The Defense Establishment in Cold War Arizona, 1945–1968

On February 16, 1956, Robert J. Everett, a former U.S. Air Force pilot turned Lockheed Aircraft Corporation employee, ejected over Arizona at approximately thirty thousand feet after a fire started in his cockpit during a routine training flight.¹ Ten months later, on December 19, 1956, Bob Ericson, another Lockheed Aircraft pilot, was also forced to jettison over Arizona, this time at twenty-eight thousand feet, when his interior oxygen supply became “prematurely depleted.”² Although aircraft crashes were a frequent occurrence in Arizona during the 1950s and 1960s, these two events were particularly unique. The aircraft were U-2s, and the pilots were actually working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The U-2 program, which was authorized by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in December 1954, was a clandestine CIA effort charged with high-altitude, deep-penetration reconnaissance overflights of the Soviet Union. The program’s namesake aircraft, intentionally misrepresented as a nondescript utility aircraft (i.e., part of the U.S. Air Force’s U-series), was quite innovative. The U-2 was both sophisticated jet aircraft and elegant sailplane. Capable of Mach 0.85, the single-engine aircraft operated at an altitude of seventy-two thousand feet—almost five times higher than commercial airliners then in operation. At the same time, the U-2 utilized high-aspect ratio wings, similar to those found on performance gliders, which gave the aircraft a range of nearly three thousand miles.³

During the Cold War, the U-2 program relied extensively on Arizona. When the CIA originally sought to utilize foreign nationals for the Soviet overflights, several Greek pilots were matriculated into the “USAF jet training course at Williams AFB, Arizona.”⁴ During the aircraft’s test phase in late 1955 and early 1956, U-2 flights were often routed over isolated areas of Arizona and Nevada. In July 1963, the U.S. Air Force, now actively flying its own U-2 missions, relocated the 4080th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing (later 100th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing) to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base (Davis-Monthan AFB) in Tucson. During the next thirteen years, U-2 aircraft from the 4080th would conduct high-altitude air sampling of the stratosphere and reconnaissance overflights of Cuba, Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam. Francis Gary Powers, the iconic figure of the U-2 program, was even briefly associated with Arizona. Powers received advanced flight training at Williams Air Force Base (Williams AFB), near Mesa, Arizona, between 1952 and 1953.⁵

This essay examines Arizona during the crucial period between 1945 and 1968, when significant numbers of electronics and aerospace firms established manufacturing and production facilities in the state. This twenty-three-year period, which corresponded to the opening decades of the Cold War, brought profound economic,

Training flight over the desert. Arizona Historical Society–Tucson collections, MS1255, Charles and Lucile Herbert–Western Ways Features Manuscript and Photographic Collection, Box 35, Folder 535.

social, and political transformations to Arizona.⁶ The article documents the emergence of the state’s unique postwar defense establishment—an array of interconnected military installations, proving grounds, corporate research laboratories, industrial testing facilities, and airframe and missile production facilities that transformed Arizona into both a battleground and home front of the Cold War. Cold War rearmament connected Arizona into a broader militarized region that extended across the western United States, while emerging Cold War conflicts, such as the Korean War (1950–1953) and Vietnam War (1964–1975), brought a wave of federal largesse to the state. The defense establishment also shaped the state’s postwar economic expansion. Arizona reaped the benefit of several new national security policies, in particular, industrial dispersion and decentralization. Indeed, both defense policies proved to be a marked competitive advantage for the state. Throughout the Cold War, Arizona continuously sought to make itself attractive to defense contractors. To this end, political and economic elites were extremely conscious of creating both an inviting and friendly business climate. Finally, the defense establishment effected broad changes in Arizona’s society. The antagonism of...