Military interservice rivalries had much to do with the shift of defense business from,the frost belt to the sun belt. The U.S. Air Force, freed from army control by the late 1940s, was the beneficiary of the Strategic Missiles Evaluation Committee (the "TeapotCommittee"), which in 1954 recommended a six-year crash program for R&D in ballistic missiles. It proposed that the air force lead the new effort, based on the West Coast at Western Development Division (WDD), which was created in 1954 and located in Inglewood (Los Angeles).

Meanwhile two engineers in the Howard Hughes aircraft organization, Simon Ramo and Dean Wooldridge, had built up a huge scientific and engineering organization within Hughes. At one time they oversaw the work of four hundred scientists. Ramo and Wooldridge left the Hughes oper-. ation in 1953, joining with a Cleveland aircraftengine firm called Thompson Products...