June 27, 2022 — by MLivngood in our A History Trip to Cobb County Georgia blog… It provides an account of the founding of Air Force Plant 6 (originally Government Aircraft Plant 6) — more commonly referred to as ‘The Bomber Plant’ and home to the former Lockheed-Georgia Company, now Lockheed-Martin’s Marietta Site — and the key individuals involved in local politics during the 1930’s, who successfully secured support and funding for both the airfield and the plant in the early 1940’s. The Marietta-based Bell Bomber Plant and Marietta Army Airfield provided a much-need boost in the local economy and commerce from the thousands of men and women who built the airfield and plant, and then the tens-of-thousands of people who worked at the Bell Aircraft Corporation leased and operated plant during World War II, from 1943 through 1945. Perhaps even more important has been the subsequent, re-opening of Air Force Plant 6 in 1951 by the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation and it’s successor, Lockheed Martin Corporation who continues to operate and build aircraft at the plant 72-years later.
To read the story in it’s entirety, click on the larger, bold title below, for a hyperlink that will take you the blog entry.
Introduction & Overview
This past March I decided to re-direct my interests and writing energy to something more productive, essentially local history beginning with how Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park came to be in April, and by March was digging-into and writing A Chronological History of Marietta, Cobb County & The State of Georgia. And, earlier this month I created a virtual, photo-based walk around the Marietta Square, adjacent streets and a few other areas of interest that provides images of what Marietta looks like today, and back in time using historic photos entitled, Marietta, Georgia: A Photo Compilation of “Now & Then”.
However, it was impossible to study the history of Cobb County and Marietta without taking time to learn more about Air Force Plant 6 (originally Government Aircraft Plant 6) and Dobbins Air Reserve Base (originally Rickenbacker Field). The history of the airfield and plant is directly tied to several key individuals involved in local politics during the 1930’s, who successfully secured support and funding for both the airfield and the plant in the early 1940’s. The two, parallel programs brought much-needed, new work on two major construction and associated infrastructure projects, as well as a huge boost in the local economy and commerce from the thousands of men and women who built the airfield and plant, and then the tens-of-thousands of people who worked at the Bell Aircraft Corporation leased and operated plant during World War II, from 1943 through 1945.
Perhaps even more important has been the subsequent, re-opening of Air Force Plant 6 in 1951 by the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. Unlike its first life that only created a three-year injection of economic growth and prosperity to the local community, under what is now the Lockheed Martin Corporation’s Aeronautics business area’s site at Air Force Plant 6 in Marietta, Georgia, the plant has remained in continuous operation for 71-years and been an important part and partner to Cobb County and the City of Marietta for all of those years.
Having worked at Lockheed from 1984 through 2018, and at the Marietta plant from 1991 until I retired in 2018, I knew quite a bit about the history of the F-22 and C-130, as they were both programs I worked-on in a program management capacity. However, once I started to dig-into the history of the plant, I realized just how much I didn’t know or appreciate about it, or even many of the aircraft that were produced at Air Force Plant 6 by both Bell and Lockheed.
Therefore, this is the product of that research, something I took on as a personal project in my spare time over the course of the past two-weeks, and as a follow-on to the aforementioned virtual, photo-based walk around Marietta, Georgia using historic photos. My goal was to try and capture in an internet-enabled, visual history trip with historic photos from the past, some married with more current images of the same places and buildings, to create an interesting, enjoyable and attention-holding retrospective on “The Bell Bomber Plant” as it’s always been known. And, it was hard to not include information regarding the amazing aircraft built at the plant since 1943 by tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people who have worked at the plant over all of those years, and who might want to either revisit the history they helped create, or learn the history they never knew.
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