General Motors took over and produced transmissions until 2010, when the company declared bankruptcy and moved out. Sadly, one of the people most responsible for Willow Run's success did not live to see it. Willow Run takes its name from a small tributary of the Huron River that meandered through pastureland fields and woodland along the WayneWashtenaw county line until the late 1930s. It's hard to imagine a factory that large churning out a complete heavy bomber every 55 minutes, but these workers accomplished exactly that. The Willow Run area wasn't prepared to house many of the 42,000 workers who arrived when Ford Motor Company established its bomber plant there during World War II. [3][4] Even then it would take nearly a year before finished Liberators left the factory. GM first built transmissions at the plant, and later automobiles including Chevrolet's Corvair and Nova models. By 4 a.m. he had configured floor space and time requirements for sequential assembly of the planes principal sections, each fabricated in choreographed progression through separate, self-contained cells. In 2013, the Museum was able to purchase 144,000 square feet of the Plant. However, he finally relented and did employ "Rosie the Riveters" on his assembly lines, probably more because so many of his potential male workers had been drafted into the military than due to any sudden change of principle on his part. The Willow Run airport was to produce the B-24 bomber to support the Allied war effort. You can select the language displayed on our website. Reality proved otherwise. The Willow Run complex has given its name to a community on the east side of Ypsilanti, defined roughly by the boundaries of the Willow Run Community School District. The main building went up in sections, with workers using plywood partitions to seal off finished portions from those still under construction. Ypsilanti's oldest claim to fame: a bomber plant unlike any other The bombings curbed Germany's manufacturing capabilities and wore down its citizens' morale. Specialized employees -- riveters, for example -- received training in these classrooms as well. Ford Motor Company had reinvented the concept with the Model T's moving assembly line. In addition, Henry Ford refused on principle to hire women. The whole plane it would be, with the agreement that Ford would truck B-24 parts and finished sections called knockdowns to Consolidated plants in San Diego and Fort Worth and to Douglas Aircraft in Tulsa. [8] In 2014, the Yankee Air Museum moved into the bomber factory. The airfield passed into civilian hands after the war and is now controlled by Wayne County Airport Authority. Plant construction started in March 1941. But, as 1943 arrived, problems got solved and Willow Run turned a corner. Ford struggled to get Willow Run running at full potential. PEGATRON CORPORATION Company Profile | Taipei City, Taiwan Along with the B-17, the B-24 formed the backbone of the Allies' air war over Europe. [3], B-24Es built and fully assembled at Ford were designated B-24E-FO; those assembled at Tulsa and Fort Worth out of parts supplied by Ford were designated B-24E-DT and B-24E-CF respectively. plant, each paid the same 85 cents an hour as their Steel dies proved more precise, longer lasting, and perfectly safe. Planes were assembled outdoors, exposed to a hot sun that distorted parts out of shape. He was violently anti-union and there were serious labor difficulties, including a massive strike. Rosemary was among 200,000 southerners who flocked to southeastern Michigan for factory jobs, including 9,500 employed at Willow Run. In the process, the boys were to learn self-discipline and the values of hard work, and benefit from the fresh air of the country.[11]. Willow Run Bomber Plant - Warfare History Network Bill. "A Historical Perspective.". The average daily pumpage in million gallons was about 1.68 in 1942, 1.70 in 1943, and 1.66 in 1944. Henry Ford and the World Wars - Military History of the Upper Great Lakes Working with architect Albert Kahn, Ford officials envisioned a massive factory with bombers built on a moving line, just like Ford's automobiles. Search our website to find what youre looking for. Not only did Ford build 490 complete planes, but it also supplied components of B-24Es as kits that could be trucked for final assembly at the factories of Consolidated in Fort Worth and Douglas in Tulsa, 144 and 167 kits. [7] The 175,000-square-foot (16,300m2) portion of the original bomber plant that Yankee seeks to preserve is less than 5% of the massive facility, comprises the end of the former B-24 assembly line at the far eastern edge of the property, and contains the two iconic bay doors from which the finished Consolidated B-24 Liberator bombers exited the plant during World War II. His sketches embraced the two fundamentals of mass production: standardized, interchangeable parts and continuous, orderly flow punctuated by stops at assembly stations where workers and machines performed repetitive tasks. After the war, these residences served students attending the nearby University of Michigan on the G.I. Public bus lines offered 35 daily trips from Detroit, while private carriers offered 130. [21], In addition to the Willow Run Lodge and Village housing projects, another community named Parkridge Homes was also built in 1943 to house African-American Willow Run employees. you can see the two big hangar doors behind me. Although officially retired, Henry Ford still had a say in the company's affairs and refused government financing for Willow Run, preferring to have his company build the factory and sell it to the government, which would lease it back to the company for the duration of the war. Approximately one-third of the plant's assembly line workers were female. In 1941, Henry Ford had his company build a factory at Willow Run in the Detroit area. Women did everything from clerical work in the offices to riveting and welding on the assembly line. When Ford declined to purchase the facility after the war, Kaiser-Frazer Corporation gained ownership, and in 1953 Ford's rival General Motors took ownership and operated the factory as Willow Run Transmission until 2010. [21], Also in the Willow Run Village were the West Court[24] buildings, with peaked rooftops and space for couples or three adults. restore a piece of the building, about 175,000 square feet. Only 56 airplanes were built in all of 1942. Willow Run Assembly operated from 1959 to 1992 on a parcel to the south of the airport. [48] On October 26, 2013, RACER Trust and the Yankee Air Museum again reached a third, and final, deadline extension agreement that gave Yankee until May 1, 2014, to raise the $8 million estimated as necessary to secure, enclose and preserve a portion of the original Willow Run plant for the Yankee Air Museum. Labor shortages made women essential to war industries, and the government actively recruited them to join the workforce. The first of these apartments were ready for occupancy in August 1943. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. According to Max Wallace, Air Corps Chief General "Hap" Arnold told Charles Lindbergh, then a consultant at the plant, that "combat squadrons greatly preferred the B-17 bomber to the B-24 because 'when we send the 17's out on a mission, most of them return. That hulking plant was idled in the early 1990s, putting about 4,000 people out of work. 1250 B-24L aircraft were built at Willow Run. Mr. Ford's steadfast leadership helped the company to make good on its promise. Easements were acquired from landowners across the county line in Ypsilanti Township where the Liberator plant (and eventually the airport terminal) would be built. The valves that would shut the water off to different parts of the plant have been hidden in the building's entrails. 34,533 employees at peak; . Completed planes flew off to field modification centers for fixes, upgrades and customizing. You cant expect a blacksmith to make a watch overnight, It still has the original pews and other furnishings; the only other set in active use belongs to the Greenfield Village chapel.[13]. The President and First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, visited Willow Run on September 18, 1942, where they joined Henry Ford, Edsel Ford and Charles Sorensen on a tour of the complex. [41], The B-24L was the first product of the new, downsized Liberator production pool. The B-24H differed from earlier B-24s by having a second turret placed in the nose of the aircraft to increase defensive firepower. Bricker.[33]. The remaining four hours were used to restock parts and change tooling. Ford now planned to build 650 planes each month -- one every 45 minutes. [15] Ford Motor was to have first option on the plant after war production ended, an option it ultimately chose not to exercise, although a rumor in Drew Pearson's syndicated column had Ford planning a postwar use as a tractor factory,[16] but that never came to pass. The factory prompted the creation of the Washtenaw County Health Department and was a key part of America's "arsenal of . Crew size was up to ten, and range was up to 3,000 miles. By Tim Trainor. Manufacturing costs were slashed as man-hours per plane plummeted. The tri-level interchange seen here provided direct access to the factory for traffic traveling to and from the expressway. When . A ghostly, decaying reminder of the industrial and military history echoing within its cavernous expanse, Willow Run was demolished in 2014. Few new hires had ever been in a factory, so Ford built the Aircraft Apprentice School on the grounds to familiarize these industrial novices with tools and techniques of high-precision aeronautical manufacturing. [40], The B-24E was the first variant of the B-24 that underwent primary manufacture by Ford at Willow Run. A parcel of land to the south of Powertrain was set aside for assembly operations that began in 1959, with a Fisher Body plant that built bodies for the Chevrolet models assembled there, including the Corvair and Nova. The metal entry doors were also fashioned with magnets to effectively keep the door shut. In the meantime, visitors to the Yankee Air Museum at the airport can see how the blacksmith made a watch and helped win a war. Ford officials looked for every efficiency they could find in B-24 production. This covered 90 parcels of land[20] totaling 2,641 acres (1,069ha). With the pressures of wartime production schedules -- and the sense that victory itself depended on their efforts -- Willow Run's employees needed occasional relief from their burdens. Media coverage hyped by Ford and military publicists wove extravagant tales of a mammoth industrial citadel where 100,000 dedicated workers would produce hundreds of Liberators each week to roar across the oceans and obliterate enemy sources and seats of power. Watch on. Willow Run and its workers met their goal. Summary. Faces of Detroit: War: Lunch at Willow Run [13], The Willow Run Chapel[14] was the one originally built for Camp Willow Run, and became the place of worship for the Belleville Presbyterian Church in 1979 after a series of handoffs. The plant produced both Kaiser and Frazer models, including the compact Henry J, which with minor differences was also sold through Sears-Roebuck as the Allstate. By visiting this website, certain cookies have already been set, which you may delete and block. During this reduction, there was rumor that Ford would repurchase the plant from the government . Willow Run, also known as Air Force Plant 31, was a manufacturing complex in Michigan, United States, located between Ypsilanti Township and Belleville, built by the Ford Motor Company to manufacture aircraft, especially the B-24 Liberator heavy bomber. Charles Sorensen boasted that Ford would produce B-24s at the rate of one each hour. Plastic Model Club | Willow Run Bomber Plant IPMS Chapter | Ypsilanti When Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945, only 7,400 employees remained on the Willow Run payroll. Willow Run Bomber Plant - The Henry Ford Visit our updated, This website requires certain cookies to work and uses other cookies to help you have the best experience. More than 3,200 feet long and 1,279 feet across at its widest point, the plants 80-acre interior exceeded the Empire State Buildings floor space by 20 percent. Willow Run Bomber Plant IPMS - USA. Architect Albert Kahn boasted that the Willow Run plant would be the Willow Run produced 739,000 cars as part of Kaiser-Frazer and Kaiser Motors, from 1947 through 1953, when after years of losses, the company (now called Kaiser Motors after Frazer's exit from the partnership) purchased Willys-Overland and began moving its production at Willow Run to the Willys plant in Toledo, Ohio. . Early example of Lean. PBS to air documentary about Ypsilanti's legendary Willow Run B-24 As American involvement in the war seemed more likely, the U.S. government approached Ford Motor Company about making parts and subassemblies for B-24 bombers. This was largely because of Henry Ford. Paper (Fiber product) The resulting housing complexes were built in several different groups. The B-24 and the Willow Run Bomber Plant | Flickr Kaiser-Frazer moved into Willow Run and built civilian-style Jeeps, Henry J sedans, and C-119 cargo planes until going under in 1953. Willow Run ran two nine hour shifts. Willow Run Airport was built as part of the bomber plant. Some 12,000 women worked at the Willow Run bomber Consolidated had built each wing with its own temporary jig to hold the structure in place. The Willow Run Plant had many initial startup problems, due primarily to the fact that Ford employees were used to automobile mass production and found it difficult to adapt these techniques to aircraft . Workers at the Willow Run Bomber Plant take lunch on the fuselage, February 8, 1943. Part of the airport complex operated at various times as a research facility affiliated with the University of Michigan, and as a secondary United States Air Force Installation. It appears that Camp Willow Run shut down after the 1941 season with the coming of the bomber plant, many of the boys went to work at the Willow Run village industry plant, and others moved on to the apprentice and trade school. The factory was nearly an hour's drive from Detroit, and the imposition of wartime gasoline and tire rationing had made the daily commute difficult. As he spoke, the country had fewer than 3,000 warplanes in its arsenal, most obsolete. Blacks and other minorities were welcomed and so were immigrants. Enjoy the latest news from The Henry Ford, special offers, and more. For government officials, Ford offered significant advantages. A thousand-member tool design group worked around the clock seven days a week for almost a year to create three-dimensional schematics of the planes 30,000 separate components, generating five million square feet of blueprints in the process. The U.S. government contributed $200 million to the project.Originally 975 acres of farmland owned by Henry Ford, the site was developed by the Ford Motor Company into The twin-finned, high-winged B-24 with its dual bomb bays and tricycle landing gear debuted in 1939 as a repurposed land model of Consolidateds bulky flying boats. The heavies of choice were the B-17 Flying Fortress from Boeing Airplane Co. and the B-24 Liberator from Consolidated Aircraft. Now signifying "the arsenal of democracy", at the outset Ford's Willow Run Bomber Plant was nearly a failure. Ford production chief Charles Sorensen, driving force behind the B-24 program, possessed a crusaders faith and fervor in the primacy and benefits of mass production, and had the bona fides to back it up. Between them, there was a shelter for more than 15,000 people, roughly the number of people living in Ypsilanti at the time. heavy aircraft. New housing, better roads and professional training alleviated Willow Runs employee retention dilemma, but didnt solve it. RACER Trust has been supportive of the campaign, even reconfiguring engineering and demolition plans to save cost for the museum. Still, aviation industry leaders scoffed when the War Department chose Ford Motor Co. to mass-produce Liberators. With so many young men drafted into the armed forces, Willow Run's workforce was unusually diverse for its time: African Americans, whites, older people, younger men unable to serve in the military, and -- most notably -- women. Dies and machine tools were tossed out and redesigned, wasting precious time and millions of dollars. Ultimately, more than seven million square feet of floor space were completed for B-24 production at Willow Run. Sorensen was shocked. Most controversial was Ford's decision to replace soft metal dies -- thought to be gentler on aluminum airplane components -- with hard steel dies. The first two extensions were to October 1, 2013, and then to November 1, 2013. The first Ford-built Liberator rolled off the Willow Run line in September 1942; the first series of Willow Run Liberators was the B-24E. The plant was originally designed to be able to continue to operate if parts of it were ever bombedwhich resulted in dedicated water, compressed air and gas lines to different areas of the building.". Sixty-seven feet long, the B-24 had 450,000 parts and 360,000 rivets in 550 sizes, and it weighed 18 tons. Unlike menacing B-24 Liberators that took off from the same spot, these silent vehicles are on a mission to save lives and prevent destruction. Ford Motor would not only build the bombers, it would supply the airfield as well; the farm at Willow Run was an ideal location for the airfield's runways, being under the personal ownership of Henry Ford (thus solving any land acquisition problem) and sited between the main roads and rail lines connecting Detroit with Ann Arbor and points to the west. This young employee at the giant Willow Run plant uses her tiny flashlight to discover any internal defects in the tubing. May 2023 WRBP Meeting -. Work Experience of Willow Run Workers 1075 - Jstor Willow Run Bomber Plant, By Request in the Benson Ford Research Center. One pundit referred to it as a sprawling mass of industrial ambition. Folklore has it that Henry Ford decreed that the eastern perimeter of the windowless, L-shaped edifice not spill over into Wayne County, home to Detroit and all those rascally Democrats and union organizers. [36][38], Once production began, it became difficult to introduce changes dictated by field experience in the various overseas theaters onto the production line in a timely fashion. In on-site classrooms, newly hired workers sat through orientation lectures on the aircraft industry in general, the B-24's specific importance to the war, and the dire consequences should the Allies lose the fight. Willow Run, also known as Air Force Plant 31, was a manufacturing complex in Michigan, United States, located between Ypsilanti Township and Belleville, built by the Ford Motor Company to manufacture aircraft, especially the B-24 Liberator heavy bomber. In 1972, the University spun off WRL into the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan, which eventually left Willow Run for offices in Ann Arbor. How Detroit Factories Retooled During WWII to Defeat Hitler - History Willow Run - B-24 Brief history | Chevy Tri Five Forum Ford created a permanent jig into which wings could be moved in and out by overhead crane. Despite how smoothly the plant ran, putting out a bomber an hour still wasn't an easy feat. Willow Run Lodge, Housing for Willow Run Bomber Plant Workers, 1945 [44], By the time General Motors entered bankruptcy in 2009, manufacturing and assembly operations at Willow Run had dwindled to almost nothing; the GM Powertrain plant closed in December 2010 and the complex passed into the control of the RACER Trust, which is charged with cleaning up, positioning for redevelopment and ultimately, selling properties of the former General Motors.[7]. Adjacent to the factory complex, Ford constructed a 1,484-acre airport with six runways and three aircraft hangars. Thought to be overly ambitious in its scope, the plant hoped to boost bomber production from one aircraft per day to one plane per hour. Every American automaker turned its workforce and facilities to military production during World War II. The worksite Sorensen chose was a 1,875-acre Ford-owned tract that had been a farm camp for boys whose fathers were killed or disabled in World War I. Kahn had designed the Rouge and hundreds of other manufacturing facilities over a long and storied career. [46] The campaign attracted national, and even international, attention from media outlets that include many major news dailies in the US as well as National Public Radio, The History Channel magazine, National Geographic TV, The Guardian and the Daily Mail, the latter two of the UK. They were producing a custom-made plane put together as a tailor would cut and fit a suit of clothes. Ground-water supplies of the Ypsilanti area, Michigan Construction on the Bomber Plant began in March, 1941. They lived in tents, with a mess hall and a chapel on-site, and sold their produce from a roadside stand built by Ford.
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