Louisiana's Military Heritage:

     Michoud Assembly Facility

Michoud Assembly Facility

The Michoud Assembly Facility is an 832-acre site located in eastern New Orleans, accessing the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway.  It was originally operated as a sugar cane plantation and refinery by the Michaud family from 1827 into the early 1900s.  During World War II, a production building covering approximately 43 acres under one roof—perhaps the largest building in the world at that time—was constructed and the plant was retooled for the purpose of producing plywood cargo planes for the U.S. Army Air Corps and landing craft for the U.S. Navy.  The facility was later renovated to produce 12-cylinder engines for Sherman and Patton tanks during the Korean War.

The Michoud Assembly Facility produced engine

parts for the M-46 Patton tank during the Korean War.

Official U.S. Army photograph.

Michoud helped put mankind on the

surface of the moon through its

production of the first stage of the

massive Saturn V rockets.

Photo courtesy of NASA.

With the advent of the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union, Michoud was brought to the attention of NASA (the National Aeronautics & Space Administration) by Werner von Braun and his team of scientists.  The massive size of the plant's production building made it perfect for the construction of large rockets and it was here that NASA chose to build the first stages of the Saturn I and Saturn V rockets.  The plant's proximity to the Mississippi River and the Intracoastal Canal allowed the massive launch vehicles to be transported by barge to Cape Canaveral, Florida, for final assembly.  Since the completion of the Apollo Program in the early 1970s, Michoud has undertaken the production of the Space Shuttle program's External Fuel Tank.  With the shuttle program now scheduled for inactivation by 2010, the new experimental Kistler Aerospace Corporation has contracted with Michoud for the construction of liquid oxygen tanks for its experimental K-1 reusable space launch vehicles.

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**Copyright 1997-2006 by Louisiana Naval War Memorial Commission**