DIRECTED-ENERGY WEAPONS (DEW)

ECOCIDE
noun
destruction of the natural environment,
especially when deliberate.

DIRECTED-ENERGY WEAPONS (DEW)

(Black Projects)

Skunk Works
U.S. Air Force Plant 4

(F-16 Production Line, 1986)

The Official Story

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE PLANT 4
(Skunk Works — Fort Worth, Texas)

Air Force Plant 4 is a government-owned, contractor-operated aerospace facility in Fort Worth, Texas, currently owned by the U.S. Air Force and operated by Lockheed Martin Aeronautics. It is home to the F-16 and F-35 fighter aircraft. Military aircraft have been manufactured at the plant since 1942. Plant 4 is adjacent to Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, formerly Carswell Air Force Base.

Cold War

In 1942, Consolidated decided to manufacture its very long range bomber, the XB-36 Peacemaker, in Fort Worth. Although the USAAF approved this plan, it caused a delay of several months in the XB-36 project; since all the drawings, the mockup, the engineers, and the tooling had to be moved from San Diego to Texas. Unfortunately, progress on the XB-36 was still slow, and by the middle of 1944, B-29s were attacking Japan regularly from bases in the Mariana Islands. Although the B-36 project would still continue, it would now do so with a lower priority. Following the surrender of Germany and the end of the war in Europe, aircraft production contracts were drastically cut back. However, the contract for the B-36 was untouched. The enormous losses suffered in seizing island bases in the Pacific convinced the USAAF that there was still a definite need for a very long-range bomber.

The first XB-36 (42-13570) was rolled out of the Fort Worth factory on 8 September 1945, and took off from Fort Worth on its maiden flight on 8 August 1946. The B-36 was in production at Fort Worth until the last B-36J was rolled out on 14 August 1954; 385 of these were ultimately built.

Consolidated Aircraft became Convair, following a merger in 1943. Convair was itself acquired by General Dynamics in 1953.

Beginning in the late 1940s, Air Materiel Command, requested that work begin on a new jet- powered medium bomber that would be ready for service by the late 1950s. After years of development, a medium jet bomber Convair’s XB-58, was accepted by the Air Force in December 1955 for thirteen aircraft, which would be built at Plant 4 in Fort Worth. Technical problems and testing by Air Force Systems Command meant that the first production aircraft were not delivered until 1959. The aircraft remained in production until 1964 when the Air Force decided to phase the aircraft out of the inventory.

The company’s proposal for the Tactical Fighter Experimental project (TFX) was accepted in 1962, with the fighter seeing production as the General Dynamics F-111. By 1966, the plant had expanded to 4.7 million square feet, and by 1968 it had expanded further to 6.5 million square feet, to accommodate production of the F-111. Plant 4 built 562 of the aircraft by the time production ended, in 1976.

In the early 1970s, the YF-16 was designed and built at Fort Worth, and the USAF accepted its first F-16 on August 17, 1978. The Fighting Falcon is one of the most successful military aircraft ever produced, with major production continuing until the early 2000s and support components of the aircraft still being produced.

Source: Wikipedia