14 Dec 06
Ford
Ford had made Liberty V12 aero engines for the US Air Force during the First World War - as had manufacturers including Packard, General Motors, Lincoln and Marmon - and Henry Ford saw the potential to apply his mass-production techniques to aircraft-building in peace-time. In 1925, Ford bought the Stout Metal Airplane Company, which was building single-engined planes influenced by the Junkers of the era, and developed from this a craft with three 200bhp Wright engines, a sheet-metal body and aluminium wings, advanced in a time when many planes were still constructed from wood. This was aimed at the airliner market, and the three engines were meant to reassure passengers that if one failed, there were still two left...
The Tin Goose could seat up to nine passengers, plus crew of two pilots and a stewardess, and it was bought by several airlines, flying the San Diego-New York route as well as a service between Havana and Santiago de Cuba. Transcontinental Air Transport (later TWA) even operated an innovative New York-Los Angeles service, taking passengers coast to coast in 48 hours by plane in daylight and by train at night. Though it was designed specifically for the comfort of paying passengers - until this point, brave civilian passengers had been either exposed to the elements or forced to share their cabin with mailbags or other cargo - the Tri-Motor was also supplied to the military, fitted with Pratt & Whitney engines. Ford made 199 before he came to the conclusion that he could not compete with the specialist aeroplane manufacturers, and ended production in June 1933.
Consolidated B-24 Liberator
In 1940, Henry Ford initially turned down a government contract to build Rolls-Royce engines for British fighter planes, but a year later the Roosevelt administration's decision to enter World War II led to Ford's building of the Willow Run aircraft factory at Ypsilanti, near Detroit. A $47 million greenfield development designed from scratch, it was the largest factory in the world at the time: 3.5 million square feet, with over 42,330 people employed to make Consolidated B-24 Liberator bombers.
Ford applied all its know-how from car-building to set up efficient mass-production lines for the planes, and at one point the factory was said to be making a bomber an hour. A highway was built in 1943 to aid workers' commutes from Detroit, and makeshift dormitory housing, tents, trailers and shanty towns were hastily constructed to house - inadequately, and to much public criticism - the thousands of workers recruited from outside the area. Production was initially low, with morale poor and supply shortages, and nearly half of the initial batch of 107 planes was deemed to be of insufficient quality. By autumn 1943, however, the glitches had been ironed out, the labour problems eased by the hiring of 12,000 women, and migrant workers from the poorer southern states.
The Willow Run estate grew to include a trailer park, apartment complexes, a shopping centre and its own airfield and runway, and the facility went on to build 8,685 B-24s before the end of the war. Post-WWII, it was sold to Kaiser Motors (see below) and then to General Motors, which now runs it as a transmission plant; the airfield remains in use for cargo flights.
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