<http://www.bakersfield.com/news/local/x1898643748/Oildales-secret-
military-history>

Who knew Oildale was a hot spot of the Cold War? But what better place
than Norris Road to help build U2 spy planes if you're trying to throw
Soviet agents off your trail -- or so went the reasoning of the
government and teams at Lockheed working on the new plane.

It was January 1956, and the arms race between the United States and
the Soviet Union was gathering momentum when President Eisenhower,
along with his military and intelligence advisers, agreed the country
needed sound information on the enemy's nuclear capabilities.

Intelligence officials decided the only way to observe the build-up
was to create a spy plane that could fly so fast and high that no
known plane or missile could intercept it as it photographed Soviet
bases behind the Iron Curtain. This aircraft had to operate at an
unheard of altitude of 70,000 feet and be able to bring back accurate
photographs. Up to that point, most attempts to fly over and
photograph Soviet territory resulted in aircraft being shot down.

In 1955, Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson, an aeronautical genius and
leader of Lockheed Burbank's celebrated "Skunk Works," formed during
the war to build up the country's air arsenal, stepped forward.
Johnson told the president and CIA that he and his crew could produce
a prototype aircraft that would meet or exceed those goals and deliver
it in less than eight months. Kelly began work on the top-secret
project, code-named "Aquatone."

The Skunk Works crew worked day and night perfecting the massive 100-
foot wings for "The Angel," as Johnson and his crew called the high
flier. They grafted the wings onto the fuselage of Lockheed's F-104
fighter plane. They used a Pratt & Whitney J57 jet engine, modified
for ultra-high altitude. In less than eight months, the first U2 was
making test flights at Area 51 in Nevada.

Knowing that Soviet spies kept a close watch on the Lockheed plant in
Burbank, Johnson decided it was necessary to move construction and
production to another site after the prototype had been built. He
reassigned his crew to a building on Norris Road in Oildale used as a
Lockheed assembly plant during World War II (the site now houses
Custom Building Products). The plant was given the code name Unit 80.

The parts and subassemblies were shipped into the Oildale plant by
rail and truck, and the Skunk Works crew assembled the entire aircraft
and checked all systems before disassembling it. Then the U2
subassemblies were loaded onto two specially built four-wheel
"wagons," concealed under a canvas cover and loaded into two trucks.
They were then hauled, under the cover of darkness, the short distance
to Meadows Field. After being off-loaded into two Air Force C-124
cargo aircraft, they were immediately flown to Groom Lake in Nevada
for final assembly. So secret were these night flights, that the C-124
pilots, once they were at the California-Nevada border, relied on
instructions by radio to get to the secret Area 51.

Upon arrival at Groom Lake, the planes were reassembled, given engine
run tests and flight tested before being ferried to Europe for spy
service.

The Oildale U2 plant was in production, without detection by Russia's
spies, from January 1956 until January 1957 and, in that year,
produced dozens of the vital spy planes. These U2s were successfully
flown from 1955 until 1960, when Gary Powers was shot down by a new
Russian missile. But by then the United States had spy satellites that
gave us even clearer photos than the amazing U2 had provided for those
six years. Also, the Lockheed Skunk Works was by then producing the
A-12, the fastest, highest-flying spy plane ever built. The plane
evolved into the SR-71 Blackbird, which can fly so high and fast, it
can outrun any missile in the world.

The photographs provided by the U2 overflights proved to intelligence
agencies that the Soviet Union had many fewer planes and missiles than
it had claimed.

Lockheed Martin's high-flying workhorse still flies somewhere in the
world every day. It has been updated and modified countless times in
its 53-year history. Other countries, NASA, corporations and
universities worldwide use the versatile aircraft for upper-air
weather studies, astronomy, mapping, geology and scores of other uses
vital to earth research.