Burbank, CA: 1930s-1990s Lockheed Factory (P-38s)

(Satellite, and now it is big box retail.)

MilitaryHistoria posted
P-38 Lightning aircraft being built at the Lockheed factory in Burbank, California, United States, date unknown.

Dale Carney: they also made them in Nashville tn Consolidated-Vultee built 113 P-38Ls in Nashville, Tenn., to meet. wartime needs.

Mike Wilson: Saw a picture in an aviation history magazine showing piles, literally piles, of completed, zero time P-38's at the end of the war. It became a boutique industry for a time to have a smelter on a trailer, and travel around melting down aircraft grade (because most recently it Was an aluminum aircraft) into ingots to sell. If all of these high performance aircraft had been available dirt cheap after the war, the light plane industry would have died out.

Everett Hoover commented on the above post
The Hibay at the Whirlybird Factory, pre-1966 (No Cobras on the line). Before my time.
[Was this also part of this Lockheed plant?]

1948/48 Burbank Quad @ 24,000

MartinTurnbull
"During WWII, the Army Corps of Engineers hid the Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant to protect it from possible Japanese air attack by covering the whole thing with camouflage netting to make it look like a rural subdivision from the air. A few blocks away, someone pointed out to Jack Warner that, from the air, a Japanese bomber might not be able to tell the difference between Lockheed and his studio. So he ordered the print shop to erect an enormous sign on the roof of one of the Warner soundstages. The result? A twenty-foot arrow pointing to Burbank, along with the words: LOCKHEED – THAT-A-WAY!"

Before camouflage:

MilitaryStory

After camouflage:

MilitaryStory

At its peak during WWII, it employed for 80,000 people. "Lockheed Martin left behind a toxic legacy of contaminated groundwater and improperly disposed of chemicals when they moved out of Burbank in the early 1990s." [Google search AI]

It became a Superfund site. [semspub]

I didn't watch because of time constraints, but it does look interesting.

1:07:22 video