United States Air Force Plant 4

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 next to Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, formerly Carswell Air Force Base.

With a staff of about 17,000 people, Air Force Plant 4 is one of the largest employers in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington Metropolitan Statistical Area.^{[citation needed]}

In May 1940, as the Army Air Corps began planning a massive expansion, the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce was trying to convince aircraft manufacturers to build an aircraft assembly plant in the Fort Worth area.

Fleet and Consolidated Aircraft, which wanted to build a heavy bomber plant in Fort Worth, suggested to the Air Corps that they jointly build an airfield next to the factory. Local officials promised to spend money to build an airport on the land next to the plant and lease it to the Air Corps. After some objections to this, another suggestion to deed the Air Corps the land was accepted, and on 16 June 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved $1.75 million to construct a military airfield (Fort Worth Army Airfield) next to the Consolidated manufacturing plant.

The B-24 Liberator was first proposed to the Air Corps in 1938, and with the start of World War II in Europe, the French government placed an order for 60 aircraft, sight unseen. In 1940, Britain ordered 164. These large foreign orders were placed well before the U.S. military placed similar-sized orders, and helped to get the B-24 project going.

To meet the projected demand for the B-24, in early 1941 the U.S. government established the Liberator Production Pool Program. Under this program, Consolidated would produce Liberators at the new plant in Fort Worth to supplement the B-24 production in its main San Diego plant. Sub-assemblies and components of B-24Ds would first be sent to Fort Worth and assembled from smaller plants until Fort Worth could produce the complete aircraft. Three designations of the Liberator, B-24D, B-24E, and B-24G would be flown to Fort Worth from Consolidated production lines in San Diego, Willow Run, Michigan and North American Aircraft in Dallas. At Fort Worth, the aircraft would be processed through what was called a "modification center" where the aircraft would be updated with the latest modifications before being turned over to the Air Force and flown out from the Fort Worth Army Airfield, which it shared a common airfield with. Over 3,000 B-24 aircraft were manufactured, assembled and modified during the war.

In February 1943, the Army directed Consolidated to shift its production of the B-32 Dominator very heavy bomber from San Diego to Fort Worth, to streamline PBY Catalina production in San Diego for the Navy. The B-32 program, however, was beset with technical problems and by the end of December 1944, only five aircraft had been delivered. In comparison, the B-29 Superfortress had been in combat for nearly six months. Before the program's termination in September 1945, only 124 B-32s were produced in Fort Worth.

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.