Architect Albert Kahn boasted that the Willow Run plant would be the 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). . This was done at Willow Run by 1st Concentration Command (1st CC). Future of historic Willow Run plant uncertain - mlive.com 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. The main building would be more than a mile long with dual, parallel assembly lines. Willow Run ran two nine-hour shifts. GM used the building to store files until an undetermined time, where it was sold to the Cherry Hill Baptist Church. Still, aviation industry leaders scoffed when the War Department chose Ford Motor Co. to mass-produce Liberators. Modifications resulted from lessons learned in fighting fronts and from the need to modify the plane for its multiple roles. "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? for half of all B-24s assembled that year. Sorensen and his team carefully planned the new facility to the last detail. 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. Camp Willow Run was for boys age 1719, mostly sons of dead or disabled WWI vets and those helping to support their families. 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. sniffed Dutch Kindelberger, president of North American Aviation. It also required the installation of two turntables to turn airplane fuselages 90 degrees near the end of the assembly line. From the Collections of The Henry Ford. Rosemary was among 200,000 southerners who flocked to southeastern Michigan for factory jobs, including 9,500 employed at Willow Run. Willow Run and its workers met their goal. 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 museum would consolidate operations scattered on various parcels at Willow Run, and the Trust expects to clear the remainder of the plant for redevelopment. Willow Run stepped up outsourcing of parts production and subassemblies to almost 1,000 Ford factories and independent suppliers while focusing on building B-24s in more predictable designs that minimized shutdowns. [1] Construction of the Willow Run Bomber Plant began in 1940[2] and was completed in 1942. Willow Run Assembly operated from 1959 to 1992 on a parcel to the south of the airport. Today "Rosie" remains a feminist icon and a powerful reminder of women's contributions to the American economy. The valves that would shut the water off to different parts of the plant have been hidden in the building's entrails. [51], Michigan Live reporter Amy Biolchini toured the empty Willow Run facility in early 2013, observing:[52]. 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. 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. Willow Run is an Albert Kahn-designed World War II bomber plant near Ypsilanti, Michigan. How Detroit Factories Retooled During WWII to Defeat Hitler - History "[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. plant, each paid the same 85 cents an hour as their 1250 B-24L aircraft were built at Willow Run. [23] The flat-tops contained four, six, or eight apartments with one, two, or three bedrooms. By the mid-1920s, a local family operating as Quirk Farms had bought the land in Van Buren Township that became the airport. 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. A ghostly, decaying reminder of the industrial and military history echoing within its cavernous expanse, Willow Run was demolished in 2014. Submit a Request for Proposal (RFP) to suppliers of your choice with details on what you need with a click of a button. 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. 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. Although Willow Run is synonymous with the Liberator bomber, B-24s were not the only planes manufactured at Willow Run. The metal entry doors were also fashioned with magnets to effectively keep the door shut. In April 2013, the Detroit Free Press confirmed that the facility's current owner, RACER Trust, was negotiating with the Yankee Air Museum to preserve a small portion of the original bomber plant as a new home for the museum. [8] In 2014, the Yankee Air Museum moved into the bomber factory. The B-24 and the Willow Run Bomber Plant | Flickr Courtesy of the Library of Congress. 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. 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. Now signifying "the arsenal of democracy", at the outset Ford's Willow Run Bomber Plant was nearly a failure. The skilled women who accomplished this work -- at Willow Run and elsewhere -- inspired the symbolic "Rosie the Riveter" character. Starting with 2,600 acres of Henry Ford's bare farmland, ground was broken on the 3.5 million sq.-ft. facility in April of 1941, and the first B-24 Liberator four-engine bomber flew off the giant Willow Run airfield in September of 1942. Reality proved otherwise. 550 sizes, and it weighed 18 tons. Transportation history for an electronic age is underway at Willow Run at the American Center for Mobility, where carmakers, suppliers and high-technology companies have banded together to research, develop and test driverless cars that communicate with one another and with traffic signals to avoid accidents and adjust traffic flow. The bomber plant adjacent to the airport produced the famed World War II bombers in a plant built by Henry Ford. Established aircraft manufacturers, used to a much slower rate, considered the claim preposterous. What is your previous experience with unions? 7:00 PM. General Motors took over and produced transmissions until 2010, when the company declared bankruptcy and moved out. In early 1941 the Federal government established the Liberator Production Pool Program to meet the projected demand for the B-24, and the Ford company, joined the program shortly thereafter. 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. Deemed unfit for combat, they were assigned to training bases, reconnaissance patrols and transport duties. Adjacent to the factory complex, Ford constructed a 1,484-acre airport with six runways and three aircraft hangars. [26] The housing complex remained in use until 2016 as public housing when it was demolished and rebuilt with new modern units. After Ford declined to purchase the plant, it was sold to the Kaiser-Frazer Corporation, a partnership of construction and shipbuilding magnate Henry J. Kaiser and Graham-Paige executive Joseph W. Frazer. Photographic print. The Fisher Body division also operated at Willow Run Assembly until its operations were assumed by the GM Assembly Division in the 1970s. 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. Because of the urgent need for shelter, the Federal Public Housing Administration took action and built temporary housing. Willow Run - B-24 Brief history | Chevy Tri Five Forum Simply moving workers to and from the plant was a major logistical challenge. [21], Also in the Willow Run Village were the West Court[24] buildings, with peaked rooftops and space for couples or three adults. Willow Run - B24 Liberator - Military History of the Upper Great Lakes 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. Dies and machine tools were tossed out and redesigned, wasting precious time and millions of dollars. Willow Run ran two nine hour shifts. You cant expect a blacksmith to make a watch overnight, sniffed Dutch Kindelberger, president of North American Aviation. The plant began production in summer 1941; the dedication plaque is dated June 16. "A Historical Perspective.". When Cherry Hill outgrew the little chapel and decided to build a new church, it sold the chapel to the Belleville Presbyterian Church for one dollar in July 1978. Well build the whole plane or nothing, Sorensen barked, accompanied by the audacious claim that Ford would assemble new B-24s every hour. Production steadily increased, reaching the magical plane-per-hour pinnacle in mid-1944 while accounting for half of all B-24s assembled that year. 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 university operated the Michigan Aeronautical Research Center (MARC), later known as Willow Run Laboratories (WRL), from 1946 to 1972. Apart from a new tail turret, the B-24M differed little from the B-24L. After the war, these residences served students attending the nearby University of Michigan on the G.I. 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. GM also produced vehicles next door at its Willow Run Assembly plant beginning a few years later, in 1959. Willow Run Wartime Problems - Michigan Technological University The average daily pumpage in million gallons was about 1.68 in 1942, 1.70 in 1943, and 1.66 in 1944. 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. Sorensen and his team methodically broke the complex bomber plane into 11 major assemblies, and then further divided these into 69 sub-assemblies. When Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945, only 7,400 employees remained on the Willow Run payroll. Like many successful technology companies, LITEON outgrew the garage to become a leader of its chosen industry through years of hard work. 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. 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 yankee air museum into it and show people what the history . This website requires certain cookies to work and uses other cookies to help you have the best experience. In 1941, Henry Ford had his company build a factory at Willow Run in the Detroit area. Planes were assembled outdoors, exposed to a hot sun that distorted parts out of shape. 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. At its peak, Willow Run employed more than 42,000 people. Between them, there was a shelter for more than 15,000 people, roughly the number of people living in Ypsilanti at the time. 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. Plant construction started in March 1941. [15] Ford Motor was to have first option on the plant after war production ended, an option it ultimately chose not to exercise, although a rumor in Drew Pearson's syndicated column had Ford planning a postwar use as a tractor factory,[16] but that never came to pass. The company resumed automobile production within a week. The president and his advisers were convinced that long-range, high-altitude heavy bombers would be the decisive weapon in a war dominated by air power and industrial muscle. The main building went up in sections, with workers using plywood partitions to seal off finished portions from those still under construction. Ford built 37 planes in January, 70 in February, 96 in March, and 146 in April. For webinar sponsorship information, visit www.bnpevents.com/webinars or email webinars@bnpmedia.com. Despite how smoothly the plant ran, putting out a bomber an hour still wasn't an easy feat. [3][4] Even then it would take nearly a year before finished Liberators left the factory. Ford Motor Company president Edsel Ford passed away on May 26, 1943. Willow Run After WWII - Military History of the Upper Great Lakes ", 1960 Chevrolet Corvair Sales Brochure, "The Prestige Car in Its Class". Click the drop-down menu below and make your selection. There were 24 lunch rooms located throughout the complex. Click the drop-down menu below and make your selection. The team developed the B-24's build sequence from these divisions.