Downey: A Short Aerospace History

The City of Downey has been the site of aviation ingenuity since 1929, when a section of ranch land was converted into an airport and aircraft manufacturing facility. For the next seventy years the site and facilities continued to be developed, expanded and utilized for aircraft manufacture, missile design and development, and ultimately, the design and production of Apollo command and service modules during the lunar program and development and production of the Space Shuttle Orbiters.

The majority of materials in this History of Aviation and Aeronautics in Downey site were taken from the Final Historic Buildings and Structures Inventory and Evaluation of the NASA Industrial Plant in Downey, California prepared in behalf of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, by Earth Tech, Inc., Colton California. The author of the text being referred to is Paige Payton.

For additional sources of historical information on the Downey site, see the Aerospace Legacy Foundation webpage.