[21], By the end of 1943 there were six different temporary projects in the vicinity of Willow Run: two dormitory projects, two trailer projects (one renting trailers, and another for privately owned trailers; each with community laundry, shower, and toilet facilities), and two projects with apartments for couples or families, West Court and the Village. Before the first employee was hired, the factory stood as a national symbol of Americas fearsome production prowess. 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. 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 . Another large dormitory project, containing 1,960 rooms and known as West Lodge, was also ready for tenants at that time. 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. That hulking plant was idled in the early 1990s, putting about 4,000 people out of work. plant, each paid the same 85 cents an hour as their After Kaiser left, General Motors leased and then purchased Willow Run. In only one month, Ford had hired 2,900 workers but had lost 3,100. 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. Employees Assembling Bomber at Willow Run Plant, March 1943, Employees Assembling Bomber at Willow Run Plant, March 1943 / back. It still has the original pews and other furnishings; the only other set in active use belongs to the Greenfield Village chapel.[13]. 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. 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. There were 24 lunch rooms located throughout the complex. . Ford officials looked for every efficiency they could find in B-24 production. 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. you can see the two big hangar doors behind me. Cafeterias provided meals to administrative workers in the plant's offices. As he spoke, the country had fewer than 3,000 warplanes in its arsenal, most obsolete. [40], The B-24E was the first variant of the B-24 that underwent primary manufacture by Ford at Willow Run. The Fords built seven of these: The first at Greenfield Village, Michigan, was completed in 1929. [3][41], Ford had switched over to the single-tailed B-24N in May 1945, but the end of the war in Europe in the same month brought a rapid end to Liberator production; the contract with Ford was officially terminated on 31 May 1945 and orders for 5168 unbuilt B-24N-FO bombers were cancelled as well. The factory prompted the creation of the Washtenaw County Health Department and was a key part of America's "arsenal of . Despite how smoothly the plant ran, putting out a bomber an hour still wasn't an easy feat. The plant at Willow Run was also beset with labor difficulties, high absentee rates, and rapid employee turnover. Ford proved that even the most complicated military machines could be built using the techniques it pioneered with the Model T. At war's end, Ford Motor Company chose not to exercise its option to buy the Willow Run plant. Modifications resulted from lessons learned in fighting fronts and from the need to modify the plane for its multiple roles. At its peak, Willow Run employed more than 15,000 women -- some 35 percent of its total staff. . The bugs were eventually worked out of the manufacturing processes, and by 1944, Ford was rolling a Liberator off the Willow Run production line every 63 minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In 2013, the Museum was able to purchase 144,000 square feet of the Plant. The remaining four hours were used to restock parts and change tooling. The B-17 had a six-year history of design, development, testing and limited production. Also constructed at this time was the Parkridge Community Center. Willow Run ran two nine-hour shifts. Out of sheer necessity, Willow Runs 42,500-member workforce became a model of diversity for future generations. A technological marvel for a new age of aerial warfare, the B-24 was now obsolete. The housing shortage Sorensen complained about arose from his choice of a sparsely populated rural setting 30 miles west of Detroits labor poolan island in Michigan mud, as one writer viewed it. 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. Baseball games at the on-site recreation field took away some of the strain during off-duty hours. This section was known as Willow Run Village. Dies and machine tools were tossed out and redesigned, wasting precious time and millions of dollars. 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. [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. Sorensen stayed up all night formulating a B-24 assembly process on the backs of Coronado Hotel placemats. Between June and December 1943, construction was completed on temporary "flat-top" buildings providing homes for 2,500 families. Paperwork was handled, necessary specific B-24 life support equipment was issued and some technical training for supporting the aircraft accomplished. Blacks and other minorities were welcomed and so were immigrants. 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. Sixty-seven feet long, the B-24 had 450,000 parts and 360,000 rivets in 550 sizes, and it weighed 18 tons. Frank B. Woodford, 'Willow Run Poses Problems,' New York Times, 19 April 1942, E10; Glenn H. Cummings, 'Biggest War Plant,' Wall Street Journal, 26 May 1942, 1; 'Ford Stand Stirs War Housing Issue,' New York Times, 28 June 1942, 25; Agnes E. Meyer, 'Detroit's Willow Run Area Is A Housing Nightmare ,' A typical month saw as many workers quit as were hired, and 8,200 more were drafted into military service. 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. The final B-24 bomber was produced at Willow Run plant on June 28, 1945. 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.". for half of all B-24s assembled that year. Instead, upstart automaker Kaiser-Frazer Corporation moved into the factory. 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. However, in October 1941, Ford received permission from Consolidated and the Army to assemble complete Liberators on its own at its new Willow Run facility. The automaker proudly promoted its B-24 efforts in magazine advertisements. Handcrafted versions were pressed into service in England, but the San Diego company lacked resources and methods for high-volume production of the largest, most complex airplane ever designed. On the other side of the airport from the assembly plant were a group of World War II hangars, which were sold to the University of Michigan in 1946. Established aircraft manufacturers, used to a much slower rate, considered the claim preposterous. 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. 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 heavies of choice were the B-17 Flying Fortress from Boeing Airplane Co. and the B-24 Liberator from Consolidated Aircraft. By mid-1944, the Willow Run assembly plant 8,685 B-24's were built in Willow Run bomber plant (Story of Willow Run, p.70). A ghostly, decaying reminder of the industrial and military history echoing within its cavernous expanse, Willow Run was demolished in 2014. Watch on. Skeptics scoffed at the idea that Ford Motor Co. could mass-produce Truman was unimpressed -- he didn't want excuses, he wanted finished bombers. President Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to American industrys war production efforts as the Arsenal of Democracy. Willow Run perfectly symbolized Roosevelts memorable phrase. 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. Paper (Fiber product) 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. The plant held the distinction of being the world's largest enclosed "room." After the war, Ford sold the chapel to Kaiser-Frazer, who in turn sold it to General Motors as part of the purchase of the Willow Run bomber plant. from 1959 to 1969. Numbers climbed steadily throughout the year. 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. 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 war's focus was shifting from Europe to Japan, where more-advanced B-29 bombers were needed. Since the 2010 closure of Willow Run Transmission, the factory complex has been managed by the RACER Trust, which controls the properties of the former General Motors. Do you support unions, and are they still relevant? 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. [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. Although the jumping of an automotive company into aircraft production posed these quality problems, it also brought remarkable production rates. The plant was the embodiment of America's "Arsenal of Democracy" -- the enormous manufacturing capacity so vital to the Allies' victory. generations. But, as 1943 arrived, problems got solved and Willow Run turned a corner. we intend to restore a piece of the building, about 175,000 square feet. By the end of the war, Ford had pushed 8,865 B-24 heavy bombers out the Willow Run doors for the Army . Ford built 37 planes in January, 70 in February, 96 in March, and 146 in April. 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. Here is his description of the visit and how he conceived the Willow Run bomber plant that eventually manufactured 8,800 of these aircraft. The B-24J incorporated a hydraulically driven tail turret and other defensive armament modifications in the nose of the aircraft. Enjoy the latest news from The Henry Ford, special offers, and more. Fifty variants of the aircraft were dispatched to allies throughout the world from these sites.