Though the two YO-130 prototypes were built at Lockheed's Burbank, California plant, production of all subsequent models was to take place at Lockheed-Georgia. The Lockheed plant at Marietta, Georgia is the largest of its kind in the world. It had been built during World War II and operated by Bell, which built B-29s under license from Boeing. At the conclusion of the war it was turned into a storage facility, only to be reopened by Lockheed in 1951 after they had received a contract to refurbish mothballed B-29s for the war in Korea. Lockheed also received a contract to manufacture B-47s under license. The Georgia Division's performance on this contract, in which 394 B-47s were built, resulted in the return to DoD of several million dollars in allocated defense funds. This was an unheard of event, before or since, and Lockheed executives were itching to get a contract for their super-efficient Georgia division. The award of the C-130 contract to Lockheed in 1952 ensured continued operation of the Marietta plant, though at the time no one imagined that it would still be producing C-130s 28 years later! (Company officials indicated that they would have been happy with a production run of 300 airplanes.)
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