1941. Source: NWIRP Dallas Plant
20, the Hangar. The
Records.
PAGE 8-23
Figure 8-6. Completed Plant “A” facilities, manufacturing and office buildings, circa 1941. Source: NWIRP Dallas Plant Records.
following day, North American towed it to Hensley Field, where it
took its maiden flight (Engineer’s Final Report 1944: 4).
James Stewart & Company completed construction on the Facility 1
manufacturing building in April 1941 (Figure 8-6). Some of Facility
1’s ancillary buildings included an office building (Facility 2), a
power generating plant (Facility 26), a million-gallon water reservoir
(Facility 35), a sewage treatment plant (Facility 34), air-conditioning
cooling towers, paint storage facilities (Facility 24), the Foundry
(Facility 23), and the Drop Hammer Building (Facility 22), and a
hangar and aircraft storage (Facility 20) (Bilstein & Miller 1985: 95).
North American and the DPC celebrated the beginning of production
at Plancor #25 by hosting a dedicatory ceremony for 400
distinguished guests of North American, NAS Dallas, the DPC,
Industrial Mobilization Program’s Advisory Committee, and local
Dallas County leaders on 7 April 1941. Attendees included Assistant
Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson, William S. Knudsen, J. Buell
Snyder, Colonel I. H. Edwards, Ernest R. Breech, and DPC Chief of
Council Hans Klagsbrunn (Engineer’s Final Report 1944: 4). In a
luncheon speech given on Facility 1’s assembly line, Robert P.
Patterson reflected: “The super-human job you Texans have
accomplished in erecting this great monument to defense is an
example for the entire nation. There is new reason to believe that the
American aircraft industry can do the unbelievable job expected of
it” (Hanley 1986: 46).
The onset of production at Plancor #25 resulted in economic and
industrial growth in Dallas County, as well as a population boom in
nearby Grand Prairie. The DPC sought to ease housing shortages by
providing lodging for the thousands of workers who poured into the
area. The DPC and the Federal Works Administration funded the
construction of a defense-housing colony known as “Avion Village,”
located southwest and within walking distance of Plancor #25. Avion
Village consisted of 300 hastily constructed prefabricated homes on
PAGE 8-24
concrete slab foundations. According to a contemporary source: “One
crew completely erected and furnished a cottage on a waiting
foundation in 58 minutes and 50 seconds–and defeated its competitor
by only two minutes. More adequate than many defense housing
projects, Avion Village included a community center, swimming
pool, parks and playgrounds, and a public school” (Barksdale 1958:
5).
INDUSTRIAL MOBILIZATION: THE WAR PERIOD, DECEMBER 1941—
AUGUST 1945
As officials celebrated the completion of Plancor #25 in Dallas,
events in the Pacific heightened. When Japan overran Frenchcontrolled Indo-China in May 1941, the Industrial Mobilization’s
aircraft procurement program increased and diversified into the
development and production of the long-range, four-engine bomber, a
weapon specifically designed to exert pressure in Asia. During this
period, American aircraft industry developed three types of bombers:
the heavy Consolidated B-24 Liberator, the medium Martin B-26
Marauder, and the heavy North American B-25 Mitchell (U.S.
American aircraft companies already had orders to sustain
themselves through 1942, and this increased demand for bombers
overwhelmed the industry’s capabilities and its newly constructed
facilities. Knudsen urged automotive companies to undertake the
challenge of the new bomber production program in governmentowned plants and in collaboration with the company that designed
the aircraft (U.S. Civilian Production Administration 1947: 49).
Because North American was a subsidiary of the GM and the
designer of the B-25 Mitchell, the DPC turned to GM to produce the
bomber at a newly completed factory in Kansas City. The Ford
Motor Company owned Consolidated Aircraft and agreed to
undertake B-24 Liberator production in two DPC-owned Plancor
facilities: Tulsa, Oklahoma and Fort Worth, Texas.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 forced the
Industrial Mobilization Program to acknowledge that the production
effort offered by the automotive industry was insufficient to meet the
demand and urgency for bomber aircraft. The prospect of a full-scale,
two-front war made existing procurement, production, and industrial
facilities dangerously deficient, and goals were sharply increased.
The War Department demanded that the aircraft industry undergo
additional facilities expansion to accommodate heavy bomber
production and sent nominations to the DPC for the original aircraft
PAGE 8-25
designers to expand their factories. Because Consolidated was
engaged in B-24 Liberator production in Fort Worth, the DPC
believed that North American in nearby Dallas could cooperate on
the Liberator production program. North American and the DPC
were willing to expand further into Dallas County “because the
people of Dallas and Texas have shown a wonderful spirit of
cooperation, a genuine desire to do everything necessary to win the
war, and a great aptitude for aircraft manufacture” (Dallas Morning
Figure 8-7. Plant “B” expansion plot plan as prepared by J. Gordon Turnball, Inc. Source: Defense Plant Corporation.
News 20 December 1942: np). The DPC assigned North American’s
Plancor #25 an expanded production and facility order for 100 B-24
heavy bombers per month in a new manufacturing building called
Facility 6 (Engineer’s Final Report 1944: 4, 65) (Figure 8-7).
It was not uncommon for a DPC-sponsored Plancor to be built in two
planned construction phases. Curtiss-Wright’s Plancor #17 in St.
Louis was built from 1940–42 whereas its ancillary building,
Plancor #17A was constructed in 1943. However, it is not clear
whether a two-phase construction plan was intended for Plancor #25
PAGE 8-26
or whether the second phase was merely a response to wartime
demands. It is unlikely that Plancor #25 was intended as a two-phase
plant for several reasons. First, the DPC accommodated North
American’s previous commitments when it assumed stewardship of
the Dallas County plant deal, which included existing architectural
designs for the planned buildings. Second, the need for bomber
aircraft presented itself only when construction at Dallas was nearly
complete. The President’s 50,000 plane goal primarily involved
building trainer and fighter aircraft to combat Germany and Japan’s
known capabilities, which did not include heavy bombers. Finally,
Plancor #25 had excess land available for additional construction. It
is possible that the War Department incorporated North American in
its expanded bomber production program because Plancor #25 had
room for additional facilities and was capable of accommodating the
manufacturing demands. Nevertheless, it is impossible to confirm
whether the 1943 expansion of Plancor #25 was planned prior to the
emergency shortages of heavy bombers in 1941.
EXPANSION AT PLANCOR #25
On 28 February 1943, North American and the DPC amended their
lease to provide nearly $34 million in additional funds for the
acquisition of surrounding land and the construction of a second,
much larger manufacturing building, called Plant “B,” or Facility 6,
along with its support structures (Figure 8-8). The funds also targeted
the purchase and installation of machinery and equipment for
production of the B-24 Liberator Bomber, as well as additions to
existing Plancor #25 facilities, now called Plant “A” buildings
(Engineer’s Final Report 1944: 4). The Plant “B” expansion contract
between the DPC and North American was different from the first
arrangement because the company had a limited say in the expansion.
The DPC assumed complete control for the selection of the architect,
engineer, contractor, and subcontractor (Table 8-6).
Consistent in Plancor construction nationwide, the DPC preferred to
engage architectural-engineering firms to design and supervise their
plants rather than hire separate architects and engineers. In the
1942–44 Plant “B” expansion, the DPC selected J. Gordon Turnball
as the architectural engineer instead of Allen & Kelley Architects,
who had designed Plant “A.” The architectural engineer’s contractual
obligations included surveying the property, drawing the maps,
making layouts, preparing estimates, adapting standard plans to the
sites, designing unique structures, and supervising the overall
construction of the Plancor (Fine & Remington 1972: 193).
PAGE 8-27
Figure 8-8. Artist’s rendition of the Plant “B” manufacturing expansion of Plancor #25. Source: Defense Plant Corporation.
The DPC again hired a variety of companies for construction
services, some of whom worked on Plant “A” (Table 8-7). The DPC
hired James Stewart & Company to construct and equip Facility 6
and its support buildings (Engineer’s Final Report 1944: 4–5).
Interestingly, DPC hired the Mosher Steel Company of Dallas, which
had been fired during the “Plant A” construction because of steel
restrictions. The DPC no longer had to provide its own steel as it did
in 1941, because the Office of Production Management and the
Industrial Mobilization Program took control of steel rationing.
Because steel was still in short supply in March 1942, the DPC
required the crew for “Plant B” to adhere to its construction
designations “A”–“F.” The Industrial Mobilization Program, NDAC,
Office of Production Management, and DPC worked diligently with
private industry to establish compliance standards so that they could
provide the supply work to construction programs (U.S. Civilian
Production Administration 1947: 141).
PAGE 8-28
Table 8-6.
PAGE 8-29
Contractors and Subcontractors for Plant “B” Construction at Plancor #25
Table 8-7.
PAGE 8-30
While the DPC hired subcontractors, it also negotiated the purchase
of additional lands to support the construction activities for the “Plant
B” expansion. DPC purchased four large parcels of land in the P.
Linney and R. Huitt surveys from the Estate of Mrs. Donna Roberts
Fitzgerald on 25 March 1942, the Estate of Annie I. Stevens two
days later, and from W. E. Smallwood et al. on 7 August 1942. As
soon as the land was purchased, the DPC ordered construction to
begin.
From 22 to 30 March, several
significant construction activities took
place at Plancor #25. First, the Wallace
Plumbing Company laid temporary
water lines. Second, the Grand Prairie
Construction Company began
excavation on a spur of the Texas and
Pacific Railroad to provide lines to the
“Plant B” Manufacturing Building
(Facility 6), the Wood Shop and
Garage (Facility 27), and the
Figure 8-9. Plant “B” final assembly area for B-24 Bomber.
Source: NWIRP Dallas Plant Records.
Warehouse (Facility 25). North
American used the Texas and Pacific
track to receive engines and parts from suppliers in North Texas, to
ship and receive subassemblies from Consolidated in Fort Worth, and
ship assemblies to the company’s plants in Southern California.
Finally, James Stewart & Company cleared and graded the land.
They also supervised Mosher Steel while it erected “Plant B” and the
structural steel columns and trusses for all Type “A” buildings
From March 30 until the end of
October 1942, the DPC had
construction crews working around the
clock on the “Plant B” expansion and,
by December, North American began
partial operation of its new bomber
manufacturing plant (Figure 8-9). The
first Dallas-produced B-24 Liberator
rolled off the Plant “B” assembly line
in March 1943 and was probably
Figure 8-10. B-24 wing production in Plant “B” during World
flown by North American test pilots
War II. Source: NWIRP Dallas Plant Records.
from Hensley Field to Carswell Army
Air Force Base in Fort Worth, where it
was tested and qualified (Figure 8-10). The USAAF accepted the first
PAGE 8-31
B-24 on 16 March 1943 (Engineer’s Final Report 1944: 5).
Neighboring NAS Dallas did not test and qualify the bomber aircraft
produced at Plancor #25, only the light AT-6 Texan trainers and P-51
Mustangs; Carswell was probably assigned the responsibility of
testing heavier aircraft.
FULL-SCALE OPERATIONAL
ACTIVITIES BEGIN AT PLANCOR #25
From 1942–45, North American’s
employees at Plancor #25 worked
three, 8-hour shifts, 24 hours a day, six
days a week. Plancor #25 reportedly
became the only aircraft factory in the
entire nation to produce all three types
of military planes—trainers, fighters,
and bombers (Dallas Times Herald 29
Figure 8-11. Plant “A” final assembly area for the P-51
December 1942: np). In the first eight
Mustang Fighter. Source: NWIRP Dallas Plant Records.
months that “Plants A” and “B” were
in joint production, North American produced aircraft worth $473
million at a rate of 18 AT-6 Texans, 16 P-51 Mustangs, and 10 B-24
Bombers a week (Figure 8-11).
To meet its production demands, North American required a base
work force of 17,000 employees, which at times ballooned to 38,000
(Executive Order 11724 Installation Survey Report 1974: 5). The
company quickly learned that it needed both new workers to
accommodate B-24 production and replacement workers to alleviate
its average 30% turnover rate. Since operations began in 1941, North
American officials calculated that they had hired a total of 84,476
men and women and saw their turnover rate fluctuate as high as
100% (Rae 1968: 151; Dallas Morning News 8 October 1944: np).
To train all these employees, North American created a War School
at 2222 Ross in downtown Dallas, where classes were held 24 hours
a day, seven days a week, and accommodated up to 3,000 students at
one time (Dallas Morning News 7 January 1943: np). By the time the
War School closed in 1944, workers logged 6,703,897 hours of
instruction in over 40 different subjects, equivalent to the amount of
instruction and class size of Southern Methodist University (Dallas
Morning News 8 October 1944: np).
Despite constant advertising in local newspapers, North American
had difficulty recruiting men to work in its Plancor #25 factories. The
company resorted to hiring handicapped and older men, 16- 17-yearold boys, and professional men exempt from the draft. As early as
PAGE 8-32
November 1941, the shortage of available working men forced North
American to recruit women into its work force. A year later, women
constituted 30% of its total production force (Rae 1968: 151). Of the
6,300 employees of the “Plant A” manufacturing building in
September 1943, 60% were Dallas-area women and new recruits to
the industrial work force, 4,000 of whom were housewives prior to
their employment at North American’s Plancor #25 (Dallas Morning
News 11 September 1943). In general, women came to work in the
aircraft industry “out of a patriotic desire to assist in the war effort
and to augment the family income. They did not go to work with the
idea of permanently displacing men in traditionally male-dominated
jobs, nor did they regard their new positions as permanent feminist
beachheads in the workplace” (Trimble 1990: 213).
In an effort to create loyalty among its employees, boost morale, and
reduce the employee turnover and absentee rates, North American,
like many other companies, sponsored recreational programs such as
sports teams and tournaments, dances, beauty pageants, choirs,
picnics, and outings to local amusement parks for its workers. Sports
teams were divided according to gender and production areas and
included popular games such as basketball, fishing, soccer, softball,
baseball, football, golf, tennis, and bowling. Results of tournaments
and recreational events were reported in the company magazine,
North American Skyline, and its corporate newspaper, the North
American Skywriter. Like many other industrial WWII publications,
North American’s magazine and newspaper were cheerful and well
illustrated, and included features on major production programs at the
Plancor, outstanding individuals, the history of the factory, gossip,
and information on friends and former employees currently serving
the military (Trimble 1990: 216).
North American’s steps to appease workers and overcome its labor
problems appears to have greatly influenced its employees’
production efforts during the war. The company contributed to
America’s “Arsenal of Democracy” by producing nearly 15,000 AT6/SNJ Texans, 8,000 P-51 Mustang fighters, and more than 500 B-24
bomber aircraft. North American employees produced one of these
three aircraft every 40 minutes (Dallas Morning News 4 June 1944:
np). It has been reported that more planes were built at North
American’s Dallas plant than anywhere else in the country—over
20,000 flyaway units and enough equipment and spare parts to total
25,000 additional aircraft (Figure 8-12) (Barksdale 1958: 7).
PAGE 8-33
Figure 8-12. Aerial view of Plancor #25 following construction, circa 1943. Source: NWIRP Dallas Plant Records.
Each of the three types of aircraft
produced at Plancor #25 fulfilled
different functions for the U.S. and its
allies. The USAAF and Navy used the
AT-6/SNJ Texan to train and prepare
recruits for the newer, highperformance combat fighters and
bombers (Figure 8-13). The Texan
proved to be a universal trainer,
capable of simulating the performance
Figure 8-13. The SNJ in flight. Source: Rockwell, The
Heritage of North American by Bill Yenne.
of both fighters and bombers (Yenne
1989: 24). This characteristic made the
aircraft both cost effective and an excellent preparatory training
device for the variety of planes that new recruits might fly in
combat. North American produced nearly 17,000 Texans, with
Plancor #25 contributing 15,000 of this total (Donald 1997: 705).
North American engineers and employees at Plancor #25 constructed
2,970 Texans from plywood and balsa wood to conserve aluminum
PAGE 8-34
for its combat aircraft, the P-51
Mustang (Yenne 1989: 26). All North
American Texans were qualified and
tested to some degree by NAS Dallas
pilots, whose procedures were
probably abbreviated because of
wartime constraints and the desperate
need for the aircraft in training
exercises. In all, NAS Dallas personnel
directly flew and cleared 4,421 Texans
at Hensley Field before they were
shipped to the fleet (Figure 8-14);
NAS Dallas Historical Record nd:1).
North American also enjoyed great
success with its P-51 Mustang. In
1940, the British approached North
American about producing the CurtissWright-designed P-40, but Dallas
executive Dutch Kindelberger felt that
the P-40 was inadequate against the
speed, capabilities, and range of Nazi
interceptors. Kindelberger offered to
design and build a superior combat
fighter for the British instead of the P40, even though the company had
never designed or built a fighter in its
history. Procurement officials from
Great Britain liked Kindelberger’s idea
and ordered the proposed P-51
Mustang sight unseen. North
American engineers designed and
manufactured the new fighter in an
unprecedented 100 days at its
Inglewood, California, plant (Empires
of Industry 29 June 1999). The P-51’s
revolutionary innovations included
thin, stream-lined wings, a 2,000pound bomb load, a jet-like radiator
system, and a Rolls Royce engine that
allowed the plane to regularly reach
the top speed of 443 miles per hour
(Figures 8-15 & 8-16). The P-51’s
long-range capability, bomb load, and
Figure 8-14. SNJ-45 at NAS Dallas. Source: United States
Naval Air Stations of World War II; Volume II-Western States.
by M. L Shettle, Jr.
Figure 8-15. A P-51 Mustang fighter on airport runway.
Source: Rockwell, The Heritage of North American by Bill
Yenne.
Figure 8-16. P-51-D Mustang fighters on production line in
Plant “A” during World War II. Source:Rockwell, The Heritage
of North American by Bill Yenne.
PAGE 8-35
speed were its greatest assets. The Mustang’s reserve tanks allowed it
to travel over 2,000 miles before refueling. The fighter’s speed and
range are the key reasons the aircraft is regarded as one of the most
important fighters of World War II (Empires of Industry 29 June
1999; Donald 1997: 702). The performance of the P-51 prototype
caused its demand to skyrocket. North American’s expanded facilities
in Inglewood, Kansas, and Dallas were assigned the challenge of
mass-producing the fighter. Plancor #25 produced nearly 8,000 P-51
Mustangs at a rate of 16 per week during the war (Yenne 1989: 57).
The P-51 fought in both the European and Pacific theaters. Over
Germany skies, long-range Mustang fighters escorted bombers in and
out of Berlin and overwhelmed the Luftwaffe by destroying nearly
half of the fleet and blasting its bases (Yenne 1989: 57). The P-51
had tremendous dive bombing and escort capabilities that enabled the
USAAF and Navy to make daring daylight raids into the heart of
Germany that slowly eroded Nazi resistance (Empires of Industry 29
June 1999). Chuck Yeager, one of America’s greatest pilots, flew a P51 over the skies in Europe and described it as “the best American
fighter in the war, equal to anything the Germans put up against her”
(Yenne 1989: 54). Over the Pacific, the Mustang stormed into Iwo
Jima and was vital to the capture of that base, which the Americans
later used to launch an invasion into the Japanese homeland. At the
conclusion of fighting in both theaters, more Mustangs survived than
any other fighter, with 3,303 retained in service (Yenne 1989 48, 57).
Plancor #25 won the prestigious “E” Pennant by the Army Air Force
Flying Training Command on 21 September 1942, for outstanding
production efforts on its Texan trainer and Mustang fighter aircraft
(Engineer’s Final Report 1944: 4). The plant’s employees received
the award for the production of a record 728 aircraft in a single 30day period (Bilstein & Miller 1985: 95; Barksdale 1958: 7). The “E”
Pennant was the highest honor the United States bestowed on its
“civilian production soldiers” and the first awarded in the state of
Texas (Hanley 1986: 47). A second “E” Pennant flew at Plancor #25
in April 1943, when the Army–Navy presented the employees with
the award for the company’s continued production excellence (Dallas
Morning News 7 April 1943: np).
The B-24 Liberator bomber proved to be the United States’ most
extensively produced aircraft during World War II, with 19,000 total
aircraft built by Consolidated in Fort Worth, North American in
Dallas, and Ford at Tulsa (Donald 1997: 266–67). Plancor #25
contributed only a small percentage of the overall figure for the B-24,
producing the Liberator bomber for only 19 months (Figure 8-17).
PAGE 8-36
Figure 8-17. Production layout/floor plan for B-24 Liberator production in Plant “B” during World War II. Source: Defense Plant
Corporation.
Faster than the Boeing B-17 Flying
Fortress, the Liberator’s speed, range
(3,000 miles), and availability made it
popular with the U.S. military and its
allies. Like the Mustang, the Liberator
was used in both Europe and Japan
during World War II. Often escorted by
the P-51, the B-24 flew deep into
Germany to drop its bomb load across
Nazi territories (Empires of Industry
29 June 1999). The B-24, like many
Figure 8-18. B-24 Liberator Bomber. Source: The Complete
other bomber aircraft, was capable of
Encyclopedia of World Aircraft.
flying in high altitudes over the
Himalayan Mountains after the
Japanese closed the Burma Road in 1942. Later in the war, the B-24
was used exclusively to ferry aviation fuel over the Himalayans to
support the operational activities of the Boeing B-29 Superfortresses
in China. (Figure 8-18).
PLANCOR #25 OPERATIONS ARE REDUCED
By summer 1944, the Allied Forces had taken the upper hand in both
Europe and the Pacific. The United States’ superior manufacturing
ability, together with the quality and quantity of its military
personnel, proved to be the deciding factors in victory over the Axis
PAGE 8-37
Powers. (Eltscher & Young 1998: 95, 123). From 1940–44, American
factories clearly out produced both its allies and the enemy with
aircraft amounting to 27% of the total munitions output, peaking at
$16 billion. DPC-owned plants in the Midwest, like Plancor #25 in
Dallas, produced over 35% of all aircraft, airframes, and engines
used in the war (Yoshpe & Franke 1968: 49–50).
The American aircraft industry anticipated the war’s end with a
combination of apprehension and optimism because the cessation of
fighting meant significant cutbacks in military contracts. Dallas’s
North American plant was not immune to this dilemma. Production
contracts at Plancor #25 were cut back on 10 August 1944, and 3,687
employees lost their jobs when the original B-24 Liberator contract
was reduced (Dallas Morning News 17 August 1944: np). A
supplemental order for production of the B-29 Superfortress and nose
portion of the B-25 Mitchell Bomber saved many Plancor #25
employees from dismissal, but the reprieve was only temporary
(Dallas Times Herald 28 September 1944: np). Full production on the
Texan and Mustang continued through January 1945, when it was
reduced to approximately 60% of the earlier wartime production rates
(Dallas Morning News 17 August 1944: np).
During this reduction period, the Dallas and Grand Prairie Chambers
of Commerce assessed the contributions of the DPC and North
American in Dallas County. In just the first eight months of 1944,
North American’s total military sales topped $235,939,610, compared
with $155,945,064 for all other manufactured products in Dallas
County during the entire year. Grand Prairie’s population was only
2,000 when the company first came to Dallas County, but it
mushroomed to 16,339 persons, largely due to the construction of
Plancor #25 and NAS Dallas (Engineer’s Final Report 1944: 66). At
its peak, North American paid a monthly payroll of $10,442,889,
compared with $15,522,683 for other businesses and industries in
Dallas County during the same year (Dallas Morning News 8 August
1944). From these figures, North American clearly stimulated
significant growth within Dallas county from 1941–44. Any
employment reductions at Plancor #25 would greatly affect the
county’s economic growth and stability.
On V-J Day, as the world celebrated the Allied victory, North
American Aviation, like many employers nationwide, gave its 29,000
employees at Plancor #25 a holiday (Barksdale 1958: 7; Engineer’s
Final Report 1944: 66). During the break, company officials decided
to close their Dallas factory in order to remain in the aircraft
PAGE 8-38
manufacturing business. North American announced on Dallas radio
stations and in local newspapers its decision to immediately shut
down the Dallas factory on account of contract cancellations. Half of
the employees were told not to return to Plancor #25 following the
holiday, while the other half —approximately 17,000—were allowed
to return for 15 days to prepare the plant for closure and return it to
the U.S. government (Hanley 1986: 50; Bilstein & Miller 1985: 137).
INDUSTRIAL MOBILIZATION: THE TRANSITION PERIOD, AUGUST
1945–DECEMBER 1947
DEFENSE PLANT CORPORATION CLOSES SHOP
In the summer of 1945, it became apparent to the Industrial
Mobilization Program that the war was coming to an end. America
no longer needed to fund an expansion of its industrial facilities and
the DPC was officially folded back into the RFC and renamed the
Office of Defense Plants, on 30 June. This action signaled the end of
the DPC’s wartime work and the creation of the Office of Defense
Plants’ to administer the former industrial facilities (White 1980: 89).
The Office of Defense Plants recommended to the War Department
that the military branches retain facilities considered critical to the
manufacture of military supplies, with the remainder sold to private
enterprise. On 28 July 1945 the Department of the Navy and War
Department gave their consent to the disposal of excess DPCsponsored property and, on 20 August 1945, the War Productions
Board released 146 properties, including Plancor #25 (White 1980:
101).
The DPC had financed 2,098 plants in 46 different states totaling
$7,939,465,000 during World War II (Table 8-8). Of that number, the
DPC owned 920 plants valued at $6,055,000,000, most of which
were projects nominated by the armed forces (Jones & Angly 1951).
The DPC, the Industrial Mobilization Program, the War Department,
and Congress considered these properties valuable not only in war
but also in peacetime, because the factories would help the nation
retain its military superiority. As of July 1944, the Senate War
Committee and the Truman Committee urged the DPC and War
Department to retain ownership of the plants and place them on
standby status in the event of a future conflict or emergency (White
1980: 111).
The DPC responded to Congress and the War Department’s requests
by sending its best engineers to all of its wholly owned plants and
conducted surveys to determine the best postwar uses for each
PAGE 8-39
Table 8-8.
PAGE 8-40
factory and contractor. Guided by a set of 20 questions, the engineers
recorded on each Plancor’s physical and economic characteristics,
contractor’s intentions following the war, importance to the Industrial
Mobilization Program, and, if it was a large plant, its prospects for
multiple tenancy. The engineer assessed 879 plants and plant sites
that the DPC and the War Department considered critical to
maintaining the country’s military prowess. The assessments were
compiled in a bound report called the Briefalogue, which was first
published in October 1944 (White 1980: 100).
Facility retention or disposal depended greatly on the updated
Briefalogue report, ordered by the Office of Defense Plants and
published in August 1945. The new volume reported that the
government owned 96% of the nation’s synthetic rubber capacity,
90% of its magnesium metal, 58% of its aluminum, 50% of its
aluminum fabrication facilities, 71% of its aircraft and aircraft engine
industry, and the bulk of the nation’s machine tools (White 1980: 90;
Jones & Angly 1951: 316). The 1945 Briefalogue also showed that
the aircraft industry was the single-most financed industry of World
War II and represented half of all of all DPC investment—
approximately $3.8 billion (Yoshpe & Franke 1968: 50). DPC
invested $2.6 billion directly in land, buildings, machines, and other
equipment to build aircraft, airframes, and its parts (Jones & Angly
1951: 316). Of this number, the DPC disbursed $1.357 billion for
airplane engine plants alone, yielding 14 of the 15 largest airplane
plants in the nation (White 1980: 68). The DPC infused the
remaining billion into aviation as capital.
The USAAF and the Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics sponsored 82%
of all aircraft facilities constructed for World War II, and in the
waning days of the war, the aircraft manufacturing industry lost more
than $21 billion in contracts, primarily from their sponsoring
agencies (Yoshpe & Franke 1968: 50; Eltscher & Young 1998: 127).
As a result of the mass contract cancellation, the number of aircraft
manufacturing companies was reduced from 66 to 16, as total sales,
earning, and employment levels plummeted (Eltscher & Young 1998:
127). Consequently, the USAAF and Navy were left with many
empty aircraft factories following the war, including Plancor #25 in
Dallas County. Because it no longer actively produced aircraft for the
USAAF, on 28 July 1945, Plancor #25 was added to the list of
disposable properties presented to the Office of Defense Plants.
Like many other excess Plancors, the Office of Defense Plants listed
the former North American Aviation Dallas County aircraft plant as
PAGE 8-41
Figure 8-19. A notice printed in the Wall Street Journal, circa 1945, advertising surplus DPC property. Plancor #25 is listed
in the lower left corner. Source: Defense Plant Corporation.
PAGE 8-42
surplus property and for sale in advertisements across the nation
(Figure 8-19). The Office of Defense Plants advertised Plancor #25
as readily convertible for multiple manufacturing purposes such as
commercial airplanes or parts, automobiles and trucks, refrigerators,
unit heaters, or products consisting principally of sheet metal and
small machined parts (Engineer’s Final Report 1944: 65–66). The
two large components (Plant “A” and Plant “B”) were rated ideal for
multiple tenancy and capable of operating independently of other
suppliers or contractors. Its location, proximity to transportation, and
abundant labor pool were also touted as advantages.
The sheer size of Plancor #25—85 buildings on a 272-acre site—
worked against its outright sale to a private corporation. The plant’s
nearly 3 million square feet of manufacturing space, including
facilities, land, machinery, and equipment, was valued at
approximately $35 million (Dallas Morning News 24 December
1945: np). In addition, the air-conditioning required to cool the
factories’ high and wide bays added to operational costs (White
1980: 105). When no companies appeared to purchase Plancor #25
and many other government-owned aircraft plants, the Office of
Defense Plants decided to retain ownership and seek potential tenants
rather than buyers. The most important factors behind this decision to
retain Plancor #25 were the plants proximity to NAS Dallas, its
ability to be converted easily to wartime production, and its
capability to produce three different types of aircraft (Engineer’s
Final Report 1944: 65–67).
PLANCOR #25 CHANGES OWNERSHIP
As the Office of Defense Plants processed the official transfer of
Plancor #25 to the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, it also sought new
tenants for the factory (Dallas Morning News 31 October 1945: np).
Many potential tenants, such as the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft
Company, placed bids with the Office of Defense Plants, but most
wanted only partial occupancy or rental on a single building; these
conditions did not appeal to either the Office of Defense Plants or the
Navy (Notes on Telephone Conversation with Lt. Caufield 18
February 1946: np). While efforts to find a permanent tenant for
Plancor #25 continued, the Office of Defense Plants and the Navy
began considering an interim lease and deal proposed by former
North American Aviation executives. The executives submitted a bid
in November 1945 to lease “Plant A” and $800,000 worth of
equipment for use in aircraft subcontracting work as well as other,
more diversified, commercial products. Their offer provided jobs for
a minimum of 3,000 displaced aircraft workers and included rent on
PAGE 8-43
at least one factory space until the Navy could locate a more
permanent arrangement (Barksdale 1958: 13).
Executives Robert McCulloch, Dutch Kindelberger, Al Graf, and
Bert Howard left North American following the closure of Plancor
#25 in August 1945 and formed their own aircraft subcontracting
firm, TEMCO. The company was created with $250,000 in capital
collected from local businessmen, primarily Colonel D. Harold Byrd,
a Dallas oil-man and TEMCO’s largest investor and stockholder
(Brown 1972: 73; Barksdale 1958: 13). Through TEMCO’s local
business support, the newly formed company acquired two different
types of contracts prior to its bid on Plant “A” of Plancor #25. The
first contract included an agreement with Fort Worth-based Fairchild
Aircraft Corporation to assist with the production of the C-82 Packet
cargo plane and F-24 cabin monoplane (Bilstein & Miller 1985: 137).
TEMCO received a contract with local merchants to manufacture
14,000 popcorn vending machines (Barksdale 1958: 14). TEMCO’s
commercial and production orders cemented the Office of Defense
Plant’s decision to temporarily lease part of Plancor #25 to the Texas
company.
In addition to the TEMCO/Plancor #25 lease, the Office of Defense
Plants arranged other agreements for many other vacant aircraft
plants across the nation. The Office of Defense Plant’s 1945–1947
efforts were stop-gap measures that attempted to sustain the financial
viability of the plants while the government and Congress established
legislation to formalize ownership of the properties. In February
1946, the RFC, on behalf of the Office of Defense Plants, filed a
letter of intent with the War Assets Administration stating that
Plancor #25 would be permanently transferred to the Department of
the Navy, which could then either sell the plant outright or lease it at
its discretion (Dallas Morning News 2 October 1946: np). It was not
until August 1947 that Congress introduced legislation that
formalized this arrangement, an act that authorized military
management of an industrial reserve comprising former DPCfinanced plants and tools (White 1980: 112).
President Harry S. Truman signed the Industrial Reserve Act (Public
Law 883, 80th Congress) on 1 December 1947, and it became law
early in 1948. The plants listed in the Act formed the basis of the
new GOCO facilities program. The legislation authorized three types
of GOCOs—ammunition, missiles, and aircraft/aerospace
manufacturers—that provided the government with many advantages
beyond the ability to lease excess properties. The military retained
PAGE 8-44
ownership of the plants while shifting the day-to-day operational
duties to a private contractor, who paid a nominal rental fee. In
addition, the government possessed 145 emergency reserve plants
that could quickly, and legally, be converted to wartime production in
an emergency. The legislation assigned the Department of the Navy
plants worth nearly $334,503,000 across the nation, including the
Dallas County facilities (Yoshpe & Franke 1968: 47–49; White 1980:
112).
THE COLD WAR PERIOD
THE DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY ASSUMES COMMAND AT DALLAS
Once it obtained stewardship of the former Plancor #25, the
Department of the Navy renamed the factory NIRAP Dallas and
began searching for a new, more permanent tenant to manufacture
naval aircraft (Yoshpe & Franke 1968: 48). The Navy also assigned
its own representative (NAVPRO) Lt. Commander W. J. Moyer to
NIRAP Dallas, who assessed the situation at the plant and found that
TEMCO utilized its manufacturing floor space extremely efficiently
and had gained a respectable reputation as an aircraft subassembly
manufacturer (Departmental Industrial Reserve Plant nd: 1). The
1947 NAVPRO assessment recommended that the Navy keep
TEMCO at NIRAP Dallas.
The Navy followed from the NAVPRO recommendation and agreed
to continue leasing part of the plant to TEMCO. The Navy and
TEMCO signed a five-year lease on “Plant A” and its ancillary
buildings on 7 December 1947. The company also requested a
month-to-month temporary lease on “Plant B” to expand its
production on the Globe “Swift” aircraft. The Navy consented to
TEMCO’s use of the neighboring plant as long as the company
vacated when a permanent tenant was located (Dallas Morning News
12 December 1947: np; Bilstein & Miller 1985: 137). Thus, the Navy
decided on multiple-tenancy for NIRAP Dallas, with TEMCO
subleasing “Plant A” from an experienced aircraft manufacturer
engaged in prime contracting work for the Navy, who felt that
established companies, with previous Navy and governmental
contracts, were ideal tenants for its 26-different GOCO plants,
including NIRAP Dallas (Yoshpe & Franke 1968: 50).
THE NAVY LOCATES A NEW TENANT FOR NIRAP DALLAS
Immediately following the war, the Pentagon became alarmed about
communist aggression and the Soviet Union’s acquisition of the
atomic bomb. It again recommended that coastal aircraft companies
PAGE 8-45
move to inland locations (Hanley 1986: 50; Brown 1972: 50). In one
area of the Mid-Atlantic Coast, 10 major aircraft, airframe, and
engine companies —Pratt & Whitney, Grumman, Republic, Glenn L.
Martin, Fairchild, Chance Vought, Hamilton Standard Propellers,
Sikorsky Helicopter & Aircraft, and United Aircraft Corporation—
were located within a short distance of one another (Dallas Morning
News 18 December 1947: np).
One of these companies, Chance Vought Aircraft Corporation,
occupied a Navy-owned manufacturing plant in Stratford,
Connecticut, that was built as part of the World War II industrial
facilities expansion. The 11-building
plant provided only 400,000 square
feet of space, which proved to be
increasingly insufficient for the
company’s burgeoning jet aircraft
program (Figure 8-20) (Building the
Navy’s Bases in World War II 1947:
397). Since Vought first occupied the
Stratford site in 1940, the company
grew in a haphazard fashion,
increasing fivefold. No surrounding or
adjacent lands were available to build
new facilities, due to the presence of
10 other major aircraft corporations
conducting similar business in the
Figure 8-20. Vought manufacturing facility in Stratford,
vicinity
(Barksdale 1958: 18; Wings
Connecticut. Source: Chance Vought News.
for the Navy 1943: np). Vought
concluded that continued operation at
Stratford would not be cost effective if their products continued to
shift to high-speed jet aircraft and missiles. These programs required
more space, additional facilities, and longer airport runways (Rae
1968: 188). However, the company had no space to build additional
facilities or runway extensions because of area congestion and
increased air traffic, which made the testing and qualifying of aircraft
difficult (Hanley 1986: 50).
The Department of the Navy was aware of Vought’s problems at its
Stratford facilities and in December 1947, invited the company to
examine the NIRAP Dallas factory (Dallas Morning News 4
December 1947: np). Chance Vought had been producing quality
naval and military aircraft for decades and had an excellent
reputation for fulfilling contracts and maintaining its facilities. The
company proved to be an excellent candidate for tenancy at Dallas.
PAGE 8-46
Jack Hospers, vice president of Vought’s sales and service, recalled
the differing reactions in Stratford and Dallas to the Navy’s offer:
“The mayor of Stratford did not seem to care whether Vought was
there or not. Dallas sent a high-level delegation to discuss the
possibility of a relocation” (Hanley 1986: 50).
After Vought’s meeting with the Dallas officials, the company sent a
survey team to North Texas to assess the facility, conditions and
climate (Dallas Times Herald 18 December 1947: np; Hanley 1986:
50). Vought’s survey team returned to Stratford with a positive report
on NIRAP Dallas: It liked the low taxes, the 10–15% lower wage
market, the weather conditions, and the highly efficient production
rates achieved by employees under North American and TEMCO.
Even though Connecticut-area residents had decades of experience in
aircraft manufacturing, Vought’s survey team found Dallas County’s
labor pool superior to Stratford’s, in more abundant supply, and
vastly more patriotic than that on the Atlantic Coast (Hanley 1986:
50). The most important factors to Vought officials was NIRAP
Dallas’s design: It was planned with care, purpose, and specifically
for aircraft production, which promised to save the company time
and money. Operations at Stratford were costly in proportion to
earnings because the plant was not equipped or arranged for
maximum efficiency (Barksdale 1958: 18).
The Vought survey report influenced the Board of Directors, for they
voted to relocate the plant in May 1947. Once the move was
approved and the Navy was notified, the cities of Dallas and Grand
Prairie were informed that Chance Vought, a subsidiary of the United
Aircraft and Transport Corporation, would be locating its $17 million
annual payroll in Dallas County. The formal announcement came in
April 1948 and caused a flood of applicants at the Texas Employment
Commission office. Approximately 4,000–5,000 applicants requested
job opportunities at Vought (Dallas Morning News 18 April 1948:
np; Dallas Morning News 20 April 1948: np). Four months later, on
8 August 1948, the Navy and Vought signed a formal lease on
NIRAP Dallas’ Plant “B” manufacturing building and its support
structures, which amounted to the majority of all structures at the
complex (Bilstein & Miller 1985: 138).
As a condition of its lease with the Navy, Vought also agreed to
sublease the Plant “A,” Facility 1 manufacturing building and a few
of its structures to TEMCO. This multiple tenancy agreement and the
wholesale move of a manufacturer from one Navy-owned plant to
another was a unique step in the brief history of the GOCO program
PAGE 8-47
itself, but was consistent with Department of Defense (DOD) policies
on aircraft industry dispersal (Rae 1968: 188). The Navy agreed to
install a long, metal chain-link fence between the TEMCO and
Vought sides of the plant as part of an overall improvement project at
the NIRAP Dallas facility. The
modification was made from
September 1948 until early 1949, and
coincided with Vought’s relocation
from Stratford to Dallas (Figures 8-21
& 8-22).
VOUGHT MOVES TO DALLAS
As part of its 1948 contract, the Navy
agreed to help its new tenant move
more than 27 million pounds of
company-owned equipment from
Stratford to Dallas. Early in
negotiations, Vought expressed a
Figure 8-21. Aerial photograph of Chance Vought facilities at
desire to retain its own equipment
NIRAP Dallas, circa 1947–48. Source: NWIRP Dallas Facility
rather than lease all of NIRAP’s
Records.
equipment and machines. When North
American left Dallas in 1945,
employees took or destroyed nearly
$200,000 worth of the NIRAP’s
equipment, machines, and tools (Final
Report on Accountability nd: np).
Considering the facility’s incomplete
stock, the Navy may have agreed that
helping Vought move its equipment
was more cost effective than replacing
the missing pieces. Vought’s relocation
to NIRAP Dallas included shipping
more than 50,000 special tools, jigs,
templates and presses 1,687 miles
Figure 8-22. The front gate and chain-link fence between Plant
from Connecticut to Texas. The
“A” and Plant “B,” circa 1947–48. Source: NWIRP
company used automobiles, trucks,
Dallas Facility Records.
trains and 1,006 freight cars to carry
the 27,077,078 pounds of machinery
in a two-year move touted as the largest relocation in American
industrial history (Barksdale 1958: 18–19; Bilstein & Miller 1985:
138; Rae 1968: 188–89).
One reason Vought wanted to retain its equipment and machines was
because the company felt its existing managers and trainers could
PAGE 8-48
teach their new employees faster on familiar systems. Vought
planned to hire the vast majority of its employees from North Texas,
except for 1,300 key Stratford personnel, including the company’s
engineers, designers, managers, trainers, executives, and corporate
officials. Vought funded the cost for moving its employees and
agreed to help locate housing accommodations. The company had 16
full-time employees working under Vought’s housing supervisor Ted
Mitchell, whose sole job was to locate housing for 1,200 to 1400
families making the move to Dallas (Dallas Times Herald 30
November 1948: np; Dallas Morning News 12 September 1948: np).
The City of Grand Prairie did not have enough available housing for
more than a thousand new families, and began work immediately to
build homes and apartment
communities for Vought’s transferred
employees. In April 1948, Acadia
Heights, a new housing subdivision
near the plant, along with fifty 8-unit
apartment homes funded through the
Federal Housing Authority, was begun
(Figure 8-23) (Dallas Morning News
25 April 1948: np). In a single year,
Grand Prairie furnished Vought with
193 new homes at a cost to the city of
$752,450, but this tremendous effort
still proved inadequate. In a joint
venture between Vought and the cities
of Grand Prairie and Dallas,
construction commenced on an
Figure 8-23. Map of the Acadia Heights subdivision in relation
additional 100 homes in a
to NIRAP Dallas and NAS Dallas. Source: NWIRP Dallas
neighborhood called the Little Payne
Facility Records.
Addition (Dallas Morning News 25
April 1948: np). It took the cities of Dallas and Grand Prairie over a
year to build enough housing to accommodate Vought employees
who were tranferring from Connecticut to Texas (Rae 1968: 188–89).
Vought carried out its move in incremental phases in order to keep up
its production, staggering its production activities from late 1947 to 1
July 1949. production activities. In Connecticut, the company to
continued manufacture its F4U Corsair piston-engine fighter, while it
used its partially occupied Dallas facilities to produce Voughtdesigned support aircraft and the initial preproduction prototypes of
the company’s newest products (Bilstein & Miller 1985: 138).
PAGE 8-49
EXPANSION OF NIRAP DALLAS
Vought’s main complaint about its Stratford facilities was the sparse
and inadequate manufacturing space. In sharing space with TEMCO,
Vought officials feared they would outgrow NIRAP Dallas as they
had Stratford. To ease this concern and accommodate Vought’s
expanding jet aircraft and missile production requirements, the Navy
decided to construct additional facilities at NIRAP Dallas (Bilstein &
Miller 1985: 138; Barksdale 1958: 18). The Navy contributed $12.4
million to a 1948–49 expansion at Dallas that included new facilities
and production equipment for Vought, which provided the company
enough space to meet productive commitments, reduce overall
backlog, and increase research and development capabilities
(Barksdale 1958: 19). Vought contributed $2,927,289.93 of its
corporate funds to further expand its Plant “B” buildings at NIRAP
Dallas (Analysis of Leasehold Improvements nd: 1).
Vought undertook research and development activities on several
Navy-sponsored projects in the late 1940s that required modern and
larger engineering and laboratory space. Facility 49, a 129,000square-foot building adjacent to the Facility 7 office building, was
the largest project undertaken during the post-World War II
expansion. This building accommodated a new Engineering
Department and Laboratory Building (Chance Vought News 30
September 1948: 4).
Facility 6, the Plant “B” manufacturing building, received four newly
constructed internal processing areas that increased Vought’s
productive capacity on its F4U Corsair, F6U Pirate, F7U Cutlass, and
F8U Crusader jet aircraft programs. Some of these projects were
already in production, while others were simply in the development
and testing phases, prior to Vought’s relocation to NIRAP Dallas.
Along the west end of Facility 6, the Navy built and installed
equipment for a Metallite Processing Department. Vought created and
patented Metallite during World War II, but used it only on the
production of aircraft after 1945. Metallite was a light, malleable
aluminum alloy bonded to both sides of a balsa wood sheet. The final
product was only a quarter-inch thick and highly resistant to wrinkle
or damage (Jones 1977: 229). The inherently stiff Metallite provided
Vought with an alternative to both aluminum and steel because it was
lightweight and improved aerodynamics and performance in jet
aircraft. An added benefit of Metallite was its relatively low cost to
Vought, since it was entirely manufactured at NIRAP Dallas.
However, despite Metallite’s use in the production of some aircraft
skins, Vought still relied on aluminum, steel, and other light-weight
PAGE 8-50
alloys for most of its manufacturing activities. The three major
processing areas added to Facility 6 in the expansion were devoted to
heat treatment of both steel and aluminum, and for the anodizing,
dichromate, and other metal-working processes (Chance Vought
News 30 September 1948: 4).
The final building constructed at NIRAP Dallas was Facility 76, a
million dollar, 58,000-square-foot final production hangar located
adjacent to Hensley Field. Vought needed Facility 76 for production
activities related to the company’s first jet aircraft programs, the F6U
Pirate and F7U Cutlass. The hangar was used for painting, Metallite
testing, final inspection, engine run-up, and preflight preparations of
high-performance jet aircraft (Chance Vought News 30 September
1948: 4; The Flying V News July 1949: 1, 3).
The Navy extended Hensley Field at NAS Dallas as its last project in
the 1948–49 NIRAP expansion, which occurred from August 1949 to
1 March 1950. The Department of the Navy provided partial funding,
and the City of Dallas appropriated $256,000 to extend the
north–south runway at Hensley from 5,200 to 7,500 feet. The added
length gave Chance Vought adequate runway distance to test the
Pirate and Cutlass jet aircraft (Flying V News August 1949: 1).
The expansion at NIRAP Dallas benefited both Vought and the Navy.
By increasing Vought’s manufacturing capacity, the company reduced
its overall backlog and the Navy received its products faster. The
expansion also gave the Navy an opportunity to upgrade and catalog
its new and valuable industrial holding at Dallas. Between 1947 and
1966, the Department of the Navy controlled 11 GOCOs involved in
the manufacture and testing of jet and rocket engines (Yoshpe &
Franke 1968: 50). The improvements to NIRAP Dallas represented
the Navy’s goal to improve and modernize some of its GOCO
facilities, which probably occurred at other sites nationwide. For
example, Navy-owned NIRAP St. Louis, occupied by McDonnell
Aircraft Corporation, also underwent expansion during this period.
VOUGHT BEGINS PRODUCTION AT NIRAP DALLAS
Much of the 1948–49 facilities expansion at NIRAP Dallas was
related to the manufacture of Stratford-designed products: the F4U
Corsair, F7U Cutlass, F6U Pirate, and the Regulus Missile. Designed
in 1938 and in production since 30 June 1941, the Navy used the
F4U Corsair extensively in both Europe and the Pacific during World
War II. It was one of the few propeller-driven aircraft used in combat
after 1945 (Figure 8-24) (Jones 1977: 171, 173; Donald 1997: 256).
The Corsair remained in production longer than any other American
PAGE 8-51
fighter; manufacturers supplied 12,571
aircraft to the Navy, Marines, and
USAAF (Jones 1977: 174; Donald
1997: 256). Vought produced six
versions of the Corsair in Stratford for
almost 10 years and one version at
NIRAP Dallas from 1947 to 1952 for
service in the Korean War.
The Chance Vought F6U Pirate was
also designed in Stratford but
produced in both Connecticut and at
NIRAP Dallas, but in far less numbers
than the Corsair (Figure 8-25).
Responding to the Navy’s early 1944
request for a jet-propelled fighter, the
Pirate was Vought’s first production jet
aircraft and also the company’s first
product made of its patented Metallite
technology (Jones 1977: 229). On 2
October 1946, Vought entered the
Pirate in a Navy’s Bureau of
Aeronautics’ competition at Muroc
Figure 8-25. F4U Corsair in flight. Source: U.S Naval Fighters
by Lloyd S. Jones.
Dry Lake, California. As a result of the
prototype’s performance, the Navy
ordered 30 production Pirates. From the outset, Vought encountered
problems in the design and testing of the production aircraft; most
notably, the prototype flew at speeds of nearly 600 mph but the
production Pirate reached only 478 mph (Jones 1977: 231). This
problem did not discourage the Navy from ordering an additional 35
F6U Pirates. The first Vought-produced Pirate entered naval service
in July 1949, but the Pirate’s poor performance prevented the
aircraft’s operational use by the Navy and it was relegated to training
units (Jones 1977: 231; Donald 1997: 231). Production on the Pirate
began in Stratford, but ended at NIRAP Dallas, when the Navy
cancelled its order for 35 new Pirates in mid-1950 (Donald 1997:
231).
Figure 8-24. F6U Pirate. Source: U.S Naval Fighters by Lloyd
S. Jones.
When Vought introduced the Pirate at the Muroc Dry Lake
competition in 1946, it also showcased the F7U Cutlass (Figures 8-26
and 8-27), the company’s second jet aircraft. The Cutlass featured an
unusual design, which Vought based on German aerodynamic
research carried out during World War II. (The Navy provided
American manufacturers with German research in late 1945.) Guided
PAGE 8-52
by the data, Vought engineers in
Stratford prepared a prototype to
compete in a Navy design competition
at the Naval Air Test Center in 1946
(Donald 1997: 257; Jones 1977: 248,
251). The resulting design produced an
unorthodox twin-jet, carrier-based
fighter with sharply angled flying
surfaces, afterburners, and no tail
(Jones 1977: 248, 251).
Vought produced its first two F7U
Figure 8-26. F7U Cutlass in flight. Source: U.S Naval Fighters
Cutlass prototypes in Stratford. The
by Lloyd S. Jones.
first flew on 29 September 1948 and
the second crashed during testing on
14 March 1949. Despite the crash, the Navy ordered 14 additional
Cutlass jets, which were manufactured entirely at NIRAP Dallas
(Jones 1977: 251). The problems that caused the 1949 crash were
corrected in these production models and the Cutlass proved to be the
first U.S. naval jet to reach supersonic speeds (Donald 1997: 257).
Figure 8-27. Cutlass jet aircraft in final assembly area of Plant “B.” Source: Chance Vought News, circa 1953.
PAGE 8-53
Vought produced over 300 F7U
Cutlass jet aircraft at NIRAP Dallas
from March 1950 through 1955. The
vast majority of these production
models were used by the Marines for
high-speed mine-laying tests; a few
served with the Navy’s Blue Angels as
demonstration aircraft (Jones 1977:
252).
In 1947, while the company was
negotiating its lease on NIRAP Dallas
with the Navy, the Bureau of
Aeronautics asked Chance Vought to
begin initial development on a guided
missile. The Navy introduced guided
missiles to its arsenal immediately
following World War II, when German
scientists, who were researching
rocket weapons for the Nazis, came to
Figure 8-28. Regulus I in flight. Source: Regulus: The
America to work for the U.S. military
Forgotten Weapon by David K. Stumpf.
at the White Sands Proving Ground in
New Mexico (Guided Missiles 1997:
np). The DOD defined the missile as an “unmanned vehicle moving
about the earth’s surface whose trajectory or flight path is capable of
being altered by a mechanism within the vehicle” (Chance Vought
News March 1953: 5). The broad and vague DOD definition
mentions nothing about the missile’s size, speed, power plant,
direction of travel, or deployment, most likely to prevent America’s
communist enemies from assessing the United States’ increased
defensive and striking power with the addition of this weapon to its
military arsenal (Chance Vought News March 1953: 5).
Chance Vought named its guided missile the Regulus (Figure 8-28).
The simple, innovative, and versatile design of the Regulus made it
affordable and desirable to the Navy, and an uncredited source
described it as “a very ordinary, unsensational, inexpensive missile,
but one of the most fiendish and destructive little devices ever
conceived by the tortured mind of man” (Barksdale 1958: 19).
Vought’s guided missile was the first designed specifically to carry an
atomic warhead and could be launched from submarines, cruisers,
guided missile ships, aircraft carriers, and land bases (Chance Vought
News March 1953: 1, 5; Vought Vanguard 8 November 1957: np).
The Regulus was economical and easy to install, with little
PAGE 8-54
modification to the launching vehicle. Vought equipped each training
and testing Regulus with tricycle landing gear so that it could be
recovered and reused, enabling the Navy to use each production
Regulus at least 10 times. Its inexpensive and quick installation,
combined with its ability to be reused, cut the Regulus’s cost to onetenth that of comparable programs carried out by other aerospace
companies (Chance Vought News March 1953: 1). In 1949, when
construction was completed on NIRAP Dallas’s new engineering
building (Facility 49), the company moved its missile program from
Connecticut to Texas, where all Regulus production models were
manufactured.
THE KOREAN CONFLICT: 1950–1956
The proliferation of communism throughout the world and resulting
Cold War (1946–89) fueled the aviation industry following World
War II. The Korean War (1950–1953) was the first conflict of this
period. Its origins resulted directly from the spread of communism
into Asia following World War II and the threat it represented to the
democratic nations of the world. Following Japan’s surrender to
allied forces, the Soviet Union occupied North Korea and the United
States controlled the south. When the United Nations (U.N.) called
for free, unified elections throughout Korea in 1948, the Soviet
Union refused to permit North Koreans from voting and instead
proclaimed a communist dictatorship, renaming the country the
People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). Following this move,
Russia withdrew its troops from Korea, leaving behind an entrenched
communist regime and a well-trained, well-equipped North Korean
Army (Korean War 1997: np).
South Korea’s smaller and ill-equipped army was incapable of
defending itself when the North crossed the 38th parallel boundary
line in a surprise invasion on 25 June 1950. Within hours of the
invasion, the U.N. Security Council called for an immediate ceasefire. North Korea ignored the order and, two days later, the Security
Council urged U.N. members to assist South Korea in expelling the
communist invaders. President Harry S. Truman came to the defense
of South Korea by providing weapons, and supplies and directing
Army General Douglas MacArthur to assemble ground forces and
inspect the battlefront. By July, the U.N. appointed General
MacArthur as Supreme Commander of a 16-nation UN force,
consisting of 300,000 Americans that included the Marines, Air
Force, and Navy (Korean War 1997: np).
PAGE 8-55
PRODUCTION FOR THE KOREAN WAR BEGINS AT NIRAP DALLAS
When the Korean conflict developed in June 1950, the American
aerospace industry was asked to meet the supply needs of the U.N.
force. MacArthur’s military strategy relied heavily on the use of
airpower, bombs, and missiles. By the end of the conflict, Navy and
Marine Air Corps flew 276,000 offensive sorties, pounded the enemy
with 177,000 tons of bombs, and blasted them with over a quarter of
a million rockets (Caras 1965: 195). Vought saw an immediate
increase in its orders as a result of the Korean War and was the
beneficiary of Navy and Marine contracts for both its aircraft and
missiles. Of all its products manufactured for Korea, Vought received
the most orders for its Regulus missile, 514 of which were used
during the war. The company’s F7U Cutlass was its most popular jet
aircraft manufactured at NIRAP Dallas during the conflict (Vought
Vanguard 8 November 1957: 7).
Chance Vought began work on the Cutlass following the company’s
relocation to Dallas, flying the first prototype at Hensley Field on 29
September 1948. (Donald 1997: 257–58). Just months before
communist North Korea invaded the South, the Navy placed one of
several orders for the Cutlass, which remained in production through
1955 (Donald 1997: 258). However, the expense and the problems
associated with maintaining Cutlass jets prevented the Navy, or any
military branch, from using this jet in combat during Korea (Jones
1977: 252).
In fact, the F4U-5N Corsair was the only Vought-designed aircraft
that saw combat action during the Korean War. Shortly before the
North Korean invasion, the Marines ordered 110 Corsairs in a new
combat attack version. The Marines used the Corsair to fly low-level
reconnaissance and night operations, surprising North Korean forces.
One squadron of F4U-5N Corsairs used its superior radar systems to
locate and attack ground forces in total darkness and with great
accuracy, while other Marine Corsairs squadrons wreaked havoc on
communication centers (Jones 1977: 175). Even though the Corsair
was considered obsolete by the time conflict erupted in Korea, one of
its pilots gained fame as a night-fighting ace by downing five enemy
aircraft in only 18 days and another destroyed a far superior Soviet
MiG-15 fighter (Jones 1977: 175–76).
VOUGHT AND THE NAVY EXPAND PLANT “B” FACILITIES
The Vought aerospace products ordered by the armed forces from
1950–55 were already designed, tested, and in production by the time
war erupted in Korea. With increased orders and demand for the
PAGE 8-56
company’s aircraft and missiles, Vought needed new workers and
additional facilities to meet its contractual requirements for the F7U
Cutlass, Corsair, and Regulus. At the outset of the war, Vought had
only 8,200 employees at NIRAP Dallas. The company’s prewar
payroll of $32 million jumped to nearly $100 million by war’s end.
Vought employed 18,000 employees from 1950–53 (Executive Order
11724 Installation Survey Report 1974: 5; Dallas Morning News 7
October 1951: 1).
Early in 1951, Vought publicly announced a 3,000-person hiring
program at NIRAP Dallas in response to the company’s production
schedule on the F7U Cutlass aircraft for the Navy. The new Cutlass
personnel raised employment at NIRAP Dallas from 8,000 to 11,000
(Dallas Morning News 26 September 1951: np). Vought quickly
found the increase was insufficient, and determined that the company
needed to hire at a pace of 240 persons for more than a year to meet
its production requirements on the Regulus, F4U Corsair, and its
subcontracting commitments for components of the Boeing B-47
Stratojet Bomber and Lockheed’s P2V Neptune Patrol bomber
(Chance Vought News October 1951: 1). In 1953, during the height
of the Korean War, employment at NIRAP Dallas peaked at 18,000
persons, a number that remained constant to the end of the war
(Executive Order 11724 Installation Survey Report 1974: 5).
Vought looked for all levels of production workers–skilled,
semiskilled, and unskilled categories–from the North Texas labor
pool. The company advertised that jobs as “tool designers, tool
planners, researchers, jig builders, time study men, sheet metal
fabricators, machinists, assemblers, and bench hands” were available
for men, but opportunities for women were limited at NIRAP Dallas
(Dallas Morning News 26 September 1951: np). Most of the workers
hired at NIRAP Dallas during the Korean War came from Dallas,
Grand Prairie, Arlington, Ft. Worth, and Irving. The remaining labor
pool came from all over rural North Texas. Overall, the Korean War
hiring program at NIRAP Dallas had wide-ranging and positive
affects on the economy in North Texas.
In addition to hiring new employees during the war, Vought needed
additional manufacturing space at NIRAP Dallas for its Cutlass and
Regulus programs. In late 1951, Vought announced a $4 million
Spring Building Program that included construction of new facilities,
upgrading existing NIRAP buildings, and adding new parking lots to
accommodate the hiring program (Dallas Morning News 7 October
1951: np; Chance Vought News April 1952: 1). Vought, rather than
PAGE 8-57
the Navy, funded the majority of construction on the new buildings at
NIRAP Dallas. The Navy provided the land for the Spring Building
Program, while Vought supplied the funding, contractors, and
architects. By law, the Navy retained ownership of the new facilities,
but Vought recouped all its construction costs through government
tax credits that were very similar to incentives offered during World
War II. The House of Representatives Committee on Government
Operations developed procedures for contractor-sponsored
construction at Navy-owned GOCO sites as part of the 1947–48
National Industrial Reserve Act (White 1980: 112; Commander,
Naval Air Systems Command 29 March 1981: 1). They consisted of
the following:
• The contractor requested written permission to build on a site or
modify a building from the GOCO NAVPRO on-site
representative
• NAVPRO forwarded the request to the Department of the Navy
Property Management and Disposal Services, which approved
or denied the new facilities
• The Navy asked the GOCO contractor to provide an inventory
and dollar value of construction costs, machines, equipment,
and tooling
• The Department then considered whether to amortize the yearly
taxes on the building. The criteria for approving tax deferments
are unknown, but were probably linked to the amount of naval
orders produced by the GOCO making the request.
Since most of the products manufactured at NIRAP Dallas were used
exclusively by the Navy, Vought did not pay taxes on any of its
Korean War-period facility improvements until 1971, pursuant to
Public Law 388 (D Whitney Thornton to James F. Taylor 15
November 1971: 1).
After examining Vought’s Spring Building Program plan, the Navy
agreed to fund the construction of one building and to supervise the
construction of the other new facilities on government-owned land.
The Navy’s Bureau of Yards and Docks approved contractor’s
choices for architect, builder, and designs prior to construction. In
some cases, the Bureau of Yards and Docks supplied the architectural
drawings when they found the proposed design inadequate. Between
1952 and 1954, Vought spent more than $8.7 million for additional
facilities and improvements as part of the Spring Building Program.
PAGE 8-58
The cost was more than double the initial $4 million estimate
(Chance Vought News June 1953: 1).
Vought began its construction of a new parking lot, the installation of
new air conditioning in all cafeteria buildings, and the construction of
at least two new buildings, Facilities 93 and 94, in April 1952
(Chance Vought News April 1952: 1, 4). The Navy paid for three
improvements to existing facilities, whereas Vought funded the new
parking lot and air conditioning systems. The Farwell Company of
Dallas replaced the air conditioning units in Facilities 11, 12, and 31
at a cost of $47,000 between April and June 1952. Another facility
improvement that benefited the employees of NIRAP was the
construction of a 16,400-square-yard parking lot west of the Plant
“B” high bay area. The addition of 400 parking spaces eased
overcrowding at the plant and made it easier for Vought employees to
exit the plant via Jefferson Boulevard and Southeast 14th Street. The
Reinhart Company of Fort Worth built the parking lot at a cost of
$70,000 (Chance Vought News April 1952: 1). The last improvement
to existing NIRAP buildings included the replacement of the Plant
“B” fire alarm system, the installation of new sprinklers in both
Plants “A” and “B”, and the installation of oil bath filters in the air
conditioning systems of Plant “B” (Chance Vought News April 1952:
4).
Facility 93 was the first new building constructed as part of the
Spring Building Program. The Bureau of Yards and Docks supplied
Vought with the architectural drawings, and James Stewart &
Company performed all the general construction, which began June
1, 1952 (Chance Vought News April 1952: 4). Vought spent more
than $1.3 million on Facility 93, which met the company’s need for a
large and conveniently located warehouse, manufacturing, and
shipping building. The one-story, 78,000-plus-square-foot masonry
structure (Facility 93) was built between the railroad sidings on the
south side of Plant “B” (Facility 6) to provide Vought with railroad
loading docks on the building’s north and south sides (Chance
Vought News April 1952: 4). Vought used Facility 93 to ship finished
products, such as the Regulus, Cutlass, Pirate, and Corsair to the
Navy and to receive and then ship subassembly work back to the
prime contractor. James Stewart & Company constructed a loading
dock and special features for shipping and receiving Lockheed and
Boeing nose sections. Internally, the building was equipped with
unique bridge cranes and a monorail system for moving materials
from one end of the building to another (Chance Vought News April
PAGE 8-59
1952: 4). James Stewart & Company completed construction on
Facility 93 in 1953, at the height of Vought’s Korean War production.
When construction began on Facility 93 in June 1952, Vought was
still planning Facility 94, a research, design, and structures test lab
for the Regulus I Missile Program. Vought hired architects Corgan,
Lane & Associates A/E of Dallas to design its 88,647-square-foot,
hangar-type laboratory, with steel columns, steel trussing, and
“Robertson” metal siding, which matched existing Plant “B”
structures constructed during World War II (Chance Vought News
April 1952: 4). In the summer of 1953, Carpenter Brothers
Construction Company of Dallas began the general construction on
Facility 94’s structural test lab located northwest of the Plant “B,”
high bay area. It was completed on 1 January 1954 and the Navy
paid the entire $1.7 million cost (Chance Vought News April 1952: 4;
Chance Vought News June 1953: 1).
Along with Facility 94, Vought decided to fund and build five
additional buildings: Facilities 95, 97, 102, 103, and 106. The first
two supported its Regulus Missile program while the others served
jet aircraft production. Construction on Facility 95 began sometime
in 1953 and was completed in early 1954. The Bureau of Yards and
Docks supplied the architectural drawings and O’Rourke
Figure 8-29. Facility 97 under construction in the summer of 1953. Source: Chance Vought News.
PAGE 8-60
Construction Company of Dallas performed the general construction
activities related to the 8,190-square-foot building. Facility 95
provided Vought with a test cell building for the Regulus Missile at a
cost of $215,180.09. Test cells furnish both the power and control
mechanism for guided missiles. They are either self-contained rocket
motors or air-breathing jet engines, but may also be airfoils or
outside booster charges from ramp or tube launchers (Guided
Missiles 1997: np). Vought tested these power sources in Facility 95.
On 18 June 1953, Vought broke ground on Facility 97, a $1.7 million
guided missile hangar to store and test the Regulus (Figure 8-29).
Harwood K. Smith & Joseph M. Mills A/E of Dallas designed
Facility 97 with almost 70,000 square feet of workspace that
contained a high bay area, electronics test areas, storage, and office
and workroom space for expanded production on the Regulus.
O’Rourke Construction Company completed Facility 97 in January
1954 (Chance Vought News June 1953: 1). Vought used Facility 97
primarily to check and ground test the Regulus prior to its delivery to
the West Coast for flight operations (Chance Vought News June
1953: 1–2). Regulus missiles leaving the Plant “B,” Facility 6
production lines were taken to Facility 97 for final installation of the
missile’s internal components and the individual testing of all
electronic systems. Following this process, Vought employees moved
the missiles to flight testing, which included the simulation of engine
start-up, take-off, climb, cruise, and let-down simulation (Chance
Vought News June 1953: 1).
In 1954, Vought completed the last of its three buildings—Facilities
102, 103, and 106—as part of the company’s Spring Building
Program. All three buildings were related to Vought’s jet aircraft
program in one way or another. The Bureau of Yards and Docks
supplied architectural plans for the facilities and O’Rourke
Construction Company provided the general construction services.
Facility 102, a machine tool storage building, was the first
constructed. The 27,649-square-foot building was used to store the
specialized machine tools required to manufacture jet aircraft and
cost Vought $149,373.33. The second finished building, a jet-engine
test cell building (Facility 103), provided the company with 5,253
square feet of laboratory space and was used to test the F7U Cutlass
and, later, Vought’s F8U Crusader. Facility 103 cost only
$109,836.88. Facility 106 was the last of the buildings constructed as
part of the Spring Building Program, and Vought used the 6,289-
PAGE 8-61
square-foot building to assemble jet
engines for the Pirate, and Cutlass and,
later, the Crusader and Corsair II
manufacturing programs. The building,
which initially cost Vought
$63,874.41, underwent expansion
during the Vietnam War period.
EXPANSION OF TEMCO’S PLANT “A”
FACILITIES
In 1952, the Navy awarded TEMCO
Figure 8-30. TEMCO’s subassembly work in Facility 1, Plant
its first contract to manufacture a
“A,” circa 1950–52. Source: NWIRP Dallas Facility Records.
complete aircraft—McDonnell Aircraft
Corporation—the F3H Demon,
designed by (Barksdale 1958: 15). The company also won contracts
for major subassembly work on the Boeing B-47 Stratojet, Lockheed
P2V Neptune, Martin P5M Marlin, and the Convair B-36 aircraft that
were used on the war front. TEMCO also reconditioned Douglas C54
aircraft for use in Korea (Figures 8-30 & 8-31). The Navy needed the
carrier-based Demon and other products delivered on a timely basis,
but TEMCO suffered a rising backlog due to inadequate facilities,
and an expansion of the Plant “A” side of NIRAP Dallas seemed the
only expedient remedy. During the Korean War, TEMCO did not
enjoy the same financial position as Vought and thus could not afford
to fund the construction of new facilities. The Department of the
Navy had contributed more than $1.7 million to Vought’s Spring
Building Program and, in an effort to be fair, offered the same
amount to TEMCO for a 1956 Naval Facilities Expansion Program.
Under this program, the Navy funded construction of two new
buildings for TEMCO, Facilities 104 and 105, and an addition to
TEMCO’s Facility 2 office building,
which ultimately cost $2.2 million, at
NIRAP Dallas (TEMCO Tidings 16
January 1953: 1).
Figure 8-31. Finished aircraft on NIRAP Dallas property, east
of Plant “A,” Facility 1. Circa 1952–53. Source: NWIRP
Dallas Facility Records.
PAGE 8-62
The Navy hired James Stewart &
Company, the same firm that provided
previous construction services during
World War II and with both of
Vought’s expansions at NIRAP Dallas,
to construct a 58,000-square-foot
addition to TEMCO’s Facility 2 office
building. Ground was broken on the
$800,000 addition on 31 March 1953
and completed on 1 December 1953
(TEMCO Tidings 17 April 1953: 1).
TEMCO used the extra space to hire
additional engineers and office staff to
accommodate the company’s expanded
workload (Figure 8-32).
Smith & Warder A/E and T. C.
Bateson Construction Company, both
of Dallas, provided the drawings and
construction services for the TEMCO
Figure 8-32. Aerial view of TEMCO’s Plant “A” buildings,
buildings in the 1956 Naval Facilities
(Facilities 1 and 2), following the Korean War expansion
Expansion Program. Construction on
project. Source: NWIRP Dallas Plant Records.
Facility 105, a paint stripping structure
northeast of Plant “A,” Facility 1 and
adjacent to Jefferson Boulevard, began in June 1955 and was
completed in 1956. It cost the Navy $105,600 (TEMCO Tidings 17
June 1955: 1). The building provided TEMCO with an 8,048-squarefoot subassembly area for refurbishing work on the Boeing B-47
Stratojet, Lockheed P2V Neptune, Martin P5M Marlin, and the
Convair B-36 aircraft. TEMCO stripped the paint and cleaned aircraft
in Facility 105 prior to painting in Facility 104, the largest and most
expensive of the two buildings constructed in the naval expansion of
TEMCO-leased property (Figure 8-33) (TEMCO Tidings 17 June
1955: 1). In July 1953, construction began on Facility 104, a paint
hangar, but it was not completed until early 1956. The nearly 46,000square-foot building cost the Navy $1.3 million and enabled TEMCO
to move all its final production processes and paint functions on the
Demon from Plant “A,” (Facility 1) into Facility 104 (TEMCO
Tidings 16 January 1953: 1; TEMCO
Tidings 2 July 1953: 1; TEMCO
Tidings 17 June 1955: 1).
Completion of Facility 104 also
coincided with the company’s
development of its first production jet
aircraft at NIRAP Dallas. The TEMCO
Model 51 originated in a 1947 design
called the TE-1 Buckaroo, which failed
to find buyers among the U.S. military
or in the civilian market. TEMCO
redesigned the Buckaroo as a
lightweight primary jet trainer, called
the Model 51, in the early 1950s. The
Figure 8-33. A TEMCO employee utilizing new painting
operations in Facility 104. Source: NWIRP Dallas Plant
Records.
PAGE 8-63
Figure 8-34. The TT-1 Pinto in flight. Source: The Complete Encyclopedia of Aircraft.
company manufactured the prototype and later production models in
Plant “A,” Facility 1 and used Facility 104 for all final production
and painting related to the Model 51 (TEMCO Tidings 17 June 1955:
1). On 26 March 1956, the Model 51 prototype flew at nearby
Hensley Field, NAS Dallas, in front of Navy officials, who ordered
14 production aircraft under the TT-1 designation. The Navy
purchased the TT-1 to test the feasibility of using the jet aircraft for
its primary training program (Donald 1997: 876). The company held
a contest in which they allowed its employees to select the name of it
first company-designed production jet. The winning name was the
TT-1 Pinto (Figure IV-34) and, on 15 July 1957, actress Jayne
Mansfield and her daughter came to NIRAP Dallas to christen the
first Pinto to roll off the TEMCO production line (TEMCO Tidings
19 July 1957: 1).
When the T. C. Bateson Construction Company completed Facilities
104 and 105 in 1956, TEMCO’s manufacturing and office space was
nearly double its original productive capacity, making the Plant “A”
manufacturing facilities at NIRAP Dallas one of the best
subcontracting production factories in the nation. The improved
facilities enabled the company to win additional Demon contracts,
one for the Pinto, and a multimillion dollar Republic F84F
Thunderstreak jet fighter-bomber subassembly contract for the
production of the airplane’s aft fuselage (TEMCO Tidings 16 January
1953: 1; TEMCO Tidings 16 July 1954: 1; TEMCO Tidings 17 June
1955: 1; Donald 1997: 876). The Thunderstreak project alone
required 1,200 employees in addition to the company’s existing 6,500
employees. This project, coupled with existing contracts on the
PAGE 8-64
Demon, Pinto, and other subassemblies, forced TEMCO to hire even
more workers (TEMCO Tidings 16 January 1953: 1; TEMCO
Tidings 16 July 1954: 1). TEMCO’s Korean War hiring program
raised the company employment levels to 7,893 in January 1953.
Employment peaked in 1957, when more than 11,000 workers
collected a weekly payroll of $728,000, or $60 million annually
(TEMCO Tidings 19 November 1954: 1; Barksdale 1958: 16).
TEMCO’s employees came from cities throughout North Texas:
Grand Prairie, Arlington, Ft. Worth, Irving, Dallas, Denton,
McKinney, Waxahachie, Kaufmann, Gunter, Corsicana, Lewisville,
Lake Dallas, Mesquite, Roanoke, Commerce, Venus, Midlothian,
Scurry, Ennis, Lancaster, Argyle, and Seagoville. Some came from as
far as Eustace, in Henderson County (78 miles), Hillsboro, in Hill
County (70 miles), and Blue Ridge, in Collin County (just under 70
miles) (TEMCO Tidings 18 April 1952: 1).
TEMCO’s production increase benefited the local economy as well
as its employees. Earnings were spent largely in 181 North Texas
cities and communities, with an estimated $11.7 million on food,
beverages, and tobacco; $7.7 million on homes and household
maintenance; $4.2 million on clothing and education; $3.4 million on
automobiles; and $1.8 million on hobbies, movies, sports, and other
forms of recreation (TEMCO Tidings 17 November 1955: 2). The
company had 2,500 suppliers in over 40 states, nearly a third of this
business came from 788 Texas-based companies earning $28.5
annually (Barksdale 1958: 16; TEMCO Tidings 1 April 1955: np;
TEMCO Tidings 17 November 1955: 2). In addition to payroll and
supplies, TEMCO spent nearly $340,000 in utilities, telephone
service, telegrams, and postage stamps, and another $300,000 in
freight expenses per year (TEMCO Tidings 17 November 1955: 2).
POST-KOREAN WAR PRODUCTION CONTINUES AT NIRAP DALLAS
The end of war in Korea did not stop or slow defense spending and
contracts for America’s aviation industries. Western democratic
nations genuinely feared the spread of communism in Asia and its
entrenchment in Eastern Europe, leading to increased production of
nuclear weapons, vehicles to transport those weapons, and the
creation of new and superior jet aircraft for Cold War combat and
reconnaissance. The U.S. defense strategy focused on containing
communism within the areas already affected—Soviet Union, China,
North Korea, North Vietnam, Cuba, East Germany, Poland, Hungary,
Romania, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia.
PAGE 8-65
The rise in Cold War defense spending
and contracts also signified a change
in America’s aviation industry to an
aerospace industry, as production
shifted to the manufacture of jets,
helicopters, guided and
intercontinental supersonic missiles,
aircraft for space travel, rockets, and
satellites. The Department of the Navy
Figure 8-35. The F8U Crusader. Source: The Complete
recognized this transformation and
Encyclopedia of Aircraft.
responded by changing the name of its
26 aircraft-producing GOCO facilities
from Naval Industrial Reserve Aircraft Plants (NIRAP) to Naval
Weapons Industrial Reserve Plants (NWIRP) in 1952 (D. Whitney
Thornton to James F. Taylor 15 Nov 1971: 1). The new name
accurately reflected the variety of products that the GOCOs
manufactured during the Cold War period.
Vought began its transition from an aviation to an aerospace company
in the late 1940s with the design of its Regulus missile and jets, but it
was determined to keep up with the demand for new, more
competitive and technologically superior products in the global fight
against communism. The expanded facilities and personnel at
NWIRP Dallas allowed Vought to begin research and development
on a second generation of jet aircraft and missiles, products that
moved the company to the forefront of the American aerospace
industry. In the early 1950s, Vought began simultaneous development
on the Regulus II guided missile and
F8U Crusader at NWIRP Dallas.
Figure 8-36. Crusader jet aircraft outside Facility 15 and west
of Hensley field at NAS Dallas. Source:NWIRP Dallas Plant
Records.
PAGE 8-66
In September 1952, the Department of
the Navy selected a Vought proposal
for a carrier-based supersonic airsuperiority fighter from eight other
competitors because of the company’s
attention to the fighter’s low-speed
characteristics. Vought spent nearly
four years designing and developing
the new all-weather F8U Crusader
(Figure 8-35). The Navy ordered a
prototype on 29 June 1953 and the
sleek, arrow-like fighter made its
maiden flight at Edwards Air Force
Base in California on 25 March 1955.
The Crusader cruised past Mach 1 with little difficulty (Jones 1977:
312). The 52-minute test flight at Edwards demonstrated to the Navy
that the fighter had great potential and they ordered 318 production
models. By 30 September 1955, after the first production model flew
at Hensley Field in Dallas and subsequent test flights proceeded with
few problems, the Navy ordered an additional 473 units worth $100
million (Figure 8-36). In May 1956, Vought received additional
orders for the F8U Crusader, which, combined with earlier orders,
totaled more than $275 million (Jones 1977: 312, 314; Chance
Vought News December 1955: 1). Ultimately, Vought produced 1,261
Crusaders for the U.S. Navy and 42 for France at NWIRP Dallas
(Donald 1997: 900; Wagner 1968: 423; Jones 1977: 314).
The Crusader appealed to the Navy in many ways. It had a high rate of
climb due to its Pratt & Whitney J57-P-4A engine, which offered
16,200-pounds. of thrust. It carried four 20-mm cannons, two
Sidewinders in its fuselage sides, and thirty-two 2.75 inch missiles.
Furthermore, the Crusader had an exceptional combat ceiling, could
penetrate the speed of sound in level flight, and be refueled in mid-air.
Vought designed the F8U for faster-than-sound operation from both
land and aircraft carriers, further improving the Navy’s capability to
control the air and seas (Jones 1977: 312; Wagner 1968: 423; Chance
Vought News December 1955: 1). The Crusader joined U.S. Navy
Squadron VF-32 in 1957 and remained in service until the late 1980s
(Donald 1997: 900; Green & Swanborough 1981: 203; Wagner 1968:
423).
The Crusader won Vought a great deal
of attention and praise in its first two
years of production. An F8U-1
Crusader, flown by Commander R. W.
Windsor, set a national speed record at
1,015 mph in August 1956, only
months after production began
(Wagner 1968: 423; Vought Vanguard
8 November 1957: np). On the basis of Figure 8-37. John H. Glenn in his record-setting F80-IP
Crusader on July 17, 1957. Source: Chance Vought News.
this outstanding record, Vought won
the prestigious Thompson Trophy for
speed, and later that year, the company received the Collier Trophy
for the Crusader’s design and development. The Bureau of
Aeronautics awarded its first-ever Certificate of Merit to Vought for
the Crusader in the same year (Jones 1977: 312). Finally, the
Crusader set the transcontinental speed record for a single-engine
aircraft, a record that still stands. Marine Major John H. Glenn
PAGE 8-67
accomplished this feat on 17 July 1957, when he flew an F8U-1P
Crusader from Los Angles to New York at 725.55 mph and 35,000
feet, with three in-air refuelings (Figure 8-37) (Wagner 1968: 423;
Vought Vanguard 17 July 1957: 1, 3).
The Crusader’s success led Vought to further evolve the design to
produce the F8U-3 Crusader III, a new aircraft that physically
resembled its predecessor but performed differently. The Navy
ordered three prototypes of the Crusader III to enter into competition
against the McDonnell Phantom II in 1958. On 11 June, the Crusader
III made its first supersonic run, an in an August flight, the jet
reached Mach 2, climbing 60,000 feet at a 300 angle. The plane
peaked at nearly 76,000 feet before the engined stalled and pilot John
Konrad glided the Crusader III to a dead -stick landing at Edwards
Air Force Base (Jones 1977: 314, 317). The Navy ordered 15
production F8U-3s after the August flight, but the engine stall
problem persisted. Ultimately, the Phantom II outperformed and was
more durable than the Crusader III, and Vought produced only 3 of
the 15 models ordered. Those three were later relegated to NASA for
high speed research (Jones 1977: 317).
At the height of the Crusader program in 1956, Vought began testing
the Regulus II prototype at Hensley Field, even though the Navy had
placed a $14 million order for continued production on the Regulus I
missiles just months before (Chance Vought News February 1956: 1).
Vought did not intend to wait until the Regulus I was obsolete before
it offered the second version of the guided missile to the Navy.
Confident of the product and its ability to sell, the company began
immediate production on the Regulus II following the successful
May flight tests (Figure 8-38). Production occurred in four buildings:
Plant “B,” Facility 6; the Structures Lab, Facility 94; the Test Cell
Figure 8-38. Regulus II. Source: Regulus The Forgotten Weapon by David K. Stumpf.
PAGE 8-68
Laboratory, Facility 95; and the Final Production Missile Hangar,
Facility 97.
Vought’s gamble paid off when the Navy placed a $12 million order
for production of 59 of the Regulus II in July 1956 (Chance Vought
News July 1956: 1; Vought Vanguard 8 November 1957: np). The
Regulus II was as versatile and affordable as its predecessor, but was
capable of a much higher level of performance. Production Regulus
II missiles came equipped with a J-79 jet engine that reached speeds
of Mach 2 and a ceiling of 60,000 feet. Like the first version, the
Regulus II could be launched from submarines, ships, and land bases,
and was also recoverable after flight because of its wheeled landing
gear (Vought Vanguard 8 November 1957: np). During the testing of
the Regulus II, the Navy used each of their 59 production missiles 6
to 18 times before being retired. No other guided missile in the
Navy’s history and arsenal had ever lived as long or performed as
well in a testing environment as the Regulus II (Vought Vanguard 8
November 1957: 6).
The Department of the Navy was so impressed with the performance
of both the Regulus I and II that Chief of Naval Operations Admiral
Arleigh Burke referred to Vought’s guided missiles as the “harbingers
of the Navy of the future” (Chance Vought News December 1956: 1).
Following this proclamation, the Department of the Navy placed a
$26 million production order for both the Regulus I and II guided
missiles. With this order and contracts on the Crusader, Vought’s
backlog soared to over $500 million (Chance Vought News
December 1956: 1). In addition, the Navy ordered a nuclear
submarine, The Halibut, designed and constructed specifically to
launch the Regulus II Missile (Vought Vanguard 8 November 1957:
6). The Regulus II proved to be such a prolific and innovative missile
that the Smithsonian Institute selected it for an exhibit of historic
aerospace regalia that included the original Wright Brothers’ airplane
and other pioneering rockets, missiles, and aircraft (LTV News 17
June 1966: np).
In May 1959, Vought continued its foray into the aerospace industry
by winning a $1 million NASA contract for both the manufacture
and assembly of the Scout research rocket. NASA developed and
supplied the instrument payload, engines, stage separation devices,
jet vanes, and fin assemblies, while Vought developed the nose
section, airframe, and constructed a launching platform. NASA
shipped the assemblies via road rail to Facility 6, Plant “B” from
other manufacturers, and Vought produced its pieces and assembled
PAGE 8-69
the complete 70-foot, 35,000-pound, four-stage solid rocket at
NWIRP Dallas (Vought Vanguard 1 May 1959: 1). Vought built the
three-piece Scout rocket launcher in jigs located in Facility 94’s
structural test lab. The 109-foot steel tower was assembled, erected,
and painted, just west of the Facility 6, Plant “B” manufacturing
building in August 1959. After Vought and NASA employees
checked and qualified the launcher, it was taken down, loaded on
railroad cars, and transported, along with the Scout rockets, to
Wallops Island, Virginia, where the missile was fired (Vought
Vanguard 21 August 1959: 1).
CONFLICT DEVELOPS AT NWIRP DALLAS AS TEMCO MERGES
WITH VOUGHT
Between 1948 and 1959, Chance Vought leased three-fifths of
NWIRP Dallas and used its Plant “B” facilities to develop and
produce stages of the Regulus I and II guided missiles, Scout missile,
Corsair, Pirate, Cutlass, Crusader, and Crusader III aircraft. During
the same period, TEMCO used its Plant “A” facilities to produce
airframe sections and engine assemblies for prime contractors such as
Douglas, Lockheed, McDonnell, Boeing, and Pratt & Whitney, and
worked as a prime contractor on the production of the TT-1 Pinto
trainer aircraft and development of the Corvus missile (Executive
Order 11724 Installation Survey Report 1974: 7; Departmental
Industrial Reserve Plant, Chance Vought Aircraft Corporation,
Dallas, Texas, DOD-387 nd: 1). Vought and TEMCO's peaceful
coexistence became tenuous as both businesses grew. The Navy
received complaints about the joint tenancy issue from both its
NWIRP Dallas lessees as early as 1950. The fence installed between
the Plant “A” and Plant “B” properties was not sufficient to prevent
tension.
Vought and TEMCO's main problem at NWIRP Dallas stemmed
from the fact that the lessees had inadvertently become competitors
for naval contracts and within the aerospace industry as a whole. In
addition, TEMCO's presence prevented Vought from expanding its
own facilities in a national emergency (Departmental Industrial
Reserve Plant, Chance Vought Aircraft Corporation, Dallas, Texas,
DOD-387 nd: 1, 4). TEMCO's continual growth and request to
further expand its facilities angered Vought management, and the
situation was discussed extensively in NAVPRO reports to the
Department of the Navy during this period (Departmental Industrial
Reserve Plant, Chance Vought Aircraft Corporation, Dallas, Texas,
DOD-387 1958: np; Departmental Industrial Reserve Plant, Chance
Vought Aircraft Corporation, Dallas, Texas, DOD-387 nd: 1, 4).
PAGE 8-70
Vought tolerated the situation and did not pressure the Navy to
change the joint tenancy arrangement until 1960, when TEMCO
merged with Ling-Altec Electronics to form Ling-TEMCO
Electronics and Missile Company (Bilstein & Miller 1985: 137;
Brown 1972: 75; Departmental Industrial Reserve Plant, Chance
Vought Aircraft Corporation, Dallas, Texas, DOD-387 1958: np).
Immediately following the merger, the Department of the Navy
cancelled TEMCO's newly awarded $400 million Corvus Missile
contract. The reasons for the Navy's decision are unclear, but
following the cancellations, TEMCO's new president, James Ling,
announced his plans to expand TEMCO's position in the aerospace
industry and take over Vought (Brown 1972: 80–81).
Early in 1960, Ling and his business associate, John Coughenour,
began to buy up Chance Vought stock in an effort to legitimize their
position within the aerospace industry and the Dallas business
community. Chance Vought Aircraft enjoyed a stellar reputation in
the aerospace industry and with the Navy. The combined company
would assume Vought's established relationship with local banks and
wield greater power as one of North Texas' largest employers (Brown
1972: 82). In October 1960, Ling called a meeting of the TEMCO
board to obtain official approval for the acquisition of Vought stocks
and a commitment of $10 million of the company's funds to purchase
them (Brown 1972: 85).
In the short year that James Ling owned TEMCO, he managed to
increase sales to $148.4 million, winning the company the #285 spot
among the Fortune 500. In the same period, Ling acquired more than
10% of Vought stock, which legally required him to notify Vought
management of his intentions to take over the company (Brown
1972: 85). In January 1961, Vought's board of directors refused to
consider a merger with TEMCO and launched a publicity campaign
that vilified Ling and his activities, calling him "an uncouth predator
making raids on the innocent" (Brown 1972: 77, 87; Dallas Morning
News 9 August 1962: np). As word of Ling's takeover plans spread
throughout the Dallas financial community, ferocious local
opposition began to form. "The Ling-TEMCO merger was friendly,
and most Dallasites felt Ling had not overreached himself, but
Chance Vought was another matter all together; therefore his battle to
acquire Vought split the town and created acrimony that would not
subside for years and earn Ling a reputation as dangerous and
untrustworthy" (Brown 1972: 84).
PAGE 8-71
Despite the personal attacks and bitter resentment among Vought
employees and local business leaders, Ling was able to acquire 40%
of Vought stock by March 1961,
making him the majority shareholder
and capable of calling a special vote
on the proposed Ling-TEMCO Vought
merger (Brown 1972: 87). Vought
management, including President
Frederick O. Deitweiler, responded to
Ling's vote by resigning in protest and
disgust. The remaining leadership
worked hard to prevent a vote, even
requesting help from its Washington,
DC, connections, but ultimately, on 9
Figure 8-39. LTV offices, Facility 2, following the merger in
1962. Source: NWIRP Dallas Plant Records.
June 1961, the shareholders were
issued proxy statements to vote on the
Vought-TEMCO merger (Dallas Morning News 9 August 1962: np;
Brown 1972: 87; Vought Vanguard 9 June 1961: 1). Stockholders
issued the results of the proxy vote on 30 June 1961 and Ling-Temco
Vought (LTV) was officially formed. The combined company now
employed more than 20,000 people and had assets of $195 million, a
backlog of $305 million in orders, and encompassed activities in the
fields of aerospace, communications and test systems, commercial
and industrial products, sound systems, aerosystems, and information
handling systems (Figure 8-39) (Vought Vanguard 9 June 1961: 1;
Vought Vanguard 30 June 1961: 1–2).
LTV TRIES TO PURCHASE NWIRP DALLAS
Immediately following the merger, James Ling, the new president of
LTV, met with NWIRP Dallas's NAVPRO representative to lay out
the company's new business philosophy. Ling's long-term goal for
LTV was diversification from Navy projects into commercial
ventures, or achieve some sort of balance between the two interests.
Ling articulated his strategy to NAVPRO representatives, which was
later recounted in NWIRP Dallas official reports:
The corporation's mission is to conceive, design,
manufacture, assemble, and test products for agencies of
the Department of Defense, other branches of the
government and other aerospace contractors. These
aerospace products primarily consist of complete aircraft
and missile weapon systems, major subassemblies of
commercial transports, space launch systems, airport
transit systems and numerous research and development
PAGE 8-72
projects. (Executive Order 11724 Installation Survey
Report 1974: 2)
Ling also wanted to move the company away from
manufacturing line and quantity production into limited and
specialized manufacturing activities. The new philosophy also
stressed increased research and design of new products for both the
military and commercial sectors (J. E. Moody to Commissioner of
Utilization and Disposal Services 18 August 1961: np).
NAVPRO notes from the meeting indicate that the Navy's
representative communicated Ling's new goals to the Department of
the Navy, which was displeased not only by the merger between
Vought and TEMCO but also by the change in the company's
business philosophy. The Navy had considered both Vought and
TEMCO highly qualified contractors, but after the merger, its opinion
of LTV was uncertain (J. E. Moody to Commissioner of Utilization
and Disposal Services 18 August 1961: np). Until this time, the Navy
had chosen tenants for its GOCOs who were their prime contractors
or who worked exclusively in military production. Despite the Navy's
attitude toward LTV, it could not evict the company from NWIRP
Dallas because of a preexisting lease with Vought (Lease No.
N0w6137u), executed in 1958 and valid through 1971 (Special
Disposal Plan 1 April 1971: np). As Vought's new owner, LTV
became the beneficiary of the lease that covered all the land and
buildings at NWIRP Dallas, including approximately 309 acres of
land and 3.1 million square feet of manufacturing space; therefore,
the Navy was contractually obligated to retain LTV as tenant through
1971 (J. E. Moody to Commissioner of Utilization and Disposal
Services 18 August 1961: np).
NAVPRO apparently informed LTV of the Navy's ambiguity toward
the company's business philosophy; LTV responded by offering to
purchase NWIRP Dallas. NAVPRO arranged a meeting between
James Ling and representatives of the Navy's Utilization and
Disposal Services in August 1961 (J. E. Moody to Commissioner of
Utilization and Disposal Services 18 August 1961: np). At the
meeting, Ling attempted to persuade the Navy that it should sell
NWIRP Dallas at a "bargain price," or below fair market value, due
to the number of contractor-funded leasehold improvements, which
dated to the 1947–49 expansion and included all subsequent
construction and maintenance. Records of the meeting clearly
indicate that Ling's arguments were unpersuasive and in fact offended
the representatives of the Utilization and Disposal Services, who
PAGE 8-73
informed LTV that even if the sale was authorized, it would be at fair
market value and brokered by the General Service Administration
(GSA) under section 203(e) (3) (G) of the Federal Property and
Administrative Service Act of 1949 (J. E. Moody to Commissioner
of Utilization and Disposal Services 18 August 1961: np). The GSA
served as the agency responsible for federally owned property sales
and transfers.
On 11 September 1961, a month after the meeting, the Navy
informed LTV management that the DOD would include a national
security clause in any bill of sale that required LTV to maintain the
plant according to existing naval GOCO standards for a period of
time stipulated by the Navy rather than DOD. Other stipulations
prohibited LTV from making any major alterations to NWIRP Dallas
for 10 years, and included provisions for periodic and surprise
inspections by NAVPRO representatives. In addition, LTV was
required to give priority status to all DOD contracts (Environmental
Statement for the Disposal of the Naval Weapons Industrial Reserve
Plant Dallas, Texas 19 June 1971: 3; Restriction Covering Sale of
NWIRP, Dallas nd: Attachment A; J. E. Moody to Commissioner of
Utilization and Disposal Services 18 August 1961: np). The DOD
requirements reflected the Navy's assessment of NWIRP Dallas as
the most complete manufacturing plant in its GOCO program and
possibly the nation. NWIRP Dallas was different from most Navyowned GOCO facilities because of the plant's capablility to produce a
variety of military-related products rather than a few specialized
services (Departmental Industrial Reserve Plant, Chance Vought
Aircraft Corporation, Dallas, Texas, DOD-387 1958: 2; Special
Disposal Plan 1 April 1971: np). The Navy was clearly cautious
about selling such a valuable resource, and explained its concerns to
LTV at its initial meeting and during subsequent communications (J.
E. Moody to Commissioner of Utilization and Disposal Services 18
August 1961: np).
Another indication of the Navy's apprehension about selling NWIRP
Dallas is revealed in the length of time that the Utilization and
Disposal Services took in sending LTV's request to purchase the
facility to GSA. It was not until 1970, close to a decade after the
initial meetings, that GSA informed LTV of its appraisal; NWIRP
Dallas was worth $68,748,321.00, but the government would sell the
complex for $31,946,000 (General Services Administration 14 April
1972: 2; Special Disposal Plan 1 April 1971: np; Curtis A. Roos to
GSA 30 October 1970: np). The GSA based this figure on the sale of
other GOCOs to contractors, specifically the sale of Air Force Plant
PAGE 8-74
#14 at Burbank, California, to the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation,
which bought the plant at 25%–50% of its fair market price. The
GSA's offer to LTV allowed the Department of the Navy a return of
68.4% on its investment since 1947 (General Services Administration
14 April 1972: 1; Paul T. Flynn to GSA 15 October 1971: 1–2).
The GSA's 1970 appraisal of NWIRP Dallas's land, facilities,
equipment, machines, and tools was more than double LTV's
assessment, which took into account depreciation costs, leasehold
improvements, and other contractor investments (Paul T. Flynn to
GSA 15 October 1971: 2). LTV was extremely agitated by the delay
and the appraisal, and responded to GSA:
LTV has spent considerable effort and money obtaining
independent outside appraisals on the subject facility. Age
and obsolescence of buildings and equipment, need for
modernization of water and waste disposal facilities, and
the current depressed conditions of the aerospace industry
are major factors influencing the Contractor's evaluation
of the NWIRP. (C. J. Brenner to Commander, Naval Air
Systems Command 8 March 1972: 1)
In anger, LTV demanded that its purchase of NWIRP Dallas be
contingent on the company's continued use of NAS Dallas's Hensley
Field runways to test its products. The company also wanted the
Navy to fund a water treatment facility and clean up a hazardous
waste spill that had contaminated Mountain Creek Lake (General
Services Administration 14 April 1972: 1–2). The Texas Water
Quality Board, responding to complaints from Dallas County
citizens, discovered the spill, informed the Navy, and required LTV
to clean up the area to the State's satisfaction. LTV wanted to defer
the $4.54 million treatment facility and $2.6 million cleanup costs to
the Navy in an effort to offset the high GSA purchase price, but the
Navy refused to pay for either (Robert P. Selm, P. E. to E. A. Tharpe
II, ASA 22 August 1970: np; C. L. Turner to Commander, Naval Air
Systems Command 3 August 1971: np; A. H. Clancy, Jr., to LTV
Aerospace Corporation, Vought Aeronautics Division 23 April 1971:
np). The Navy also told LTV that it could not guarantee the use of
Hensley Field ,because the airfield was owned by the City of Dallas,
not the federal government; LTV would have to negotiate with the
City to resolve that issue (C. L. Turner to Commander, Naval Air
Systems Command 3 August 1971: np; Special Disposal Plan 1 April
1971: np).
PAGE 8-75
On 11 February 1972, LTV informed the Navy and GSA that the
company was no longer interested in purchasing NWIRP Dallas.
LTV based its decision on the GSA $31 million purchase price, the
Navy's refusal to pay for a treatment facility or to cleanup Mountain
Creek Lake, money difficulties, and DOD restrictions on plant
operations. Furthermore, the City of Dallas refused LTV's request for
continued use of Hensley Field because the airfield was restricted to
DOD use only (General Service Administration 14 April 1972: 2). In
reality, rising Cold War tensions and the conflict brewing in Vietnam
Table 8-9.
PAGE 8-76
over the spread of communism were the primary factors that
complicated and delayed the plant's sale, rather than animosity
between LTV, the Navy, GSA, and DOD.
THE VIETNAM PERIOD, 1965–1975
Conflict over control of Vietnam raged for almost two decades,
beginning in 1954, when the country was split in half along political
lines. Like Korea in 1945, Vietnam was divided at the 17th parallel
into North Vietnam, a communist government supported by the
Soviet Union, and South Vietnam, with a Republican government
backed by the French and other democratic, Western nations. Not
long after the partition, the U.S. military assumed the job of training
the South Vietnamese army to defend itself against the North and its
guerillas, known as the Viet Cong. The goal of the Viet Cong was to
disrupt South Vietnam's social, political, and economic improvement
programs through violence, including the assassination of political
leaders and attacks on industrial facilities, farms, military bases, and
small, rural villages. The Viet Cong's objective of spreading
communism through force was done covertly, sporadically, and
gradually.
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy received a report on the Viet
Cong from his military advisor, General Maxwell D. Taylor, which
detailed the North's infiltration of South Vietnam. The President's
advisors informed Kennedy that more equipment was needed for the
South Vietnamese army to repel the Viet Cong. By 1963, the United
States had spent $400 million dollars on military aid and had sent
more than 16,000 military advisors to Vietnam to assess the best
strategy to combat the rebels. On 2 and 4 August 1964, the USS
Maddox, a destroyer cruising in the Gulf of Tonkin, was attacked by
the Viet Cong patrol boats. The Maddox returned fire after the
second attack, sinking the North Vietnamese boats. President Lyndon
B. Johnson ordered air attacks in retaliation for the hostile actions,
and the North Vietnamese responded with terrorist attacks on
American installations in the South.
As a result of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the U.S. military devoted
its full attention to South Vietnam and, by June 1965, American
troops were engaged in combat with the Viet Cong. The initial U.S.
presence numbered 50,000 troops and reached 500,000 by early
1968. Defense spending soared as America's military commitment in
Vietnam increased. Aerospace companies, like LTV, became the
beneficiaries of increased contracts. It was during these early stages
of the Vietnam conflict that LTV attempted to purchase NWIRP
PAGE 8-77
Dallas. Despite its heated negotiations for the plant, LTV continued
production on its jets, missiles, rockets, and on new products for the
Army and NASA (Table 8-9).
LTV BEGINS PRODUCTION FOR VIETNAM WAR
From 1964 to 1974, when the United States was actively involved in
the Vietnam conflict, the military ordered nearly 30,000 jet aircraft
and helicopters from the nation's aerospace industries (The
Aerospace Industry 1997: np). The Crusader was LTV's first jet
aircraft to receive a production order for use in Vietnam. The Navy
placed a $48 million order for the F8 Crusader in 1962 and an
additional order worth $175 million for the remanufacture 446 of the
fighters as photo planes in 1966 ("Manufacturing Technology
Contracts" 3 October 1986: np; LTV News 7 September 1962: 1).
The Crusader's combat effectiveness was tested and proved during
the conflict in head-to-head battle against the Russian MiG-17 and
MiG-21 jet aircraft. Its rugged construction made the Crusader a
formidable weapon against the MiG, responsible for downing 17
MiG-17s and 4 MiG-21s (Jones 1977: 314).
The A-7 Corsair II, a new jet created by company engineers during
the Vietnam period, was the most heavily ordered LTV jet aircraft.
The Corsair II was of similar configuration as the Crusader but
incorporated different structural assemblies. The Navy ordered three
A-7 prototypes on 19 March 1964, with the first flying at Hensley
Field on 27 September 1965, almost four weeks ahead of schedule
(Donald 1997: 899). Pleased with the Corsair II's performance, the
Navy selected the jet to replace many of its outdated Douglas A-4
Skyhawks already in service (Figure 8-40). In November 1966, the
Navy awarded LTV a $32 million contract for 16 of the light attack
bomber, each of which cost approximately $2 million. The Corsair II
entered service with U.S. Navy Squadron VA-147 on 1 February
1967 (Figure 8-41)(Donald1997:899;http:// www.wpafb.af.mil/
museum/modern_flight; Dallas Morning News 18 November 1966:
np). Vice Admiral William F. Bringlt, Commander of the Seventh
Fleet, declared the Corsair II the "workhorse" of the Navy's
operations in North Vietnam because of the fighter’s all-weather
capabilities (LTV News 5 January 1967: 1, 4). The Corsair II served
in 27 different squadrons in Vietnam, flying more than 90,000
combat missions (Donald 1997: 899). During the war period, LTV
produced 866 Corsair II for combat use (LTV Profile 22 July 1971:
3).
PAGE 8-78
In addition to jet aircraft orders, LTV
provided other services to the Navy.
On 6 March 1965, LTV updated the
electrical systems of two long-range
instrumentation ships, the USS
Huntsville and the USNS Watertown.
The Navy's Bureau of Ships awarded
LTV the $21,925,774 contract for the
modification, renovation, and repair of
the ships, which were originally
slotted for communications use in
Vietnam, but later reassigned to NASA Figure 8-40. A-7A aircraft aboard USS America. Source: LTV
Aerospace Corporation.
for use in the Apollo Space Program.
NASA used the USS Huntsville and
the USNS Watertown to monitor and track the Apollo spacecraft as
they re-entered the Earth's atmosphere (Dallas Morning News 5
March 1965: np). NWIRP Dallas manufactured the electrical
systems, but the installation occurred at the Kennedy Space Center in
Florida (Dallas Morning News 30 March 1968: np).
Following the merger of TEMCO with
Vought, LTV began producing for
other military branches and for NASA.
In 1962, just prior to the Vietnam
buildup, LTV researched and
developed a space pack called the
SMU (self-maneuvering unit), which
enabled astronauts to assemble
Figure 8-41. The A-7 Corsair II.
vehicles and transfer goods from one
Source:http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/modern_flight
ship to another in space (Dallas Times
Herald 13 August 1962: np). The
company's successful work on the SMU led to a contract for the
design and manufacture of a manned space flight simulator at
NWIRP Dallas. The simulator was "a maneuvering, ground-based
device which can simulate numerous phases of space missions
including launch, orbit, rendezvous, earth and lunar landings, and
many others." Eight of NASA's astronauts for the Apollo Space
Mission trained on the manned space flight simulator at NWIRP
Dallas in May 1963 (LTV News 17 May 1963: 1).
Also in 1963, LTV received an $10,687,500 extension to the existing
Scout missile production program for 23 additional launch vehicles, a
program that Vought began with NASA in May 1959. NASA used
Scout missiles to launch satellites into the Earth's orbit (LTV News
PAGE 8-79
17 May 1963: 1). NASA again extended the Scout missile program
and LTV's role in its production on 30 August 1965. The $9.2 million
award required the company to manage the entire program on a trial
basis that lasted 16 months, from 1 July to 31 October 1966. LTV's
responsibilities included assembling the Scout, testing, and
launching, as well as mission planning and evaluation of the field
data (Dallas Times Herald 30 August 1965: np). LTV's performance
as manager of the Scout program earned the company prime
contractor status and two additional Scout missile contracts worth
nearly $14 million, in June 1972. As prime contractor, LTV was
responsible for both the Scout launch vehicles and its motors.
NASA's order called for the delivery of 15 units at the rate of 1 per
month beginning in November 1973 and ending in February 1975
(LTV Profile June 1972: 1). Between 1962 and 1970, LTV's earnings
of $44,445,000 on NASA contracts placed the company 12th among
100 contractors providing products or performing services for the
space agency (LTV Profile February 1970: 2).
During the Vietnam period, LTV also performed work for the Army,
which awarded it a $79.4 million contract for the Lance Missile, a
weapon designed for use in a general or limited war and capable of
combat operations in all types of weather and terrain. The Lance
Missile System protected advancing ground forces in the field and
also carried the Army's nuclear fire support (LTV News 7 June 1963:
1). LTV's second Army contract was for the XM561 one-quarter ton
cargo truck worth $2.5 million. Both the Lance Missile System and
XM561 were developed at NWIRP Dallas in LTV's engineering
buildings, but neither was manufactured at Dallas owing to the lack
of adequate facilities as well as final production commitments on jet
aircraft and NASA products. LTV manufactured the Lance Missile
System and XM561 at the Warren Ordnance Plant in Detroit,
Michigan, an Army-owned GOCO facility (LTV News 21 December
1962: 1).
LTV EXPANDS NWIRP DALLAS TO MEET ITS PRODUCTION DEMAND
From 1965–75, LTV sales to the Navy, Army, and NASA topped
$3.75 billion, and the company's production efforts for the DOD,
combined with an ambitious commercial program, strained NWIRP
Dallas facilities (Brown 1972: 26). The overcrowding forced LTV to
transfer manufacturing on its Army contracts to Detroit, so the
company sought to expand of its existing facilities in order to
accommodate its wartime and commercial production. In October
1966, LTV began a $21 million facility and equipment modernization
program, of which the Navy contributed $4 million (Table IV-10).
PAGE 8-80
The modernization program's goal was to keep LTV competitive,
efficient, and able to meet the company's overwhelming military and
commercial orders (LTV News 7 October 1966: 3).
Although no major construction occurred at Plant “B,” Facility 6 as
part of the expansion, the factory's high bay area received the bulk of
the funds for equipment modernization or replacement (LTV News 7
October 1966: 3). The company spent most of its expansion funds on
the construction of 15 new buildings, additions to Facilities 76, 110,
128, and 197, and the installation of a new parking area that provided
1,000 additional parking spaces (LTV Profile February 1969: 1).
The Facility 76 addition included a 50,000-square-foot avionics lab,
an acceptance test lab for government and contractor-furnished
equipment, and a repair center for aircraft computers, radar, and
gyros. An addition to Facility 197, an acoustics and fuel systems test
lab, provided expanded space for testing of vibration problems in
advanced, supersonic jet aircraft. LTV's improvement to the Fuel
Calibration Lab, Facility 110, doubled the company's capacity for
testing aircraft fueling systems, a job generally performed by the
Navy at other GOCOs (LTV Profile February 1969: 1).
Table 8-10.
PAGE 8-81
Facility 194, an office and engineering building, was the first new
building constructed as part of the Vietnam Expansion Program. The
100,000-square-foot facility supported the A-7 Corsair II production
program. (Leasehold Improvements Over $25,000 11 April 1974: 1).
Architect Dale Y. Foster and Leo L. Landauers & Associates supplied
the architectural drawings, and an unknown firm built Facility 194 at
a total cost of $1,320,480. In a 1974 NAVPRO report, Facility 194 is
listed as one of the most significant construction projects undertaken
by LTV at NWIRP Dallas (Executive Order 11724 Installation
Survey Report 1974: 8).
LTV undertook construction of several different facilities and areas
of NWIRP Dallas in 1967. Construction activities included the
installation of a 250,000-square-foot concrete ramp area extending
from the production lines at Facilities 1 and 6 to Hensley Field and
storage facilities, or Line Shelters, scattered across the eastern
portion of NWIRP Dallas. LTV requested this project on 9 January
1967, and received approval on 23 June 1967 (Leasehold
Improvements Over $25,000 11 April 1974: 2). The new concrete
ramp expanded airport operations and capabilities at NWIRP Dallas
for LTV's commercial and military
programs, specifically the A-7 Corsair
II, Crusader, Boeing 747, and
McDonnell-Douglas DC-10. The
ramp's construction cost $940,977.00.
Figure 8-42. Line shelters constructed in the eastern portion of
NWIRP Dallas during the Vietnam War. Source: NWIRP
Dallas Plant Records.
PAGE 8-82
Part of the Vietnam Expansion
included the installation of eight
prefabricated, metal Engine Run-Up
Line Shelters—Facilities 201, 202,
203, 204, 205, 211, 212, and 213—in
the eastern portion of NWIRP Dallas
(Figure 8-42). The Navy approved the
shelters on 19 April 1967 (Leasehold
Improvements Over $25,000 11 April
1974: 1). Engine Run-Up Line
Shelters provided space to store,
inspect ,and test individual jet aircraft
prior to flight testing at Hensley Field.
Once a jet was manufactured in
Facilities 1 and 6, LTV employees
moved the aircraft down the newly
installed concrete ramp to a Line
Shelter, where it was tested and then
moved through Gate 48 or Gate 49 to Hensley Field at NAS Dallas.
Each unit provided 3,300 square feet of space and at a combined cost
of $94,357 (Leasehold Improvements Over $25,000 11 April 1974:
1).
The two remaining buildings constructed in 1967 were small support
buildings. The first, Facility 219, a raw materials warehouse, was
used to store aluminum, steel, wood, and other production goods.
The 60,594-square- foot warehouse cost LTV nearly $500,000.
Located in the southwest portion of NWIRP Dallas and away from
manufacturing centers, Facility 219 was accessible to Crusader
Drive, which was used to transport the raw materials to the
appropriate production facility. The second building, Facility 195, a
cooling tower, cost $45,000 and supported expanded air conditioning
needs in the newly constructed buildings.
Three LTV-funded buildings were added at NWIRP Dallas in 1968,
the largest of which was Facility 198, a machining center. LTV
requested the new facility on 3 May 1967, which was approved later
that month. The 205,658-square-foot building cost $3.6 million and
provided LTV with a variety of manufacturing support functions,
both commercial and military (Leasehold Improvements Over
$25,000 11 April 1974: 1). With LTV's expanded manufacturing
program, the company needed a large and modern machining center
to make, shape, and forge specific parts for jet aircraft, missiles,
rockets, and commercial airliners. Both large and small parts, made
of metals and alloys, were machined through heat, pressure, and
chemical processes on large presses and dies in Facility 198.
The remaining two 1968 buildings, Facilities 222 and 223, were
completed within two months of each other. Facility 222, a 9,311square-foot paint preparation area, served the company's commercial
and military production programs, specifically the A-7 Corsair II,
Boeing 747, and McDonnell-Douglas DC-10. LTV used Facility 223
to store ammunition magazines for installation on the Crusader,
Crusader III, and Corsair II. Because of its strict military application,
the Navy—rather than LTV—funded the 1,250-square-foot facility at
a cost of $50,000 (Table IV-11) (Leasehold Improvements Over
$25,000 11 April 1974: 2; LTV Profile February 1969: 1).
The last building constructed as part of the Vietnam Expansion was
Facility 220, an office building located immediately south of Facility
194, in the westernmost portion of NWIRP Dallas. The three-story,
155,526- square-foot office building cost LTV over $3 million dollars
PAGE 8-83
and housed materials and computer systems related to the A-7
Corsair II program. The Navy approved construction of Facility 220
on 29 May 1968, and LTV hired Dale M. Mills, a Dallas architectengineer, to supply the architectural drawings. Facility 220 was
completed in 1969.
Figure 8-43. The city of Grand Prairie during the 1970s.
Source: NWIRP Dallas Plant Records.
In March 1968, Texas Governor John
Connally awarded LTV the Governor's
Industrial Expansion Award on the
basis of the company's Vietnam
Expansion Program and its effects on
the total economic growth of North
Texas. The Dallas and Grand Prairie
Chambers of Commerce nominated
LTV for the prestigious award because
the expansion afforded North Texas
residents increased employment
opportunities, which in turn heightened
local expenditures and capital
investments (LTV News 15 March
1968: 1). During the Vietnam period,
employment at NWIRP Dallas soared
to 25,000, a figure approaching World
War II employment levels. Even so,
the Navy estimated that LTV was
understaffed by nearly 10,000
employees (Executive Order 11724
Installation Survey Report 1974: 5).
The growth of NWIRP Dallas also coincided with the growth of the
Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex (Figure 8-43). By 1974, the overall
population of the Metroplex reached 2.5 million, with the City of
Dallas representing 894,000 and Grand Prairie 63,000 residents—a
considerable jump from the nearly 400,000-Dallas County population
figure in 1940, when NWIRP Dallas was built (Executive Order
11724 Installation Survey Report 1974: 9; Bilstein & Miller 1985:
94). Since the plant's initial opening, the Metroplex had grown into
the transportation hub of the Southwest, serviced by the Dallas-Ft.
Worth Regional Airport, major interstate highways, and numerous
freight lines (Executive Order 11724 Installation Survey Report
1974: 11). Grand Prairie Chamber of Commerce officials credited
NWIRP Dallas, the Navy, and the facility contractor with bolstering
the suburb's economy, spurring development and growth, and
providing North Texas residents with expanded employment
PAGE 8-84
Table 8-11.
opportunities. Randle Lee, vice-president of commercial development
for the Chamber of Commerce, compared the impact of the aircraft
industry in North Texas to that of oil in West Texas (Dallas Morning
News 9 August 1987).
LTV OPERATIONS IN POST-VIETNAM TO 1992
Following the end of the Vietnam War in the mid-1970s and the
reduction of military-related contracts, LTV was forced to layoff over
half its work force. With the Cold War period coming to a close, the
company relied more on commercial contracts and orders from
foreign nations to keep its business afloat. Consequently, LTV had no
funds to purchase NWIRP Dallas, and this factor, combined with
restrictions placed on the sale, forced the company to abandon its
plan to buy the complex. The Navy subsequently declared NWIRP
PAGE 8-85
Dallas a surplus property, but little buyer interest and the nation's
depressed economic conditions forced it to reconsider divestiture.
Furthermore, the Navy argued that as long as LTV devoted a
substantial percentage of its production activities to DOD- or NASArelated contracts, the company could continue to lease NWIRP
Dallas. With few viable alternatives, the Navy renewed LTV's lease,
No. N0w6137u, ensuring that NWIRP Dallas was preserved for
future mobilization emergencies (Special Disposal Plan 1 April 1971:
np; Executive Order 11724 Installation Survey Report 1974: 1).
Since the major Vietnam Expansion of 1966–69, LTV has made no
major leasehold improvements at NWIRP Dallas except for routine
maintenance and the cleanup of Mountain Creek Lake. As a
condition of the lease renewal, LTV was required to install a new
water treatment plant according to the specifications of the Texas
Water Quality Board and the Environmental Protection Agency. In
1974, LTV constructed an Industrial Waste Treatment Plant and
Collection System in the westernmost portion of the plant at a cost of
$2,851,300. The company also connected the NWIRP Dallas water
storage tanks to the City of Dallas water main, providing quality
drinking water to employees for the first time in almost a decade.
Finally, the last maintenance requirement at NWIRP Dallas was the
replacement of the World War II-era cooling tower, Facility 129, at a
cost of nearly $2.6 million (Executive Order 11724 Installation
Survey Report 1974: 16).
The worldwide recession of the early 1980s and the expense of
required facilities maintenance rendered LTV financially vulnerable.
The company was able to keep its doors open through its
subcontracting work and continued production of its famed Corsair II
jet aircraft. The Corsair II sustained LTV throughout the late 1970s
and 1980s. Both the Navy and Air Force placed orders with LTV for
the jet, but the DOD purchased aircraft modification kits and other
maintenance supplies rather than complete production models. The
42 new production Corsair II jets manufactured at NWIRP Dallas in
this period were ordered by the French military, with additional units
requisitioned by the Greek and Portuguese air forces in the late 1980s
(Donald 1997: 899–900). The Corsair II was a superiorly designed
jet, and its performance and limited maintenance requirements
allowed the aircraft to remain in active service throughout the 1980s
and 1990s. The U.S. Navy deployed the Corsair II in combat during
the Desert Storm conflict. In 1993, the last version of the Corsair II,
in service with the U.S. Air National Guard, was retired (Donald
1997: 899). NATO countries still fly models of the Corsair II today.
PAGE 8-86
The Corsair II and subcontracting work fueled LTV's survival in the
lean and often cyclical aerospace environment of the 1980s. In 1981,
LTV won its largest contract ever, a $1.3 billion subcontract from
Rockwell International Corporation, a California-based company, to
build the aft fuselage of the B1B Stealth Bomber (Dallas Morning
News 9 August 1987). The Stealth contract, a subcontracting job for
the U.S. Air Force C-17 Cargo plane, and commercial work for
Boeing sustained and allowed LTV to rehire many employees who
had lost their jobs in the declining aircraft market following the
Vietnam War. By the late 1980s, LTV employment rebounded to
15,800 persons, with an annual payroll of $211.3 million. Throughout
the late 1980s and to the present, no complete jet aircraft or
commercial product has been manufactured at NWIRP Dallas (Dallas
Morning News 9 August 1987).
PRODUCTION AT NWIRP DALLAS FROM 1992 TO THE PRESENT
In 1992, Northrop Grumman, a prestigious Southern California-based
company, purchased LTV and became the new tenant of NWIRP
Dallas. A leader in Stealth technology, Northrop Grumman purchased
LTV because of its decade-long experience manufacturing pieces of
the Stealth Bomber. Northrop Grumman valued LTV's expertise and
wanted NWIRP Dallas employees to work on the company's
burgeoning Stealth Fighter program. Northrop Grumman also used
Figure 8-44. Aerial view of NWIRP Dallas, 1991. Source: NWIRP Dallas Plant Records.
PAGE 8-87
NWIRP Dallas to refurbish its Gulf Stream aircraft, but has never
manufactured a complete product at the complex. In the last few
years, the company reduced employment levels at the facility in an
effort to reorganize its corporate structure and determine the best way
to utilize the factory.
In its tenure at NWIRP Dallas, Northrop Grumman has made no
major leasehold improvements except for routine maintenance;
however, in 1997–98, the company renovated its office space in
Facilities 2 and 7, which required a massive 5,000-person layoff.
Also during this time, the Navy decided to divest itself of NWIRP
Dallas and other aircraft-related GOCO facilities. The Navy gave
Northrop Grumman the first opportunity to purchase NWIRP Dallas,
but the company declined, preferring to lease rather than own the
property. The Navy offered to sell NWIRP Dallas to the City of
Dallas, which currently owns both Hensley Field and the former
NAS Dallas complex. The city accepted the proposal and on 24
March 1999, Congress took the first step in the transfer of NWIRP
Dallas to the city with the passage of Senate Bill S-694 (Figures 8-44
& 8-45).
Figure 8-45. Aerial view of NWIRP Dallas, 1991. Source: NWIRP Dallas Plant Records.
PAGE 8-88
OWNERSHIP OF NWIRP DALLAS CHANGES
Throughout the transfer of the property to the City of Dallas,
Northrop Grumman continued on as lessee of NWIRP Dallas, filling
orders for the B-2 Stealth Bomber manufacturing program as well as
the Joint STARS, E-2C, and Global Hawk programs. In the third
quarter of 1999, Northrop Grumman experienced a backlog at most
of its production facilities, but at NWIRP Dallas, the company
experienced a significant slow- down. Grumman attributed the
decrease in work to the conclusion of the B-2 bomber program. The
reduction in B-2 work reduced profits at NWIRP Dallas by half, from
$104 million to $51 million. As a result of reduced sales and profits,
the company decided to sell its Dallas division (PR Newswire 18
October 2000: np).
In July 2000, Northrop Grumman entered into talks with The Carlyle
Group about purchasing the Dallas division and assuming the lease at
NWIRP Dallas. The Carlyle Group, a Washington, D.C.-based
private venture capital firm, developed a reputation for acquiring and
successfully operating 11 defense-related companies, including
Power Paragon and United Defense Industries, maker of the Bradley
fighting vehicle. The Carlyle Group offered to purchase all of
Northrop Grumman’s aerostructures divisions – not just the Dallas
division. Northrop Grumman’s commercial aerostructures unit
generated annual sales of $706 million and employed some 6,000
people at production facilities in Dallas, Texas; Hawthorne,
California; Stuart, Florida; and Milledgeville and Perry, Georgia.
Northrop Grumman agreed to the sale of its whole aerostructures
sector, so long as The Carlyle Group agreed to assume more then
$400 million in employment liabilities and taxes. The Carlyle Group
agreed to Northrop Grumman’s terms. On 24 July 2000, The Carlyle
Group officially purchased Northrop Grumman’s entire aerostructures
sector for $1.2 billion dollars. When publicly announcing the deal,
The Carlyle Group confirmed that there would be no significant
changes in overall workforce levels and that it would keep
aerostructures’ headquarters at NWIRP Dallas, operating under the
historic name, Vought Aircraft Industries, Inc. (PR Newswire 24 July
2000: 12:21; PR Newswire 24 July 2000: 12:05; hoovers.com;
thecarlylegroup.com).
The new company formed by The Carlyle Group marked the return
of a well-respected name in the aerospace industry and combined the
design and manufacturing capabilities of the Vought Aircraft
Company, Northrop Corporation, and Grumman Corporation. The
new director of aerostructures operations, Gordon Williams,
PAGE 8-89
elaborated on the importance and combination of the three companies
under the name Vought Aircraft Industries: “Our new company name
carries with it a tradition of excellence. The Vought legacy of
achievement in aerospace design, manufacture, and technology
innovation has made us what we are today – the premier
aerostructures supplier in the world”. Vought Aircraft Industries
assumed all of the previous subcontract and prime contract work for
the Boeing Company and Gulf Stream Aerospace at NWIRP Dallas,
supplying the firms with fuselages, empennages, wing center
sections, flight control surfaces, doors and nacelle components, as
well as the entire integrated work for the Gulfstream V business jet
(PR Newswire 24 July 2000: 12:21; PR Newswire 24 July 2000:
12:05).
Immediately following the July 2000 creation of Vought Aircraft
Industries, NWIRP Dallas became the center of the company’s
fabrication and major assembly operations. Vought Aircraft Industries
continued production work for Boeing on both commercial and
military projects at NWIRP Dallas. Current commercial products
include various structures for the Boeing 737, 747, 757, 767, and
777. Current military subcontract work for the Air Force and Navy
include major structures on the C-17 Globemaster III transport
aircraft. NWIRP Dallas employees manufacture the nacelles,
horizontal and vertical stabilizers, and universal aerial refueling
panels for the C-17. Other military-related products manufactured at
Dallas under Vought Aircraft Industries include the E-2C Hawkeye
outer wing panels, S-3A Viking wing folds, V-22 fuselage
subassemblies, and the wings for the Global Hawk unmanned air
vehicle (PR Newswire 24 July 2000: 12:21).
Northrop Grumman’s sale of its aerostructures sector to The Carlyle
Group and the renaming of the division to Vought Aircraft Industries
only minimally affected operations at NWIRP Dallas, but has
delayed the sale of the federally owned property to the City of Dallas
from 2002 until 2006. In the meantime, the Navy and the City of
Dallas has agreed to keep Vought Aircraft Industries as the lessee of
NWIRP Dallas throughout and following the transfer of the property
from the military to the private sector. However, during the six-year
transfer period, Vought Aircraft Industries is precluded from
engaging in any leasehold improvements at NWIRP Dallas without
the formal and written consent of the Navy, the City of Dallas, and
the Texas State Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO).
PAGE 8-90

Historic Context - Vought Aircraft Division

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