The Missile Producers

Missiles are assembled out of the same basic subsystems as aircraft, namely, an airframe, a power plant, and a guidance and control mechanism. Accordingly, as missiles started to become an essential element of the defense arsenal, the aircraft manufacturers were especially well placed to move rapidly into this expanding market, and they did so with great success over the 1940s and 1950s. By 1961, the top five aircraft producers in the United States as a whole accounted for 68.3 percent of all missile production (Simonson 1964). Aircraft manufacturers also had the advantage of long familiarity with the inner complexities of the Department of Defense, the monopsonistic market for missiles. To be sure, a number of specialized missile manufacturers had already made their appearance in Southern California before the 1950s. As indicated earlier, these were Aerojet-General, Marquardt, and the Firestone Guided Missile Division. In addition, Grand Central Rocket was founded in 1955 as a rocket propellant and engine producer, though six years later it was absorbed by Lockheed. A few electronics firms such as Hughes Aircraft and (after 1953) Ramo Wooldridge were also involved as prime contractors with missile production. However, it was the aircraft firms that entered most forcefully into this now burgeoning sector of production, and by the mid-1950s, most of the large aircraft assemblers had established active missile divisions.

As early as 1950, Douglas Aircraft established a Missile Division within the firm's Santa Monica plant. In 1962 the Missile Division became the Missile and Space Systems Division, which in 1964 moved to Huntington Beach (where it was subsequently renamed McDonnell

Douglas Space Systems). Lockheed set up its Missile Systems Division in Van Nuys in 1954, though the division moved a year later to Sunnyvale in the Bay Area (Yenne 1987). Also in 1954, shortly after the "Teapot Committee" headed by John Von Neumann had recommended construction of an ICBM with an H-bomb warhead, General Dynamics established its Convair Astronautics Division in San Diego, where the Atlas ICBM was constructed (see table 4.9); in the same year, the firm also set up its Pomona Division, where the Terrier missile was manufactured for the Navy. In 1955, North American Aviation opened both its Space and Information Systems Division in Downey (manufacturing Hound Dog missiles), and its great Rocketdyne Division in Canoga Park where the engines for the first Atlas, Thor, and Jupiter systems were produced. Finally, the Ford Motor Company created its Aeronutronic Systems Division in Glendale in 1956 where work on the Shillelagh missile began; and in 1960, the establishment moved to Newport Beach where in 1976 it was renamed Ford Aerospace and Communications Corporation.

The locations of ordnance (i.e., missile) manufacturers and parts suppliers in Southern California in the middle of the 1950s are shown in figure 4.2. At this time, there were only some twelve such establishments in the region, though they were for the most part extremely large in size. Their geographic distribution is much like that of aircraft and parts establishments, with some of the more recently founded plants at that time (such as General Dynamics-Pomona and Rocketdyne) occupying relatively peripheral locations. By the mid-1950s, the major missile producers in the region had also become caught up in a dense local network of interindustrial linkages. Thus, a missile market directory of the period informs us that within the confines of Southern California, there were eight missile prime contractors connected to eleven major subcontractors who in turn were connected to 175 subcontractors providing electronic guidance, tracking, telemetering, and checkout equipment (American Aviation Publications 1958). Almost all of these producers were located in Los Angeles County, with the residue mainly in Orange and San Diego counties.