Warbirds – Wings of Freedom – B24 Liberators

This section is about the “Warbirds”....no, not a new app for your cell phone...some of the airplanes used during World War II in Europe and the Pacific. Where is the link to Michigan? Well, a lot more than you might think.

First of all, I'm sure there are a large number of people in Michigan that remember very vividly what some of these planes were like, because some of those people were the pilots and ground crews that were connected to them and some of them were the people that actually helped to build those famous planes.

In talking about the B24 Liberator bomber, it was built at the Ford Willow Run plant and was a great lesson in how people can come together in a short time to build quality equipment for a war effort. And lets remember that at the time the United States was getting involved in WWII, the President, the Military and the civilian population knew there was a serious threat to the countries in Europe from Hitler and the Nazis of Germany................and, there was no guarantee that the U.S. could stop them from taking over the entire world.........and Japan hadn't even started their aggression yet.

Utilizing the “mass-production” expertise of the Ford Motor Co. and the experience and ingenuity of the people of Michigan, the Willow Run Plant was able to design and build the B24 Liberator Bomber so that it was a really great airplane....and....they actually got to a point where they could roll a finished B24 off the end of the manufacturing line at a rate of 1 plane every hour!

One of the other interesting things to come out of the whole process was that with so many of the “boys” having gone off to war...someone had to step up and take over the jobs that those “boys” had left. Thus was the start of a lot of women stepping up to do their part for the “war-effort”, and those ladies learned how to do the jobs very well. In fact, they even ended up with a moniker that not only described some of the jobs they did...but it also characterized the women themselves. That moniker was: “Rosie the Riveter”. And there were a lot of them from the Michigan area. Check with your family and see if you had relative that worked there or in another facility.

Michigan can truly say that it had a lot to do with women leaving the traditional home and motherhood to join the work force!