Ford .Motor Company Willow Run Bomber Plant

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 Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber. Construction of the Willow Run Bomber Plant began in 1940 and was completed in 1942.

Defense plant

The plant began production in summer 1941; the dedication plaque is dated June 16. The plant initially built components. The aircraft manufacturer Douglas Aircraft, and the B-24's designer, Consolidated Aircraft, assembled the finished airplane. Remote assembly proved problematic, however, and by October 1941 Ford received permission to produce complete Liberators. Willow Run's Liberator assembly line ran until May 1945, building almost half of all the Liberators produced.

Statistics employees: 42,500 military draft losses: each month 8,200 workers were drafted into military service training: the Aircraft Apprentice School had up to 8,000 students per week complete training and report for work size: 3.5-million-square-feet dimensions: More than 3,200 feet long and 1,279 feet across at its widest point building: Construction began in April 18, 1941 aircraft: B-24 aircraft production began in the final weeks of 1942 subassemblies: parts production and subassemblies were produced at almost 1,000 Ford factories and independent suppliers

Airport Willow Run Airport was built as part of the bomber plant. The airfield passed into civilian hands after the war and is now controlled by Wayne County Airport Authority. Part of the airport complex operated at various times as a research facility affiliated with the University of Michigan, and as a secondary United States Air Force Installation. Willow Run Airport has remained active as a cargo and general aviation airfield. Since 1992, the airport has been home to the former Yankee Air Museum and the National Museum of Aviation and Technology at Historic Willow Run, now referred to as the Michigan Flight Museum.

Camp Willow Run

Willow Run takes its name from a small tributary of the Huron River that meandered through pastureland fields and woodland along the Wayne–Washtenaw county line until the late 1930s. By the mid-1920s, a local family operating as Quirk Farms had bought the land in Van Buren Township that became the airport. Quirk Farms was purchased by automobile pioneer Henry Ford in 1931. Ford, a keen exponent of the virtues of country living, used it as farmland for a "social engineering" experiment that brought inner-city boys to the Willow Run Camp to learn about farming, nature, and the rural way of life. The residents of the Willow Run Camp planted, tended, and harvested field crops and collected maple syrup, selling their products at the farm market on the property. In the process, the boys were to learn self-discipline and the values of hard work, and benefit from the fresh air of the country. Camp Willow Run was for boys age 17–19, mostly sons of dead or disabled WWI vets and those helping to support their families. According to the Benson Ford Research Center, the camp offered:

"...farm training, self-reliance, management, and salesmanship...the boys governed themselves, appointing a foreman and field foreman from their own ranks. They lived in tents, with a mess hall and a chapel on-site, and sold their produce from a roadside stand built by Ford. Boys...had time for recreation as well as work, each camp had a baseball diamond and the boys participated in a softball league, there was also volleyball and handball, movies were shown, and each camp also hosted harvest dances, inviting nearby high school students to join. 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."

Chapel of Martha and Mary 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. The Fords built seven of these: The first at Greenfield Village, Michigan, was completed in 1929. The others, completed in the 1930s, were located in Dearborn, Michigan (site of the Fords' Fair Lane estate); Sudbury, Massachusetts; two in Richmond Hill, Georgia (the Fords' winter home); Macon, Michigan; and Willow Run. The Willow Run Chapel was the one originally built for Camp Willow Run, and became the place of worship for the Belleville Presbyterian Church in 1979 after a series of handoffs. 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. GM used the building to store files until an undetermined time, where it was sold to the Cherry Hill Baptist Church. 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. 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. Of the seven chapels, this is the only one currently in use as a regular place of worship. It still has the original pews and other furnishings; the only other set in active use belongs to the Greenfield Village chapel.

Factory construction Like virtually all of the United States' industrial concerns, Ford Motor Company, by this time under the direction of Henry Ford's only son Edsel, directed its manufacturing output during World War II to Allied war production. 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 Motor would not only build the bombers, it would supply the airfield as well; the farm at Willow Run was an ideal location for the airfield's runways, being under the personal ownership of Henry Ford (thus solving any land acquisition problem) and sited between the main roads and rail lines connecting Detroit with Ann Arbor and points to the west. Easements were acquired from landowners across the county line in Ypsilanti Township where the Liberator plant (and eventually the airport terminal) would be built. Although officially retired, Henry Ford still had a say in the company's affairs and refused government financing for Willow Run, preferring to have his company build the factory and sell it to the government, which would lease it back to the company for the duration of the war. 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, but that never came to pass. Ford would eventually sell its land to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation's Defense Plant Corporation in July 1944, shortly after the Ford farms were transferred to the company's ownership. Architect Albert Kahn designed the main structure of the Willow Run bomber plant, which had 3,500,000 square feet (330,000 m2) of factory space, and an aircraft assembly line over a mile (1600 m) long. It was thought to be the largest factory under one roof anywhere in the world. The Willow Run plant featured four large turntables two-thirds of the way along the assembly lines, allowing the B-24 production lines to make a 90° turn before continuing to final assembly. 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.

Employee housing crisis 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. Because of the urgent need for shelter, the Federal Public Housing Administration took action and built temporary housing.

Willow Run Lodge and Village The resulting housing complexes were built in several different groups. Willow Run Lodge was a series of dormitories for single people and was built on the land north of Michigan Avenue and south of Geddes Road. This covered 90 parcels of land totaling 2,641 acres (1,069 ha). In February 1943, the first dormitory (Willow Run Lodge) opened, consisted of fifteen buildings containing 1,900 rooms, some single- and others double-occupancy, with room for 3,000 people. Between June and December 1943, construction was completed on temporary "flat-top" buildings providing homes for 2,500 families. This section was known as Willow Run Village. The flat-tops contained four, six, or eight apartments with one, two, or three bedrooms. Also in the Willow Run Village were the West Court buildings, with peaked rooftops and space for couples or three adults. Of the 1,000 apartments in West Court, some had no bedrooms and were called "zero bedroom" apartments, and the rest had one bedroom. The first of these apartments were ready for occupancy in August 1943. Another large dormitory project, containing 1,960 rooms and known as West Lodge, was also ready for tenants at that time. 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. Between them, there was a shelter for more than 15,000 people, roughly the number of people living in Ypsilanti at the time.

Parkridge Homes

In addition to the Willow Run Lodge and Village housing projects, another community named Parkridge Homes was also built in 1943 to house African-American Willow Run employees. 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, so noted African-American architect Hilyard Robinson was contracted to design an 80-unit community. The housing complex remained in use until 2016 as public housing when it was demolished and rebuilt with new modern units. In May 2017, the Michigan State Historic Preservation Office recognized Parkridge Homes with the unveiling three historic markers signifying the importance to Ypsilanti history. Also constructed at this time was the Parkridge Community Center.

Sociological study on Willow Run housing crisis 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. They discuss "cultural inadequacy theory", stating that "industrial culture provides no criterion by which either a manufacturer or a government official can determine in advance when a manufacturer should divert his own capital to housing and other community services and when he shall rely on the capital of others for such facilities and services".

Liberator production Despite intensive design efforts led by Ford production executive Charles E. Sorensen, the opening of the plant still saw some mismanagement and bungling, and quality was uneven for some time. Although the Ford Trimotor had been a success in the 1920s, the company had since shied away from aviation, and initially, Ford was assigned to provide B-24 components with final assembly performed by Consolidated at its Fort Worth, Texas plant, or by Douglas Aircraft at its Tulsa, Oklahoma, plant. 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. It took only a short year before finished Liberators left the factory. An amazing feat of factory construction and commissioning. According to Max Wallace, Air Corps Chief, General "Hap" Arnold told Charles Lindbergh, then a consultant at the plant, that "combat squadrons greatly preferred the B-17 bomber to the B-24 because 'when we send the 17's out on a mission, most of them return. But when we send the 24's out, most of them don't.'" 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." Although the jumping of an automotive company into aircraft production posed these quality problems, it also brought remarkable production rates. The plant held the distinction of being the world's largest enclosed "room." 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 model.

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. The plant at Willow Run was also beset with labor difficulties, high absentee rates, and rapid employee turnover. The factory was nearly an hour's drive from Detroit, and the imposition of wartime gasoline and tire rationing had made the daily commute difficult. In only one month, Ford had hired 2,900 workers but had lost 3,100. Also, Henry Ford was cantankerous and rigid in his ways. He was violently anti-union and there were serious labor difficulties, including a massive strike. In addition, Henry Ford refused on principle to hire women. However, he finally relented and did employ "Rosie the Riveters" on his assembly lines, probably more because so many of his potential male workers had been drafted into the military than due to any sudden change of principle on his part. By autumn 1943, the top leadership role at Willow Run had passed from Charles Sorensen to Mead L. Bricker. At the request of the government, Ford began to decentralize operations and many parts were assembled at other Ford plants as well as by the company's sub-contractors, with the Willow Run plant concentrating on final aircraft assembly. 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. At its peak monthly production (April, 1944), Willow Run produced 428 B-24s with highest production listed as 100 completed bombers flying away from Willow Run between April 24 and April 26, 1944. By 1945, Ford produced 70% of the B-24s in two 9-hour shifts. Ford built 6,972 of the 18,482 total B-24s and produced ‘knoc