B-24 Liberator bomber
If you live in the Ypsilanti Michigan area (between Ann Arbor and Detroit), you might want to get over to the
Yankee Air Museum Wednesday night July 2.
Author A.J. Baime will be talking about and signing copies of his new book
The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Ford Motor Company, and Their Epic Quest to Arm an America at War. This talk will be especially interesting because the Yankee Air Museum is going to be moving into the Willow Run Bomber Plant at the heart of the story. (
Diary here of the
now successful campaign to save a piece of the plant.)
More below the Orange Omnilepticon.
A. J. Baime's book is a look at how the United States and its allies beat the axis powers in World War 2: they outproduced them. It was a near thing though. Willow Run was a key part in the larger story of the conversion of America's auto industry into a war machine. Starting from scratch, the Fords - largely under the leadership of Edsel Ford - built a massive factory that at its peak would be turning out a new bomber roughly one an hour. Willow Run built nearly half of all the B-24 Liberators, and Ford's early work in turning what was essentially a hand-crafted design into something that could be built on an assembly line made the job easier for all of the builders.
The road to Willow Run is inextricably tied up with the history of the Ford family - and there are elements to it that boggle the mind. Pre World War 2, Henry Ford had revolutionized the auto industry, and put America on the road. There were darker elements to the story though. Ford's empire ran into trouble because of his inflexibility; his relationship with his son Edsel had more than a few pathological aspects. Ford's adventures in politics led him to dabble in pacifism, anti-semitism, anti-labor brutality, and a profound detestation of FDR and Democrats.
In the 1930's Adolf Hitler was an admirer of Henry Ford's industrial skills (and his anti-semitic efforts); Ford received honors from the German government even as Ford Motor Company was expanding into Europe. He wasn't alone - Charles Lindbergh was also getting similar attention, and like Ford he had isolationist views. Both of them would come under suspicion for this after the U.S. entered the war.
Edsel Ford had been an aviation enthusiast and had actually gotten Ford Motors into the airplane building business. (Henry Ford played a part in advising Glenn Curtiss with his legal battles with the Wright Brothers over patents.) Despite this promising start, Ford exited the aviation business - until World War 2's approach and FDR's call for aircraft as America began to arm.
Edsel was the one who made the commitment to building the B-24, despite his father's strong sentiments against it. He ran into massive difficulties - the original design of the B-24 required a lot of work to get it into something that could be cranked out en masse. It took special tooling and painstaking attention to every detail. Quality was an issue - it took a long time to assemble a work force and train it to build then state of the art airplanes. Politics intruded; there were times when it looked like the plant would be nationalized because of failure to meet promises; Henry Ford came under suspicion for his ties to Hitler and questions about what the European branches of the Ford empire were doing for the Nazi war effort. Charles Lindbergh, under suspicion himself, came on board to share his aviation skills and knowledge.
Inside the plant, Henry Ford's man Harry Bennett as long time head of 'security' and labor relations ran the place like his own personal empire. His management methods had much in common with a criminal gang. Murders and black market dealings, rumors of worse swirled around his office. Meanwhile, Henry Ford repeatedly humiliated Edsel and made his life a living hell as he became increasingly out of touch with the world and mentally incompetent. The stress of Willow Run and family infighting would finally consume Edsel Ford; it took a family revolt to pry loose an increasingly senile Henry Ford and his criminal underlings with their reign of terror from the Ford empire, and let Henry Ford II take over. The rest is, as they say, history.
Baime's telling of this epic (in every sense of the word quest) ranges from the dynastic struggles within the Ford family and the battle of Willow Run, to the larger story of Detroit's tremendous growth from the war effort, and the labor and racial struggles that are still echoing today. He also includes vignettes from the front lines and Washington. There are many books on the battles of World War 2; this is a rare window into the critical battle on the home front. If the talk is anywhere near as good as the book, it should quite an evening.
Again, the Yankee Air Museum, now custodians of what is left of Willow run is where A. J. Baime will be speaking. The talk is free and there will be an opportunity to have books signed by the author. (Directions to the site here.)
B-24 LIberator "Witchcraft"