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. Construction on the Willow Run Bomber Plant began that spring and it soon became the largest factory under one roof in the world. Equities Group Holdings offered to buy the former Powertrain plant from the RACER Trust. Fifty variants of the aircraft were dispatched to allies throughout the world from these sites. Cafeterias provided meals to administrative workers in the plant's offices. we intend to save that. There was no sequence or orderly flow of materials, no sense of forward motion, no reliance on machined parts, he said. The Willow Run airport was to produce the B-24 bomber to support the Allied war effort. 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. Mass production of B-24s must rely on continuous assembly flow, or they couldnt be built at all. While this was unfolding, Sorensen retained renowned industrial architect Albert Kahn to design a factory that would adapt Fords automotive assembly techniques to mass production of a giant aircraft. The plant held the distinction of being the world's largest enclosed "room." . In some places, the bulbs had been simply painted over and left in their sockets as GM quickly re-tooled assembly lines. 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. The center includes a proving ground where smart cars react instantly to all manner of potentially dangerous and problematic situations. Still, aviation industry leaders scoffed when the War Department chose Ford Motor Co. to mass-produce Liberators. Ford built 6,972 of the 18,482 total B-24s and produced kits for 1,893 more to be assembled by the other manufacturers. President Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to American industrys war production efforts as the Arsenal of Democracy. Willow Run perfectly symbolized Roosevelts memorable phrase. for half of all B-24s assembled that year. Lloyd, Alwyn T. (1993), Liberator: America's Global Bomber, Pictorial Histories Publishing Co, Inc. O'Leary, Michael, (2003), Consolidated B-24 Liberator (Osprey Production Line to Frontline 4), Osprey Publishing, Weber, Austin. It still has the original pews and other furnishings; the only other set in active use belongs to the Greenfield Village chapel.[13]. Before the first employee was hired, the factory stood as a national symbol of Americas fearsome production prowess. Manufacturing costs were slashed as man-hours per plane plummeted. We . [3][4], By autumn 1943, the top leadership role at Willow Run had passed from Charles Sorensen to Mead L. [3][4] The Birmingham Air Depot's primary mission was modifying Liberators from Willow Run. Warren Avis, a decorated B-24 pilot in the 376th Bombardment Group, opened the nations first airport rental car service in the terminal and grew it into Avis Rent A Car Systems. The average daily pumpage in million gallons was about 1.68 in 1942, 1.70 in 1943, and 1.66 in 1944. Sociologist and professor Lowell Juilliard Carr and James Edson Stermer of the University of Michigan studied the sociological conditions at Willow Run arising from the wartime surge in the worker population in their book of 1952. The B-24H differed from earlier B-24s by having a second turret placed in the nose of the aircraft to increase defensive firepower. As the problems continued into 1943, critics took to calling the plant "Will it 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. 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. Search our website to find what youre looking for. Those who stayed hunkered down in tarpaper shacks, tents, garages, and beat-up trailers and jalopies. During this reduction, there was rumor that Ford would repurchase the plant from the government . Among the 37 workers surveyed, nearly 10 percent were Negroes.4 Men as young as 19 and as old as 71 were employed; the age range for . The plant at Willow Run was also beset with labor difficulties, high absentee rates, and rapid employee turnover. The main building went up in sections, with workers using plywood partitions to seal off finished portions from those still under construction. That was the schedule six days a week. The largest of these hangars could house 20 B-24s at once, and included a control tower, a cafe, and a hotel. 8,685 B-24's were built in Willow Run bomber plant (Story of Willow Run, p.70). Thirty-eight tons of structural steel, five million bricks, and six months later, the $65-million colossus began churning out parts while equipment was still being installed and roof and walls remained unfinished. the yankee air museum into it and show people what the history . The aircraft manufacturer Douglas Aircraft, and the B-24's designer, Consolidated Aircraft, assembled the finished airplane. In a strategic campaign, the airplanes and their crews attacked factories, railroads, harbors and -- as the war progressed -- cities in Germany, Italy and occupied France. Baseball games at the on-site recreation field took away some of the strain during off-duty hours. 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. Eighty years ago this month, workers began clearing land near a small creek in Ypsilanti Township to make way for the largest factory in the world, the Willow Run Bomber Plant. [3][4] Even then it would take nearly a year before finished Liberators left the factory. The influx of workers for the massive war . 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. Between them, there was a shelter for more than 15,000 people, roughly the number of people living in Ypsilanti at the time. Deemed unfit for combat, they were assigned to training bases, reconnaissance patrols and transport duties. Riveting was an essential craft at Willow Run. Expectations were crushed and the sarcastic appellation Willit Run gained wide circulation. Together they produced more of the slab-sided behemoths than any American warplane ever. The main building's "L" shape prevented its crossing into neighboring Wayne County. Ford now planned to build 650 planes each month -- one every 45 minutes. The Fisher Body division also operated at Willow Run Assembly until its operations were assumed by the GM Assembly Division in the 1970s. A 175,000-square-foot section, where B-24s were gassed up and towed out the door, was spared for the future home of the National Museum of Aviation and Technology. He may have been right. They lived in tents, with a mess hall and a chapel on-site, and sold their produce from a roadside stand built by Ford. During a January 1941 inspection tour of the Consolidated San Diego plant with Edsel Ford, gentlemanly 45-year-old company president and son of cantankerous autocrat Henry Ford, Sorensen belittled the operations deliberate, labor-intensive procedures. 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. 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. Women represented approximately one third of the workers at Ford Motor Company's Willow Run plant during World War II. By visiting this website, certain cookies have already been set, which you may delete and block. Copyright 2023. The Boeing B-29 Superfortress was taking over the long-range bombing role in the Pacific Theater and no new B-24 units were programmed for deployment in the other combat theaters of Europe, the Mediterranean or in the CBI. Willow Run Airport became a Midwest destination for passenger airlines until the late 1950s. 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. But just when that milestone seemed possible, the government drastically cut its order for B-24s. For webinar sponsorship information, visit www.bnpevents.com/webinars or email webinars@bnpmedia.com. The valves that would shut the water off to different parts of the plant have been hidden in the building's entrails. The remaining four hours were used to restock parts and change tooling. According to the Benson Ford Research Center, the camp offered: "farm training, self-reliance, management, and salesmanshipthe boys governed themselves, appointing a foreman and field foreman from their own ranks. 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. Every American automaker turned its workforce and facilities to military production during World War II. Willow Run ran two nine hour shifts. By visiting this website, certain cookies have already been set, which you may delete and block. 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. The main building would be more than a mile long with dual, parallel assembly lines. 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. [1] Construction of the Willow Run Bomber Plant began in 1940 [2] and was completed in 1942. Overhead cranes would hoist completed sections onto the final assembly line for joining into a finished aircraft, the same way cars were put together, but on a grand scale in a massive new plant. In only one month, Ford had hired 2,900 workers but had lost 3,100. Willow Run Airport was built as part of the bomber plant. Modifications resulted from lessons learned in fighting fronts and from the need to modify the plane for its multiple roles. RACER Trust has been supportive of the campaign, even reconfiguring engineering and demolition plans to save cost for the museum. "[12], Henry and Clara Bryant Ford dedicated a series of churches, the chapels of Martha and Mary as a perpetual tribute to their mothers, Mary Ford and Martha Bryant. Consequently, newly constructed Liberators needed modifications for the specific geographic areas they were to be flown in combat. On November 3, 1943, employees celebrated as Willow Run turned out its 1,000th finished B-24 bomber. The residents of the Willow Run Camp planted, tended, and harvested field crops and collected maple syrup, selling their products at the farm market on the property. Managing the utilities and slowly shutting them off has been Lewis' biggest challenge, as the building is hard-pressed to give up its secrets. Each completed B-24 contained more than 300,000 rivets in more than 500 sizes. Although Ford had an option to purchase the plant once it was no longer needed for war production, the company declined to exercise it, and ended its association with Willow Run. [7] Indeed, the majority of the plant was demolished in late 2013 and early 2014. Ford recruited workers throughout the Midwest and South. When . [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]. Working with a scale model, they shifted equipment and work stations for maximum efficiency. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. It sat 35 miles west of Detroit, at a site without existing highway or streetcar connections. [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. Ford Motor Company president Edsel Ford passed away on May 26, 1943. At peak production, B-24s sheathed in 4,200 square feet of bonded aluminum rolled out the door every hour. Construction on the Bomber Plant began in March, 1941. Quirk Farms was purchased by automobile pioneer Henry Ford in 1931. But when we send the 24's out, most of them don't. The chosen site was farmland owned by Henry Ford on the eastern edge of Michigan's Washtenaw County, near a creek called Willow Run. High school graduates worked the line next to 70-year-olds. Feeding the thousands of workers at Willow Run was no small task. In 2009, General Motors announced that it would shut down all operations at the GM Powertrain plant and engineering center in the coming year.[6]. Up to 8,000 students per week completed training and reported for work. 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. Sorensen protested that Willow Run could not function under these strictures. Rugged and versatile, Liberators served in every theater of the war with 15 Allied air forces, stalking and destroying German U-boats in Atlantic shipping lanes, flying The Hump from India over the Himalayas to bring critical fuel and supplies to the besieged Chinese army, and dropping special agents into France and the Low Countries to organize sabotage operations against Nazi occupiers. "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? At last Willow Run hit its stride in 1944. All Rights Reserved BNP Media. [26] The housing complex remained in use until 2016 as public housing when it was demolished and rebuilt with new modern units. most enormous room in the history of man.. Well build the whole plane or nothing, Sorensen barked, accompanied by the audacious claim that Ford would assemble new B-24s every hour. Even with people driving 100 miles or renting every spare room between Ann Arbor and Grosse Pointe, the sheer size of Willow Run led inevitably to a housing shortage. The two sides reached an accommodation during the first quarter of 1943. Ford's production methods depended on a "fixed" design -- each design modification required expensive and time-consuming updates to the assembly line. Completed planes flew off to field modification centers for fixes, upgrades and customizing. New housing, better roads and professional training alleviated Willow Runs employee retention dilemma, but didnt solve it. The Fords built seven of these: The first at Greenfield Village, Michigan, was completed in 1929. [3][4] Willow Run's Liberator assembly line ran until May 1945, building almost half of all the Liberators produced. approximately 4 out of every 10 employees were women. 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. Women and men were paid the same rate for the same work. The War Department pitched in with funds for the Detroit Industrial Expressway, linking the city to the plant. Mr. Ford's steadfast leadership helped the company to make good on its promise. The Willow Run bomber plant made aviation, industrial and social historyalong with new B-24s by the hour. The automaker had . The plant closed June 28, ending the Liberators brief but epic run, along with Fords presence in the aircraft industry. [41], The B-24L was the first product of the new, downsized Liberator production pool. 34,533 employees at peak; The standard workweek for all hourly employees was 54 hours, with time-and-a-half pay for each hour over 40. Following the success of the Save the Bomber Plant campaign, the Museum purchased a portion of the Willow Run Bomber Plant that produced B-24 Liberators during World War Two. Automatic flushing toilets in numerous bathrooms throughout the building didn't stop. Architect Albert Kahn boasted that the Willow Run plant would be the Willow Run workers built 1,893 kits over the course of the war. Bricker.[33]. Access the "best of" at The Henry Ford and other great visit planning resources. This made the farmers dislike the plant and its employees because the farmers viewed Willow Run and its employees as attempting to change the established community. Employee training was a constant process at Willow Run. The B-24J incorporated a hydraulically driven tail turret and other defensive armament modifications in the nose of the aircraft. Winston Churchill called his specially outfitted B-24 the Commando. Sorensen could not guarantee that precision parts built by Ford would fit in airplanes built by Consolidated under those conditions. The iconic Rosie the Riveter may seem to be simply a fiction from the past but she has a name - and an important history. Kaiser also built two C-123 Provider airframes at Willow Run, which were scrapped before delivery, as a procurement scandal involving the company put an end to any chance for future Air Force contracts. 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. The Yankee Air Museum acquired a portion of the plant, for preservation and exhibit purposes, in 2013. They were producing a custom-made plane put together as a tailor would cut and fit a suit of clothes. 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. For Our Members-. By the mid-1920s, a local family operating as Quirk Farms had bought the land in Van Buren Township that became the airport. Adjacent to the factory complex, Ford constructed a 1,484-acre airport with six runways and three aircraft hangars. This was largely because of Henry Ford. Apart from a new tail turret, the B-24M differed little from the B-24L. For this reason, a series of Air Technical Service Command modification centers were established for the incorporation of these required theater changes into new Liberators following their manufacture and assignments. This young employee at the giant Willow Run plant uses her tiny flashlight to discover any internal defects in the tubing. 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. 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. Ultimately, more than seven million square feet of floor space were completed for B-24 production at Willow Run. Years later, that stretch would become a section of I-94. AskUs", "Oral History Interview with John W. Snyder", "Ford May Convert Willow Run Into Huge Tractor Plant", "History of the original Willow Run Village", "They may save our honor, our hopesand our necks", AFHRA Document 00155775 1 Concentration Command History, AFHRA Document 00150138 AAFTC Technical Training Command, "Tucson International Airport's Historic Hangars", "History of the Willow Run Plant, Part 3", "Preservation group gets extension to raise money for historic Willow Run factory", "Willow Run bomber plant preservationists get more time to reach goal", "Yankee Air Museum signs deal for part of Willow Run Bomber Plant", "YPSILANTI TOWNSHIP: RACER Trust reaches demolition, development agreements for Willow Run plant", "Death of a factory: inside the Willow Run GM Powertrain plant for the last time", "Willow Run assembly plant demolition proceeding", "A Future NEW Home for the Yankee Air Museum", Detroit Edison Company Willis Avenue Station, Michigan Bell and Western Electric Warehouse, Piquette Avenue Industrial Historic District, Frederic M. Sibley Lumber Company Office Building, List of Registered Historic Places in Michigan, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Willow_Run&oldid=1134554587, Defunct aircraft manufacturers of the United States, Motor vehicle assembly plants in Michigan, United States home front during World War II, Michigan State Historic Sites in Washtenaw County, Michigan, Defunct manufacturing companies based in Michigan, Articles with dead external links from September 2020, Short description is different from Wikidata, Infobox mapframe without OSM relation ID on Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, military draft each month 8,200 workers drafted into military service, school the Aircraft Apprentice School had up to 8,000 students per week completed training and reported for work, dimensions More than 3,200 feet long and 1,279 feet across at its widest point, subassemblies parts production and subassemblies at almost 1,000 Ford factories and independent suppliers, This page was last edited on 19 January 2023, at 07:10. Labor shortages made women essential to war industries, and the government actively recruited them to join the workforce. At its peak, Willow Run employed more than 42,000 people. Workers at Willow Run built a staggering 8,685 B-24 bombers -- 6,792 complete planes and 1,893 knock-down kits -- by the time the last one was finished on June 28, 1945. Ford Motor Company built everything from jeeps to generators during World War II, but nothing else was on the scale of Willow Run. 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. No.2, Ziyou St., Tucheng Dist., New Taipei City 236, Taiwan +886-2-2268-3466 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. The ungainly aircraft flew faster (300 mph) than the sleeker B-17, carried heavier payloads (four tons of bombs, later increased to six tons), and had greater range (3,000 miles). That hulking plant was idled in the early 1990s, putting about 4,000 people out of work. A typical month saw as many workers quit as were hired, and 8,200 more were drafted into military service. After the war, these residences served students attending the nearby University of Michigan on the G.I. [50], Meanwhile, the remaining portion of the Willow Run property, which includes over 95% of the historic original bomber plant building, was optioned to Walbridge, Inc., for redevelopment as a connected car research and test facility. Of the 1,000 apartments in West Court, some had no bedrooms and were called "zero bedroom" apartments, and the rest had one bedroom. Perhaps, when peace returned, customers would remember Ford's achievement when it came time to shop for a new car.
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