With the weight reduction and more powerful engines, it also had a much longer range than earlier models. The resulting housing complexes were built in several different groups. Equities Group Holdings offered to buy the former Powertrain plant from the RACER Trust. 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. Not given to understatement, he proclaimed that the one-level superstructure would be the most enormous room in the history of man.. Some 12,000 women worked at the Willow Run bomber plant, each paid the same 85 cents an . move the yankee air museum into . Efforts to desegregate Willow Run Lodge and Village and build additional integrated housing were rebuffed by the Detroit Housing Commission and the National Housing Agency,[25] so noted African-American architect Hilyard Robinson was contracted to design an 80-unit community. Blacks and other minorities were welcomed and so were immigrants. [21][22], In February 1943, the first dormitory (Willow Run Lodge) opened, consisted of fifteen buildings containing 1,900 rooms, some single- and others double-occupancy, with room for 3,000 people. During this reduction, there was rumor that Ford would repurchase the plant from the government . 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. most enormous room in the history of man.. The water is treated in a modern treatment plant completed in 1939. He may have been right. Please click here to continue without javascript.. Increase Assembly Productivity With Cobot Automation, Manufacturing Cost Policy Deployment (MCPD) Profitability Scenarios: Systematic and Systemic Improvement of Manufacturing Costs, How Lean Helped GEs Turbine Factory Find Its Mojo, 2018 Assembly Plant of the Year: Ford Shifts Flexible Assembly Into High Gear. Most controversial was Ford's decision to replace soft metal dies -- thought to be gentler on aluminum airplane components -- with hard steel dies. Use this Artifact Card to share this great find with others. Remote assembly proved problematic, however, and by October 1941 Ford received permission to produce complete Liberators. 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. Perhaps, when peace returned, customers would remember Ford's achievement when it came time to shop for a new car. sniffed Dutch Kindelberger, president of North American Aviation. 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. New housing, better roads and professional training alleviated Willow Runs employee retention dilemma, but didnt solve it. Established aircraft manufacturers, used to a much slower rate, considered the claim preposterous. Although the Ford Trimotor had been a success in the 1920s, the company had since shied away from aviation, and initially, Ford was assigned to provide B-24 components with final assembly performed by Consolidated at its Fort Worth plant, or by fellow licensee Douglas Aircraft at its Tulsa, Oklahoma, plant. Employees at Willow Run celebrated the completion of their 6,000th airplane in September 1944. The plant's kitchen prepared nearly 10,000 rolls each day. Many fled after their first day, traumatized by the smell, constant clanging and motion of machinery, and overpowering size of the place. Construction began April 18, 1941. Cafeterias provided meals to administrative workers in the plant's offices. That April, employees in two nine-hour shifts, working six days a week, produced 453 airplanes in 468 hours -- a production rate equal to one finished B-24 Liberator every 63 minutes. The Willow Run plant was formally dedicated on October 22, 1941, in a ceremony attended by Major Jimmy Doolittle of the U.S. Army Air Forces. By the end of the war, Ford had pushed 8,865 B-24 heavy bombers out the Willow Run doors for the Army . She was part of that migration, part of the 40,000 employees at the Ford-run Willow Run B-24 bomber plant and part of the great Arsenal of Democracy that Detroit and the Southeastern Michigan region became, cranking out airplanes, tanks, trucks, and weapons. They were producing a custom-made plane put together as a tailor would cut and fit a suit of clothes. The skilled women who accomplished this work -- at Willow Run and elsewhere -- inspired the symbolic "Rosie the Riveter" character. Four engines powered the aircraft, and together its two bomb bays could carry up to 8,000 pounds of explosives. The remaining four hours were used to restock parts and change tooling. Engineering Photographic Department, United States, Michigan, Charter Township of Ypsilanti, Ford Motor Company. [3][41], During June 1944, the Army determined that the San Diego and Willow Run plants would be capable of meeting all future requirements for Liberator production. Willow Run's problems came under a microscope in April 1942 and again in February 1943, when Senator Harry S. Truman visited the plant. At peak production, the plant had a bomber come off the assembly line every 55 minutes, and the continued boost of one bomber produced a day was one bomber finished a day. * Carr, Lowell J., and Stermer, James Edison. The bomber plant adjacent to the airport produced the famed World War II bombers in a plant built by Henry Ford. Riveting was an essential craft at Willow Run. Ford recruited workers throughout the Midwest and South. "C-SPAN Cities Tour - Ann Arbor: Willow Run Bomber Plant", GM Powertrain plant and engineering center, Environmental Research Institute of Michigan, "Willow Run and the Arsenal of Democracy", "Willow Run Bomber Plant, Beginning Construction, 1940", "How Ford's Willow Run Assembly Plant Helped Win World War II", "Former GM Willow Run plant attracts $9 million offer from redevelopers", "Former GM Willow Run plant may be demolished", "Willow Run | Detroit Historical Society", "Do you have any information on Camp Legion and Camp Willow Run? the end of the assembly line where 8700 b-24s rolled out. The story of Willow run and the production miracle that produced as many as 25 B-24 bombers every day. For those unable to endure a long commute, the federal government constructed housing on nearby farmland purchased from Henry Ford. The building is currently being used to house and protect of the Museum's large aircraft . Quirk Farms was purchased by automobile pioneer Henry Ford in 1931. Their shopping list included 12,000 of these aerial battleships to attack Germanys heartland, hammering military installations, bridges, factories, rail yards, fuel storage tanks and communications centers. You cant expect a blacksmith to make a watch overnight, sniffed Dutch Kindelberger, president of North American Aviation. Boyshad time for recreation as well as work, each camp had a baseball diamond and the boys participated in a softball league, there was also volleyball and handball, movies were shown, and each camp also hosted harvest dances, inviting nearby high school students to join. [26] The housing complex remained in use until 2016 as public housing when it was demolished and rebuilt with new modern units. It also required the installation of two turntables to turn airplane fuselages 90 degrees near the end of the assembly line. Production for the B-24H at Willow Run was 1,780. 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. The airfield, owned by the Wayne County Airport Authority since 2004, continues to operate as the Willow Run Airport and is primarily used for cargo and general aviation flights. 1, Specialty Press. Ford would eventually sell its land to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation's Defense Plant Corporation in July 1944, shortly after the Ford farms were transferred to the company's ownership. Kaiser-Frazer produced some 739,000 cars at Willow Run between 1947 and 1953, when the company acquired Willys-Overland and moved all operations to the Willys factory in Toledo, Ohio. [40], The B-24E was the first variant of the B-24 that underwent primary manufacture by Ford at Willow Run. Skeptics dismissed mass production of a plane this enormous and advanced as a carmakers fantasy that would crash and burn when repeated design changes disrupted assembly lines and junked expensive tooling. The errant flush caused Lewis grief as he tried to find the source of the sound. It was the company that perfected the moving assembly line in the 1910s and, as a privately owned firm, it could move faster than publicly traded corporations. Despite intensive design efforts led by Ford production executive Charles E. Sorensen,[30] the opening of the plant still saw some mismanagement and bungling, and quality was uneven for some time. ", 1960 Chevrolet Corvair Sales Brochure, "The Prestige Car in Its Class". Today "Rosie" remains a feminist icon and a powerful reminder of women's contributions to the American economy. For government officials, Ford offered significant advantages. From the Collections of The Henry Ford. In 1968, General Motors began reorganizing its body and assembly operations into the GM Assembly Division (GMAD). for half of all B-24s assembled that year. [55] By mid-2014, the majority of the facility had been demolished and cleared. Sorensen stayed up all night formulating a B-24 assembly process on the backs of Coronado Hotel placemats. Changeovers required onerous delays and costly retooling. 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. Automatic flushing toilets in numerous bathrooms throughout the building didn't stop. Every American automaker turned its workforce and facilities to military production during World War II. the yankee air museum into it and show people what the history . 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.". This was largely because of Henry Ford. It sat 35 miles west of Detroit, at a site without existing highway or streetcar connections. After nearly 60 years at the site, GM ended its Willow Run operations in 2010. The B-24H differed from earlier B-24s by having a second turret placed in the nose of the aircraft to increase defensive firepower. Company Description: Pegatron offers a wide range of electronics products in computing, communications and consumer electronics segment, including notebook PCs, desktop PCs, motherboards, cable modems, smartphones, set-top boxes, and automotive electronics, among others. Their work guided custom designs of 1,600 machine tools and 11,000 fixtures, some 60 feet tall, that would stamp, mill, drill, broach and grind parts to thousandths-of-an-inch tolerances, each with repeatable precision. Crew size was up to ten, and range was up to 3,000 miles. All true, but he didnt mention the hard steel dies he authorized, the same types used to slam auto parts into shape, damaged and defaced the softer aluminum, a metal comprising 85 percent of B-24 content. The automaker proudly promoted its B-24 efforts in magazine advertisements. 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. Rivet gun operator Rosemary Will from Pulaski County, KY, appeared in a Ford promotional film, personifying thousands of women in the nations defense industry, collectively known as Rosie the Riveter. [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. [3], Upon the introduction of the B-24J, all three of the Liberator manufacturing plants converted to the production of this version. Dies and machine tools were tossed out and redesigned, wasting precious time and millions of dollars. 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. "It was a like a town of its own," said Rancour, 88 . Women and men were paid the same rate for the same work. The plant at Willow Run was also beset with labor difficulties, high absentee rates, and rapid employee turnover. South Lyon, Mich., resident Emma Rancour, who got a job at the Willow Run bomber plant at age 19 in 1943, was in awe of the plant's sheer size. The 60-year-old production czar viewed mass production of B-24s as the crowning achievement of his career. [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. By the mid-1920s, a local family operating as Quirk Farms had bought the land in Van Buren Township that became the airport. Visit our updated, This website requires certain cookies to work and uses other cookies to help you have the best experience. Sorensen reviewed his concept at breakfast with Edsel, who responded enthusiastically to its vision and boldness and initialed it on the spot, as did Henry II and Benson, his two sons accompanying him on the trip. Manufacturing costs were slashed as man-hours per plane plummeted. But when we send the 24's out, most of them don't. [1] Construction of the Willow Run Bomber Plant began in 1940[2] and was completed in 1942. The metal entry doors were also fashioned with magnets to effectively keep the door shut. 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]. The Air Force dictated more performance and safety upgrades for B-24s than any other American warplane. The Willow Run airport was to produce the B-24 bomber to support the Allied war effort. Production steadily increased, reaching the magical plane-per-hour pinnacle in mid-1944 while accounting for half of all B-24s assembled that year. GM used the building to store files until an undetermined time, where it was sold to the Cherry Hill Baptist Church. Simply moving workers to and from the plant was a major logistical challenge. The others, completed in the 1930s, were located in Dearborn, Michigan (site of the Fords' Fair Lane estate); Sudbury, Massachusetts; two in Richmond Hill, Georgia (the Fords' winter home); Macon, Michigan; and Willow Run. Considerable water was furnished to the Willow Run bomber plant from the Ypsilanti public-supply system during the period from August 1941 through March 1943. Enjoy the latest news from The Henry Ford, special offers, and more. Every available room within miles was rented, including those with eight-hour shifts called hot beds. you can see the two big hangar doors behind me. Working with a scale model, they shifted equipment and work stations for maximum efficiency. Meanwhile, Ford was savaged in the Detroit press because it took too long. The 1st CC was responsible for completing the organization and equipment of tactical and combat bombardment squadrons prior to their deployment to the overseas combat theaters. The war's focus was shifting from Europe to Japan, where more-advanced B-29 bombers were needed. 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. The massive plant turned out 8,645 Liberators vs. 9,808 manufactured by four factories of Consolidated, Douglas Aircraft, and North American Aviation. The first of these apartments were ready for occupancy in August 1943. A ghostly, decaying reminder of the industrial and military history echoing within its cavernous expanse, Willow Run was demolished in 2014. In response, the federal government built Willow Run Lodge, an on-site dormitory complex that could accommodate 3,000 single women and men; and Willow Run Village, with 2,500 family housing units. The tri-level interchange seen here provided direct access to the factory for traffic traveling to and from the expressway. The center includes a proving ground where smart cars react instantly to all manner of potentially dangerous and problematic situations. The company resumed automobile production within a week. Willow Run ran two nine hour shifts. Architect Albert Kahn boasted that the Willow Run plant would be the The Yankee Air Museum was able to gain control of approximately 144,900 square feet of the plant,[54] and plans to develop a permanent home for the museum. You cant expect a blacksmith to make a watch overnight, Search our website to find what youre looking for. Click the drop-down menu below and make your selection. Inspection of more than a thousand separate tubing pieces composing the fuel, hydraulic, de-icing and other systems in a bomber is a highly important job. No two were alike.. Buses were among the only practical solutions. The Willow Run bomber plant, the world's largest factory and one of America's most-publicized plants, is on the outskirts of Ypsilanti, . When Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945, only 7,400 employees remained on the Willow Run payroll. For Our Members-. Visit our updated. All Rights Reserved BNP Media. The plant initially built components. 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. Some 2,500 were parked in an Arizona desert awaiting the day when their aluminum skin and innards would be smelted into ingots for production of coffee percolators, toasters, pots and pans, and myriad other consumer and industrial products to satisfy the ravenous maw of Americas peacetime economy. It was an historic but ephemeral achievement. When . FDRs goal exceeded the total of all planes built in the U.S. since the Wright brothers 1903 flight at Kitty Hawk, NC, and he challenged the aviation industry to match that number in succeeding years. 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. Sixty-seven feet long, the B-24 had 450,000 parts and 360,000 rivets in 550 sizes, and it weighed 18 tons. Labor shortages made women essential to war industries, and the government actively recruited them to join the workforce. those hangar doors represent the end of the plant, the end of the assembly line where 8700 b-24s rolled out. Sorensen was shocked. This covered 90 parcels of land[20] totaling 2,641 acres (1,069ha). Pilots, co-pilots, navigators and crew chiefs were assigned as a crew for each aircraft, sleeping on 1,300 cots as they waited for the B-24s to roll off the assembly line. . Women represented approximately one third of the workers at Ford Motor Company's Willow Run plant during World War II. After nearly a year of work, the cost to keep the plant shuttered and standing is $7 million annually. Lewis, charged with dismantling the facility, has found it's taken more detective work than he thought to shut the plant down. They lived in tents, with a mess hall and a chapel on-site, and sold their produce from a roadside stand built by Ford. An unknown number dwelt in the memories of plant foremen. As the US Air Force struggled to expand its airlift capacity during the Korean War, Kaiser-Frazer built C-119 Flying Boxcar cargo planes at Willow Run under license from Fairchild Aircraft, producing an estimated 88 C-119s between 1951 and 1953. Ultimately, more than seven million square feet of floor space were completed for B-24 production at Willow Run.