For the vast majority of the 20th century, Long Beach, California, was not just an airport town but also a hub of aircraft manufacturing. Behind tall fences along Lakewood Boulevard, Douglas (a manufacturer that would later become McDonnell Douglas) ran what would go down in history as one of the most successful and consequential assembly lines in the history of the American aerospace industry. This was a place where wartime production would eventually give way to the jet age, and a place where successive programs gradually reshaped the local economy, the skyline, and the soundscape overhead. This story is really a numbers piece, but it is also really about what those numbers may mean. Evaluating how many aircraft were produced sounds simple until one decides what counts, primarily when it comes to complete airframes, major assemblies, prototypes, customer deliveries, and how one chooses to attribute output across multiple different merger eras.

We analyzed company statements, local reporting, and historical documentation of the plant itself to build a clear, model-by-model tally, ranging from the DC-8 and DC-9 lines to widebodies like the DC-10 and the massive MD-11. What would later be known as the Boeing 717 was also manufactured here. Along the way, we will reconcile conflicting totals, flag the assumptions behind each count, and ultimately show how this one factory’s output tracks the continued boom, consolidation, and retreat of American commercial aircraft manufacturing. We will connect these totals back to the city itself, analyzing the economy, built environment, and legacy that shaped Long Beach’s identity.

Long Beach’s Manufacturing History Dates Back Decades

This story begins back when Douglas Aircraft outgrew its earliest facilities in Southern California and needed a purpose-built factory next to what was then Daugherty Field, an airport which would later become Long Beach Airport (LGB). The airport itself, which remains a principal commercial service facility today, dates back to the early 1920s. By the time rearmament began in 1940, the site’s runways, open land, and rail-accessible location made it a natural place for a manufacturer like Douglas to rapidly scale production.

Construction of the company’s Long Beach plant began late in 1940, with the first building on the site being completed in May 1941. Full operations started in November, just weeks before the Japanese attack on the US Naval base at Pearl Harbor. During its earliest years, the facility was optimized and engineered for mass output, primarily of windowless, climate-controlled structures. Around-the-clock shifts were scheduled during wartime to ensure production moved forward as efficiently as possible.

Elaborate rooftop camouflage was also used during the war to make this plant resemble a suburban neighborhood from the air. Within that first decade (namely the 1940s into the early 1950s), Long Beach went from a brand-new wartime production line to one of the rare US mega-factories for defense that would remain dominant during the early Cold War era. This facility was one of the most important elements of the American war machine and would remain that way for decades.

A Look Into Long Beach During The Early Post-War Era

In the early post-war period, Long Beach’s plant did not simply shut down the way that many wartime assembly lines did. Rather, the facility pivoted hard. As defense contracts quickly evaporated and the market was flooded with surplus aircraft, Douglas streamlined its Southern California footprint. Santa Monica focused on commercial transportation programs, El Segundo was quickly assigned to support the US Navy, and Long Beach, on the other hand, had the unique task of managing Air Force programs. Some space at the facility was actually leased out to non-aviation tenants as the company bridged this demand gap.

On the aircraft side, Long Beach’s bridge from World War II into the Cold War is best captured by heavy airlift. The factory had already produced a mix of wartime types, with the company building the C-74 Globemaster at the end of the war. This aircraft was effectively a large, long-range transport that served as a stepping stone to what came next for the manufacturer.

In the late 1940s and the early 1950s, the next aircraft the manufacturer would start building aggressively at this facility was the C-124 Globemaster II, a larger, purpose-built heavy-lift transport manufactured by Douglas in Long Beach. The aircraft would be delivered in large numbers to help the Air Force execute its air mobility mission. Thus, while the jetliner era at Long Beach is more commonly associated with commercial programs, the immediate post-war identity of the facility was fundamentally tied to the Air Force’s transport-oriented programs.

What About The 1960s, 1970s & 1980s?

In the 1960s, Long Beach matured into a true jetliner factory, with Douglas building the Douglas DC-8 there while slowly investing in the production of the DC-9, turning the site into a high-volume commercial production hub with engineering and assembly scaled for the airline industry boom that would soon follow. By the time the 1970s arrived, the plant’s identity expanded from a narrowbody production workhorse to a heavyweight manufacturing powerhouse.

It was during this era that McDonnell Douglas pushed the Douglas DC-10 into full-rate production, all while the DC-9 line continued as steady cash-register programs and DC-8 output wound down early in the decade. In the 1980s, a multi-program era would quickly follow, with Long Beach cranking out big numbers of the MD-80 family, a jet that was the upgraded, more efficient evolution of the Douglas DC-9. It also leveraged DC-10 tooling and the know-how into the KC-10 tanker for the United States Air Force.

This brought a defense-production flavor back to the airline’s product mix. By the end of the decade, the factory was simultaneously living off proven bread-and-butter narrowbodies, ultimately sustaining a mature widebody platform through derivatives, and laying the industrial groundwork for the next wave of Long Beach-built aircraft that would define the plant’s final era.

What About The Plant’s Final Era?

The Long Beach plant’s final era was a slow, visible narrowing of production from a sprawling jet factory to a final era built primarily around a couple of holdouts. In the 1990s, McDonnell Douglas was still turning out big metal there, with the MD-80 family output alongside the MD-11 and the short-lived MD-90. The market, however, was moving toward simpler fleet strategies and the dominant Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 duopoly.

After Boeing absorbed McDonnell Douglas in 1977, Long Beach kept building the Boeing 717 as a nimble, high-frequency jet that airlines liked for short routes, although it remained a niche product in a world consolidating around larger aircraft families. As orders thinned, the plant increasingly leaned on military work, especially the C-17 Globemaster III program. This all occurred while commercial headcount and tooling steadily fell.

The symbolic end came when the last Boeing 717 rolled out in 2006, closing the chapter on commercial aircraft production in California at that site. What would follow was the afterlife of an industrial icon: a workforce that continued to disperse, with acres of facilities being repurposed or removed, and a city left with a tangible legacy of runways, infrastructure, and generations of skilled labor. This was all built around the idea that Long Beach was once a place where airliners were made from scratch.

So, How Many Aircraft Did The Plant Produce In Total?

In terms of an overall figure, the manufacturer’s Long Beach line built more than 15,000 aircraft over the course of its life, and Boeing has routinely cited that figure when discussing the factory’s production run. This includes the entire period of facility operations, ranging from the original Douglas period through the Boeing years. This massive total makes sense when one stacks multiple eras on top of each other.

There were around 9,440 aircraft produced during the Second World War alone, across five models, including the C-47 and the factory’s license-built Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses. This is all before one even gets to the jet age. In the period following the war, Long Beach kept producing aircraft, further adding to this impressive total.

All of this is before one even discusses the signature Douglas and McDonnell Douglas programs, including the Douglas DC-8, DC-9, and MD-10. Commercial work finished with the manufacturer completing 156 Boeing 717 airframes, and the final aircraft built at the site was the C-17 Globemaster III.

What Is Our Bottom Line When It Comes To This Facility?

The Douglas factory at Long Beach is one of those places where the American aviation industry was truly born. This facility accounts for many of the core aircraft development programs that sit at the heart of American aerospace history. The armed forces also owe a great debt to this plant and the variety of defensive systems it produced over its decades of operation.

The facility, on its own, is also a key factor in the city of Long Beach’s prosperity and economic development today. A thriving community with a highly-regarded state university, Long Beach is one of those towns that sits near an aerospace facility, which today sits quietly but was once a key player in American history.

While commercial aircraft production in the United States today is mostly centered around Boeing’s handful of facilities, the aviation legacy of Long Beach’s plant is not forgotten. Aviation enthusiasts and historians continue to remember it as one of the most important aircraft plants in world history.