Disappearing wings: as Boeing 717 production comes to close, workers recall L.A.'s aviation history.

To Betty Murphy, Douglas Aircraft Co. offered a haven.

With a deadbeat husband and a two-year-old daughter, Murphy signed on to help assemble B-17 bombers at the company's massive Long Beach facilities in 1942.

She reinvented herself as an original "Rosie the Riveter."

"The next best thing to serving my country was to join the war effort building airplanes to beat the bad guys," said Murphy, now 86. "You really felt like you were doing something for the war effort--providing a good solid aircraft for a pilot to fly."

Douglas did so at a remarkable pace--churning out one aircraft every 7 1/2 hours during the war. It was the heyday of the aerospace industry in Long Beach, when Douglas Aircraft alone employed 160,000 people.

Those days ended long ago, but Boeing Co.'s plans to cease production of its 717 commercial jet just seemed to confirm that the era of airplane assembly in Southern California has finally come to a close.

Boeing inherited the 717--formerly called the MD-95--when it bought McDonnell Douglas Corp. in 1997.

"I'm sad to see all those great names disappear," said Don Howser, hired by Douglas Aircraft in 1950 at age 18. "Douglas, when I was a kid, was dominant all over the world. There was a pride of working for the company. We were competing against other companies (but) then we became part of them."

Jobs in the county's aircraft manufacturing sector soon became the envy of the working class--and not simply for patriotic duty.

"When I started working there, you didn't get any medical insurance and you worked Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve," said Bob Eddington, who was a Douglas Aircraft machinist from 1954 through 1993. "There were very few vacation days in those days. I thought I'd be working there five years but we'd have (union) negotiations every three to four years and things kept getting better."

Eddington, now president of United Aerospace Workers Local 148's 7,000-member retiree group, began as a $1.64-per-hour machinist at Douglas Aircraft and retired from the assembly floor making about $27 per hour, with a pension of $2,400 per month and a health plan that covers him and his wife for $39 per month.

Unlike much of corporate America, which fought unionization, Murphy fondly remembers how founder Donald Douglas, who famously established his company behind an L.A. barbershop in 1920, respected the union's demands for his employees.

"When it was Douglas, it was very personal," she said. "Don Douglas used to come out into the shop and ask us how things are going. He respected the unions. We got along just fine."

Risks, rewards

For all the glory that came with being a part of the war effort, and later a booming, cutting-edge industry, working on the lines was fraught with risk.

Murphy recalled one young woman being decapitated during an accident on the line that produced wings. Another woman who wasn't wearing protective gear got her hair ripped out when it got caught in a piece of heavy machinery.

Murphy herself lost two front teeth when a spring clamp holding pieces of metal together snapped loose and hit her in the face.

Nevertheless, what started out as a wartime job for Murphy and so many of her colleagues turned into a career.

After the war, the aerospace industry ebbed and flowed. Douglas was overwhelmed with orders during the Korean War. By the 1960s, the big aerospace companies were diversifying into missiles and spacecraft. Ongoing financial woes forced Douglas to seek a merger in 1967 with Kansas City, Mo.-based McDonnell Aircraft Corp. (whose owner had been buying up Douglas stock). At that point, Donald Douglas retired.

Through it all, Douglas produced the DC-3, DC-4, DC-6 and DC-7 propeller planes, as well as the DC-8, DC-9 and DC-10 jet airliners.

"You did the same kind of work but just on different models," said Murphy, who would eventually rise to become one of the company's first women assembly line supervisors. "Each one was a little more advanced because you improved on the systems."

While Long Beach ruled L.A. County's aerospace industry, other operations throughout the area included Northrop Aircraft in Hawthorne, Lockheed Aircraft in Burbank and Hughes Aircraft, largely a research and development operation, in Glendale.

Many point to the DC-10 as the beginning of the end for Douglas. The wide-body jetliner failed to garner the kind of sales that predecessors enjoyed. Meanwhile, attention at the merged McDonnell Douglas Corp. was focused more squarely on military work, which was the core of McDonnell's early business.

"McDonnell was more into jet fighters and they always viewed Douglas as somewhat of the poor relative," said Jack Kyser, senior economist with the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

With the end of the Cold War, even the military side was showing strain. By the early 1990s, the aerospace industry was going through a period of consolidation that has left just three or four major players.

The region's 40,000 aerospace employees represent about 75 percent less than the 1986 peak, according to the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp.

By the time Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas, most of the old guard was happy to be in retirement. Today, the former workers lament driving down Lakewood Boulevard in Long Beach, where the old Douglas Aircraft buildings to the west of the road are being demolished.

"We were brought up like a family over here," said Eddington, adding that most of his friends were aerospace workers living in the Long Beach area. "We worked together for so many years. It's hard to go by and see the old Douglas plant being torn down."

The workers remaining on the 717 assembly line will be shifted to other Southern California operations. When the plant on the east side of the street closes, the C-17 that Boeing makes for the Air Force in Long Beach will become the only plane assembled in L.A. County.