B-24 - - - FORD TOUGH !
They also built these at the Fort Worth factory (Consolidated Aircraft), now Lockheed-Martin.
Here is something most people are not aware of. Ford built the B-24 Liberator, one every hour. Could this be accomplished today ... Probably not.
NOW YOU WILL KNOW..... "THE REST OF THE STORY"
Bet you didn't know that Ford had its own pilots to test the B-24 Liberators it was building for the ARMY at the rate of one every 55 MINUTES!!
A little bit of history for aviation buffs.
This was BEFORE Pearl Harbor! Ford's B-24 Bomber Plant at Willow Run, Michigan. Henry Ford was determined that he could mass produce bombers just as he had done with cars.
He built the Willow Run assembly plant and proved it. It was the world's largest building under one roof. This film will absolutely blow you away - one B-24 every 55 minutes.
ADOLF HITLER HAD NO IDEA THE U.S. WAS CAPABLE OF THIS KIND OF THING.
That is truly amazing.The shipbuilding capability the US had during WW2 was also amazing.
ReplyDeleteUpdate on the history Willow Run Bomber Plant: as of January 2014, it is being demolished to make way for a connected-vehicle test facility. BUT the nearby Yankee Air Museum has been given until May 1, 2014 to raise the funds necessary to preserve a small portion of the plant to be its new home.
ReplyDeleteBe a part of this great nationwide effort at www.savethebomberplant.org.
This plant, the speed with which it was built and tooled, and its prodigious output, were absolutely unprecedented. We produced more at Willow Run in a month than Japan could in a year, and Hitler's miscalculation… that he could conquer Europe before America could ramp up for military production… cost him the war.
Willow Run was the largest factory ever built under one roof, and was the most ambitious, and successful manufacturing undertaking of World War II. It also employed over 30% women on the factory floor, and was the home of Rose Will Monroe, the "real" Rosie the Riveter made famous in a wartime newsreel.
Just $50 saves one square foot of historic Willow Run… together, "we can do it!" Learn more at www.savethebomberplant.org