Willow Run
The roar of the machinery, the special
din of the riveting gun [were] absolutely deafening.
James Stermer
Willow Run worker, 1944
In March 1941, under government contract, the Ford Motor Company began
building the Willow Run factory near Ypsilanti, Michigan. The Willow Run
Airport, with six runways to test planes, was completed in 1942.
By the end of the war, workers at Willow Run had turned out 8,685 B-24
Liberator bombers. At the height of production, one bomber came off the
assembly line every 63 minutes. Never before had airplanes been mass
produced.
The Product: The B-24 Liberator Bomber
 Called Two Zero (Canadian serial number 11120), this plane came off the
Willow Run assembly line on August 29, 1944. It served in the Royal
Canadian Air Force antisubmarine patrol during the war. (The Arsenal of Democracy
gallery features the
nose of the plane suspended above the exhibits.)
Its most notable flight was a search for another B-24 that had gone
down in the mountainous forests of British Columbia. "The weather was setting in and the airplane was too big to get
into the fjords at low altitude. . . . The emotion of the loss of a
crew was something we accepted. We'd gone through the same sort of thing
overseas," recalled one of the plane's copilots, Lieutenant Charles
Lockwood.
Willow Village
In 1942, the federal government built the nation's second freeway (now
I-94) to move workers and materials to the Willow Run plant. In 1943, it
spent $20 million to construct an entire community adjacent to the plant.
In a matter of days, the government erected dormitories for single
workers and enough small houses to accommodate 3,000 people. One thousand
trailer homes were quickly added. By the end of
1943, more than 42,000 workers toiled at Willow Run.
We arrived [at Willow Run from Austinville, VA] on
a cold and snowy day in January of 1944. My mother, my father and I were
all hired the first day, and they referred us to Willow Village to find
a place to stay. We moved right into a new two-bedroom unit that rented
for about $25 a month. . . . Our new home was comfortable and clean, but
the walls were paper thin. If the neighbors cooked onions, we could
smell them. . . . The apartments were built in a row with shared walls,
and they all looked alike. Once, when we got off the bus at the wrong
stop, we had trouble finding our unit.
Florida Goodson
Willow Village provided housing
for more than 15,000 people. The village grew to include 30 dormitories, six
community buildings, rows and rows of small houses, commercial buildings,
police and fire stations, and schools.
|
