[17], Architect Albert Kahn designed the main structure of the Willow Run bomber plant, which had 3,500,000 square feet (330,000m2) of factory space, and an aircraft assembly line over a mile (1600m) long. Named "Lily's Pad",[53] the break spot was equipped with posters that catered to the male fantasy, an air conditioning unit, rope lights, a TV and a list of restaurant takeout phone numbers. Blacks and other minorities were welcomed and so were immigrants. No.2, Ziyou St., Tucheng Dist., New Taipei City 236, Taiwan +886-2-2268-3466 By closing this message or continuing to use our site, you agree to the use of cookies. Willow Run Airport became a Midwest destination for passenger airlines until the late 1950s. Not given to understatement, he proclaimed that the one-level superstructure would be the most enormous room in the history of man.. It's hard to imagine a factory that large churning out a complete heavy bomber every 55 minutes, but these workers accomplished exactly that. In 2013, the Museum was able to purchase 144,000 square feet of the Plant. In addition, Henry Ford refused on principle to hire women. 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. Truman was unimpressed -- he didn't want excuses, he wanted finished bombers. 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. Planes were assembled outdoors, exposed to a hot sun that distorted parts out of shape. Some 12,000 women worked at the Willow Run bomber plant, each paid the same 85 cents an . the end of the assembly line where 8700 b-24s rolled out. 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. Search our website to find what youre looking for. During that time, the Ford Motor Company produced almost half of the B-24s built--8,685 out of 19,256. 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. Of the seven chapels, this is the only one currently in use as a regular place of worship. The standard workweek for all hourly employees was 54 hours, with time-and-a-half pay for each hour over 40. [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. Before the first employee was hired, the factory stood as a national symbol of Americas fearsome production prowess. [13], The Willow Run chapel of Martha and Mary now stands a few miles from where it was originally constructed, on property that used to be owned by Henry Ford's Quirk Farms. 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. was producing one B-24 per houraccounting
[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. 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. Willow Run and its workers met their goal. 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. The remaining four hours were used to restock parts and change tooling. "It was a like a town of its own," said Rancour, 88 . 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 . 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. 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. In November 2016, RACER Trust sold Willow Run to an entity created by the State of Michigan, which leases the property to the American Center for Mobility (AMC).[9]. GMAD required 16 years to completely absorb Fisher Body's operations, and Fisher would manufacture bodies at Willow Run Assembly until the 1970s; vehicles would roll off the line there until 1992. Ford had no say in the matter; production chaos ensued. Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development :: ePublishing. Ford now planned to build 650 planes each month -- one every 45 minutes. Up to 8,000 students per week completed training and reported for work. 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. Every fluorescent light bulb in the plant must be taken out before the building can be torn down. With global headquarters located in the Neihu Science Park in Taipei City, LITEON Technology looks toward sustainable and profitable growth as it expanses business in the high-tech industry. 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. 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. Sorensen blamed delays on doing business with the government, treading through a maze of conflicting priorities and regulations, rancorous labor relations and wildcat strikes, housing shortages and erratic delivery of essential materials. Paper (Fiber product)
It also required the installation of two turntables to turn airplane fuselages 90 degrees near the end of the assembly line. Part of the tour led them to a hidden room within the facility: "His [Lewis] adventures in the plantalways accompanied by multiple flashlightshave lead him to amusing discoveries: a secret break room stashed in the middle of the plant. those hangar doors represent the end of the plant, the end of the assembly line where 8700 b-24s rolled out. most enormous room in the history of man.. 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 ,' The influx of workers for the massive war . There were seven known modification centers: the Birmingham Air Depot in Alabama; Consolidated's Fort Worth plant, the Oklahoma City Air Materiel Center at Tinker Field, the Tucson Modification Center at Tucson International Airport;[39] the Northwest Airlines Depot in Minneapolis; the, Martin-Omaha manufacturing plant, and the Hawaiian Air Depot at Hickam Field. male counterparts. [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. Construction began April 18, 1941. The copper wiring and electrical fixturesthe veins and arteries of the plantare the first to be stripped away. 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.". The remaining four hours were used to restock parts and change tooling. "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? Employee training was a constant process at Willow Run. Workers on the factory floor could purchase meals from lunch wagons that traveled the facility. '"[31], A 1943 committee authorized by Congress to examine problems at the plant issued a highly critical report; the Ford Motor Company had created a production line that too closely resembled an automobile assembly line "despite the warning of many experienced aircraftmen."[32]. The tri-level interchange seen here provided direct access to the factory for traffic traveling to and from the expressway. 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. Specialized employees -- riveters, for example -- received training in these classrooms as well. 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. 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. 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. [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. Despite how smoothly the plant ran, putting out a bomber an hour still wasn't an easy feat. That was the schedule six days a week. It was thought to be the largest factory under one roof anywhere in the world. Years later, that stretch would become a section of I-94. 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. Sorensen and his team carefully planned the new facility to the last detail. There were 24 lunch rooms located throughout the complex. Willow Run is an Albert Kahn-designed World War II bomber plant near Ypsilanti, Michigan. Construction on the Bomber Plant began in March, 1941. In some places, water cascades from the rafters of the buildingsending a shower on to the oily floor below. After the war, these residences served students attending the nearby University of Michigan on the G.I. 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. Every available room within miles was rented, including those with eight-hour shifts called hot beds. Numbers climbed steadily throughout the year. Willow Run workers built 1,893 kits over the course of the war. After nearly 60 years at the site, GM ended its Willow Run operations in 2010. The team developed the B-24's build sequence from these divisions. It seems like a production miracle that the people working at Willow Run bomber plant were able to produce the B-24 Liberator at such tremendous speed. [23] The flat-tops contained four, six, or eight apartments with one, two, or three bedrooms. 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. Apart from a new tail turret, the B-24M differed little from the B-24L. 20900 Oakwood Boulevard, Dearborn, MI 481245029, Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation Overview, Teacher's Choice @ Giant Screen Experience, Henry Austin Clark, Jr. Graduate Internship, Clark Travel-to-Collections Research Fellowship, Diversity and Inclusion Internship Program, Teacher's Choice @ Giant Screen Experience, Educator Professional Development Overview, 6000th Ford B-24 in Flight over Detroit, Michigan, September 13, 1944, B-24 Bomber in Flight, Willow Run Bomber Plant, 1944, Ford Rouge Plant Administration Building from the Ford Rotunda, Dearborn, Michigan, 1936, Henry Ford at Willow Run Bomber Plant Construction Site, 1941, Flow Chart for B-24 Production at the Willow Run Bomber Plant, 1944, Charles Sorensen and Others Viewing a Scale Model of the Willow Run Bomber Plant, July 1941, Interior of the Ford Willow Run Bomber Plant during Construction, 1941, Aerial View of the Ford Motor Company Willow Run Bomber Plant, September 1945, Workers Arriving and Departing by Bus at Willow Run Bomber Plant, 1942, Crowd at Dedication of Tri-Level Highway Overpass, Willow Run, Michigan, 1942, Willow Run Lodge, Housing for Willow Run Bomber Plant Workers, 1945, Employees in Classroom at the Willow Run Bomber Plant, 1942, B-24 Fuselage Assembly Line, Willow Run Bomber Plant, 1942, B-24 Bombers on Assembly Line at Ford Motor Company Willow Run Bomber Plant, January 1943, Senator Harry S. Truman and Ford Executive Charles Sorensen with B-24 Liberator at Willow Run Bomber Plant, 1942, B-24 Engine Assembly Line, Willow Run Bomber Plant, 1942, B-24 Bomber Wing Assembly, Ford Motor Company Willow Run Plant, 1944, Employees Assembling Bomber at Willow Run Plant, March 1943, Women Riveters at Willow Run Bomber Plant, Michigan, 1944, Employee Handling the Material Flow for the B-24 Bomber, Willow Run Bomber Plant, 1944, Chefs Preparing Food at Willow Run Bomber Plant Kitchen, 1942, Hangar Hospital, Willow Run Bomber Plant, 1942, Baseball Game at Willow Run Bomber Plant Recreation Field, September 1944, Comparing Cast and Welded Part with Pieced and Riveted Part to Improve Production, Willow Run Bomber Plant, 1944, B-24 Liberator Assembly Line at Ford Willow Run Bomber Plant, 1944, Portrait of Edsel Ford by Pirie MacDonald, 1934, B-24 Bomber Assemblies Being Loaded Into a Trailer, Willow Run Bomber Plant, circa 1943, 6,000th B-24 Bomber at Ford Motor Company Willow Run Plant, September 9, 1944, Henry Ford and President Franklin Roosevelt Touring the Willow Run Bomber Plant, 1942, Ford Institutional Advertisement on the B-24 Bomber, "Watch the Fords Go By! By Tim Trainor. 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. It was an attempt to reverse the trend toward ever-increasing weight of the Liberator as more and more armament, equipment, and armor had been added, with no corresponding increase in engine power. The B-24H differed from earlier B-24s by having a second turret placed in the nose of the aircraft to increase defensive firepower. Designed by Consolidated Aircraft of San Diego, California, the B-24 Liberator served in every branch of the armed forces during World War II. Expectations were crushed and the sarcastic appellation Willit Run gained wide circulation. Ford built the factory and sold it to the government, then leased it back for the duration of the war. 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. Highway improvements came in September 1942 when the Willow Run Expressway opened between the plant and Detroit. 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. workforce became a model of diversity for future
Women represented approximately one third of the workers at Ford Motor Company's Willow Run plant during World War II. The Willow Run bomber plant, the world's largest factory and one of America's most-publicized plants, is on the outskirts of Ypsilanti, . "Decommissioning the plant is not an easy task. RACER Trust has been supportive of the campaign, even reconfiguring engineering and demolition plans to save cost for the museum. 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. Well build the whole plane or nothing, Sorensen barked, accompanied by the audacious claim that Ford would assemble new B-24s every hour. Workers at the Willow Run Bomber Plant take lunch on the fuselage, February 8, 1943. Charles Sorensen's brash "one plane every hour" claim was no longer an empty boast. Now signifying "the arsenal of democracy", at the outset Ford's Willow Run Bomber Plant was nearly a failure. [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. The building is currently being used to house and protect of the Museum's large aircraft . [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. By the end of the war, Ford had pushed 8,865 B-24 heavy bombers out the Willow Run doors for the Army . The errant flush caused Lewis grief as he tried to find the source of the sound. It was constructed in 1941 by the Ford Motor Company for the mass production of the B-24 Liberator military aircraft. At its peak, Willow Run employed more than 15,000 women -- some 35 percent of its total staff. Many fled after their first day, traumatized by the smell, constant clanging and motion of machinery, and overpowering size of the place. [3][4], By autumn 1943, the top leadership role at Willow Run had passed from Charles Sorensen to Mead L. [7] Indeed, the majority of the plant was demolished in late 2013 and early 2014. [21], Also in the Willow Run Village were the West Court[24] buildings, with peaked rooftops and space for couples or three adults. According to legend, this arrangement allowed the company to pay taxes on the entire plant (and its equipment) to Washtenaw County, and avoid the higher taxes of Wayne County where the airfield is located; overhead views suggest that avoiding encroachment on the airfield's taxiways was also a motivation.[18]. The Willow Run bomber plant made aviation, industrial and social historyalong with new B-24s by the hour. plant, each paid the same 85 cents an hour as their
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. Because of production delays encountered at Willow Run as a result of the inevitable difficulties and snags involved in the adaptation of automobile manufacturing techniques to aircraft, the B-24Es produced at Willow Run were, generally, obsolete by the time that it began to roll off the production lines, and most were relegated to training roles in the United States and hence few ever saw combat. Together they produced more of the slab-sided behemoths than any American warplane ever. In addition to making automatic transmissions, Willow Run Transmission also produced the M16A1 rifle and the M39A1 20mm autocannon for the US military during the Vietnam War. 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 main building would be more than a mile long with dual, parallel assembly lines. Between them, there was a shelter for more than 15,000 people, roughly the number of people living in Ypsilanti at the time. The war's focus was shifting from Europe to Japan, where more-advanced B-29 bombers were needed. Five main contractors hurried the project along, and parts of the plant began production in September 1941. By the end of the war, Ford had pushed 8,865 B-24 heavy bombers out the Willow Run doors for the Army . Most controversial was Ford's decision to replace soft metal dies -- thought to be gentler on aluminum airplane components -- with hard steel dies. Reality proved otherwise. Linen (Material). Construction on the Willow Run Bomber Plant began that spring and it soon became the largest factory under one roof in the world. 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. Each completed B-24 contained more than 300,000 rivets in more than 500 sizes. Cast Iron Charlie had two Liberators flown to Dearborn where they were dismantled piece by piece. Consolidated maintained control over design changes and so did the Army Air Corps (retitled U.S. Army Air Force in June 1941). 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. [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. 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 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. the yankee air museum into it and show people what the history . . That hulking plant was idled in the early 1990s, putting about 4,000 people out of work. ", Willow Run Bomber Plant Manual, 1943-1944, 1947 Kaiser-Frazer Advertisement, "One Every Minute is Not Enough! Truman headed a presidential committee charged with eliminating wartime production waste, and Willow Run's struggles worried him. 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. He was violently anti-union and there were serious labor difficulties, including a massive strike. Four 1,200-hp Pratt & Whitney R-1830 Twin Wasp engines assembled by Buick Motor Division shook the earth as the newly minted war machines cast aloft on test flights. Remote assembly proved problematic, however, and by October 1941 Ford received permission to produce complete Liberators. Willow Run ran two nine-hour shifts. The two sides reached an accommodation during the first quarter of 1943. 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). Steel dies proved more precise, longer lasting, and perfectly safe. Between June and December 1943, construction was completed on temporary "flat-top" buildings providing homes for 2,500 families. The bomber plant adjacent to the airport produced the famed World War II bombers in a plant built by Henry Ford. Gift of Ford Motor Company. The holding cost of the Powertrain plant is enormous. Only 56 airplanes were built in all of 1942. 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 production. Ford built 37 planes in January, 70 in February, 96 in March, and 146 in April. The plant at Willow Run was also beset with labor difficulties, high absentee rates, and rapid employee turnover. For the next six months, Sorensen shuttled 70-man teams of engineers and draftsmen back and forth on 2,300-mile trips from Ford headquarters to the Consolidated works in San Diego to immerse themselves in B-24 design, engineering, parts and components. In 1968, General Motors began reorganizing its body and assembly operations into the GM Assembly Division (GMAD). Factory golf and bowling leagues provided additional opportunities for relaxation. New housing, better roads and professional training alleviated Willow Runs employee retention dilemma, but didnt solve it. Women did everything from clerical work in the offices to riveting and welding on the assembly line. 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. Mass production of B-24s must rely on continuous assembly flow, or they couldnt be built at all. No one had ever manufactured airplanes on such a scale before. For government officials, Ford offered significant advantages. 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. Ford created a permanent jig into which wings could be moved in and out by overhead crane. 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 Air Force dictated more performance and safety upgrades for B-24s than any other American warplane. Its goal was to apply auto-making mass-production principles to . Sadly, one of the people most responsible for Willow Run's success did not live to see it. Dwarfs, whose physical stature had limited prewar employment opportunities, toiled inside wings, fuel cells and other confined spaces. General Motors produced the Chevrolet Corvair at the Willow Run plant
They presented the plan to Consolidated President Reuben Fleet and George Mead, procurement director for the Advisory Council for National Defense, who countered with an offer to produce a thousand sets of wings. Explore our Digital Collections and curate your own set of artifacts to share with 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. Charles Sorensen, seen here earlier in his career, traveled to Consolidated's San Diego plant with Ford president Edsel Ford. The Story of Willow Run highlights several of the steps involved in building the aluminum-intensive aircraft. Ford struggled to get Willow Run running at full potential. 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.
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