Thats 53 engines a day! Production levels that would be just a dream these days. When a country is pushed into a corner so to speak, everyone does their bit. Just to look at the machines required to build the parts is more than just mind boggling. Someone somewhere had to design and test these machines and processes even before manufacture. America was more than just a powerhouse of production at that time.
@@bobolulu7615 I would bet that any major car manufacturer can out produce that number. With better reliability and quality control. It was outstanding for its time.
@@frankbutaric3565 today we rely on outsourced parts and labor from adversarial countrys. Plus, It would be a challenge just to keep the EPA and OSHA away as well.
My father worked as a machinist at the Chicago Dodge plant during WW2. I treasure the micrometers that he left to me that he used to help build the B-29 engines. America had patriots in the factories as well as in the armed forces in those days. That was the greatest generation.
@@fredericwidlak2071 My great Grandfather was a B-25 mechanic during WW2. I guess it's because of him that I have an interest in aviation. I'd love to see those pictures as well.
They manufactured 1,600 working, commissioned engines every month, 53 A DAY, provided no weekend interruption. All double-tested and double-assembled...... Just plain incredible. What organization, logistics and cleverness! Clockwork of 30,000 people every day. I doubt that is possible today.
It’s crazy how we went from not having planes to having 18 cylinder radial engines in just a few decades. The amount of engineering that went into designing and building is just monumental. Think about all of the tooling and machines that needed to be invented to make this happen. Minus the war going on it had to be a really cool time to be alive.
The scale of this operation, the millions of details, the custom machinery and fixtures, the time frame involved and then shutting it down almost "just after" it was completed really staggers the mind. And then he points out the "electrical savings" and the "savings" from the castors like that was something worth mentioning, when in fact the whole thing was "waste", thanks to the madness of war. I look at this in AWE as someone who spent his life in "very light industrial engineering", and it just leaves my mind numb thinking of what all was involved, AND then to think of how many more similar operations were taking place all over the country for all the needs of warfare, AMAZING. And to think that each engine was assembled twice, for the sake of those who had to go in harms way...
My dad worked in the Passkigula, MS ship yard. He always said he and a woman welder were number 1 & number 2 best welders in the whole shipyard. He said he worked all the double shifts that they would let him. I looked at some of his pay stubs and most were over 80 hours a week.
Just to think. A weld might save some kid from dying somewhere in Europe. To be a dad, and do that as a job, I'd throw myself at it too. They are heroes.
Great tribute for what amounted to a fantastic amalgamation of efforts. On the other end, my father worked for the War Assets Administration at Boeing/Wichita. I was very young but remember him bringing home stories of how troublesome the first R3350s were with overheating and catching fire in the B-29s. C-W eventually redesigned the engine to direct the front cylinder bank exhausts to the rear rather than to the front which had been the source of so many failures and headaches. The big engine went on to serve admirably in post war applications on both military and civilian aircraft.
The engine powered the Douglas Skyraider over Vietnam. I've got a visualization thing about the big bombers, for instance when I see the Lancaster it looks like four Spitfires. I know the cowling isn't the same on the Skyraider and B-29 but I think you see where I'm going with it.
As a manufacturing engineer in today's world, it takes 5 months just to get the purchase orders sent to the tooling suppliers. Back then they designed and rolled out new equipment in less than 5 months. I grew up in the wrong era.
Not sure where you work but where and complexities but I worked about a month from concept to tool in hand. With today’s modern capabilities of CAD and CnC as well as rapid prototype better and quicker results are the norm.
Back in the '40s we built the facilities to build tens of thousands of trucks, aircraft, ships, and everything that goes along with them and did it in 4 years time. Now it takes 4 years to get the permits to build the building.
My dad was an AC, Flew 40 missions as AC. Was in the first group on Saipan. 73rd Wing,497th group,869 bomb sq. A Square.3. Never talked about the war. Finally got some talk when he was 92. His particular plane flew 50 missions. He lost 4 engines during the duration of his tour. Before he flew missions it was his job to test fly every plane that had been overhauled. Before he was assigned to B-29's he was an instructor , training B-24 crews before they flew to bases in North Africa.
Mean while somebody had to find, drill, pump, refine, all the oil to burn in those engines. War is all about make work in the end. Just think of the global consumption of earth resources in w.w.ll alone. Staggering amounts of every type of material much of it to be dumped at sea at wars end. All so "uncle joe" Stalin could take half the world in his greedy fingers.
If anyone thinks that they're clever or smart, let them compare themselves to Jacque Droz. Without a doubt the most mind-boggling craftsman I have ever seen...1700 s Look him up and let me know what you think.
Just think about that. Without a single computer, just brains and braun this plant went from an open field to producing many many thousands of engines in a matter of 8 months.
As I read all of your comments below, I feel the dedication and feeling of pride that america experienced during WW2. Thanks to all of you and your family members for coming together and defending our way of life and our allies. America did rise to the occasion and many sacrificed their lives for us. So many paid the ultimate price. How can we adequately show our appreciation? Maybe by never forgetting why so many lives were given for us, the survivors.
This footage certainly shows how far this country has fallen since the end of WW2. This is the time when calculations were done on a slide ruler, and figured things out without the help of a computer - all drawings were done by hand. We can't even build a car from start to finish without parts outsourced to China or some other country. So sad. Thanks for sharing.
Wow.....The incredible desire to succeed, to win, to defeat tyranny....The sheer will and determination of this generation I fear shall never be equaled again....Now, our youth play pokemon...
Veronica Kovacic Really? You know nothing about me yet you wish to disrespect me? I'm a USAF vet...I fought for your freedom to act like an ass...Now go on, go play pokemon....You must be one of those safe spacers....I'll send you a safety pin.
Everything is too easy for people now. Stores are stocked to the ceilings with things you can walk up and grab. It’s been this way for a number of generations now. It’s made us become weak. I dread the day the rug gets pulled out from underneath us. We owe everything we have to the greatest generation. They allowed us to live this life style. Things are so out of balance in our society, we wouldn’t know what to do if things went horribly wrong.
Yeah, building massive fleets of airliners for free to get people together to celebrate Unity and everlasting World Peace, to transport food to stop World starvation. And the list of humanitarian progress does go on ...
Interesting clip - thanks for upping. I had no idea they disassembled every engine and then reassembled. At Derby, RR used to do the same to one Merlin in a batch. Painstaking stuff, but the size of operations during "total war" made this possible.
Assembled, test run for several hours, disassembled, inspected for wear due to a defect, then reassembled for delivery. There were a couple of more steps. Yeah, I see your comment was from six years ago, hope everything's going well.
This documentary and the River Rouge plant in Detroit are miracles That should be understood by modern America but the world has largely forgotten this greatness. Imagine Iron Ore and raw materials arriving in one end and finished cars out the other!
That is "Dino" stuff. Building the same object, an engine, does require far more different components and numbers of units these days. The production process has to be far more efficient to be cost effective and still profitable. No company can survive without profits for future sustainability. And the greed of CEOs and shareholders is another "killer factor" to be accounted for. As usual, the worker is expected to bear the load by accepting low wages. And that is the reason AMERICAN producers gave the job to China. CUT the tax cuts for the top end. CUT their horrendous salaries. And then production might come back.
This is more than fantastic. Could this type of factory be operated today? Look at the incredibly short time it took to build the factory. The amount of machines required for specific jobs is mind boggling, then there is the people who actually designed and built these machines! The foundry, the machining, the assembly - just out of this world stuff. Imagine having to design production assembly techniques and fixtures so that the common person was able to to his/her task correctly every time with very little skill. I wonder if there was any one person who knew everything about the entire building and its production process at each point. One other thing is - could it be done today? Could it even be built today? The amount of paperwork and red tape would put it years behind what has been achieved here. Remember this is not the only thing that was going on in the war. Planes were being built, ships built, guns, ammunitions, even uniforms and food. America during World War 2 was one big manufacturing powerhouse.
What an amazing feat. Could we do this today? We need manufacturing skills back here in America now! Five thousand sub-contracters. Can you imagine the jobs that created?
My Dad was aircrew on Lockheed EC-121H Warning Star Constellations in the early 1960s and they flew with the R-3350s. Amazing engines second oy to the R-4360s, which had 28 cylinders in 4 rows of 7 jugs, each.
amazing watching these videos. All the engineering to build the factories, the tools needed to make the parts, then the engineering that went into the design of the engine.
The Dodge Chicago plant was built to manufacture R3350’s during the war. After the war, Preston Tucker built his Tucker 48’s there. Then Ford owned the plant and built R4360 engines then later J57 Turbojets. Then it was sold to land developers and turned into the present day Ford City mall. You can still see the exhaust stacks from the engine test cells there.
I just saw “Tora Tora Tora” a few days ago. I was reminded of the line said by the actor playing Admiral Yamamoto at the movie end when he found out Pearl was attacked before Japan declared war. He said “I feel all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” What you are seeing here is resolve.
Yes, I remember that base well. I've been thinking of trying to go back for a visit to all the old RAF bases I was involved with. Thanks for bringing her up.
The plant extended from 7100 to 7900 South on Cicero avenue in Chicago. Most of the land is currently a shopping mall, however some buildings of the plant still stand;those smokestacks still stand today.
And Cicero was filled with Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Poles that came from desperate poverty and brutal governments long before the war. They worked the hardest as they knew what losing the war would mean better than anyone else. Ask my father and mother.
in the 1970s, I worked in the plant housing the upsetters that made 75% of the pistons for the workhorse B24 bomber. Many of my colleagues were men who had been hired in the late 1930s and who had been excused from serving in the military during the war, because the work they did was deemed essential for th war effort.
These engines had a history of catching fire. In fact, the prototype B-29 with Boeing’s chief pilot, Eddie Allen and a cadre of engineers were killed on a test flight when one of its R-3350 engines caught fire and caused a wing to collapse. Overheating was a huge problem during WWll.
Caught on fire because they swallowed valves, there were mountains of these engines piled high on the island march to Japan because of reliability issues of Wright, after a very low total time they just changed the engine.
I’m a Brit living in Texas and I never cease to marvel at how fast the US went to full war production not only in existing factories but new sites built from scratch. The shipyard, aero plants and weapons and munitions. Watching those stories makes one wonder how Germany or Japan could even dream of winning. Add to that a fully mobilized UK manufacturing which was also significant and the Axis were literally drowned in allied production. The video series War Factories really makes all this so clear.
This plant was at what is now Ford city mall. Some of the buildings still exist. You see them on google earth. It was reopened during the Korean war. This was the Tucker plant then Ford plant.
Oct. 6, 2018---I remember reading some where some big shot was being given a tour of the final assembly and testing of the B-29's before they were to go over seas and into combat. He thought it was too complicated and doomed to failure. The Boeing guy told him to find anyone he wanted and bring that person back where they were. The VIP did, with the Boeing rep gave the unknown man the manual for engine starting procedures. Man read the manual with everyone behind watching him. He started all 4 engines by himself using the manual. Don't think any aircraft manufacturer would be willing to do this today, but then things were different back then.
I've seen it in writing and on other documentaries. The B-29 project cost hundreds of millions, but the A-bomb was mostly research so didn't cost as much. The uranium refining process was the most expensive part, but still didn't cost as much as 4 Iowa battleships. (at $100 million each!) Why? Lower labor costs mostly, plus so many parts in a plane compared to three bombs.
@@glenkelley6048 Not so. Unity is still there but not reported because it does not sell newspapers or attract eyeballs. Negative sells and it all started with our 24 hour news cycle and the monster it created and must be fed. Less CNN and Fox news viewing may be the answer.
Any idea how bad the racism and sexism was back then? It was more divided. The difference between now and then, is that people who aren't male and white no longer keep quiet out of fear like they did back then. Not the same thing as not being divided at all.
@@lordgarion514 Actually I do have an idea about how it was then. I was a kid living in Southern California in a city full of defense plants. My mother worked at Douglas Aircraft building C-47’s. Certainly there was racism and sexism then, as there always has been in our country, but enough people worked together to see that we won. These days we would just be calling each other names and running in opposite directions as we are now. These days South Korea, Japan , Germany, New Zealand, etc. all work together to solve their biggest problem. Daily it becomes more obvious that we can’t. But then, each of them has a leader. Hopefully we will get one again next week.
@@jimpal Like I said, the non white males knew to keep their mouths shut. That's not the same thing as "getting along"not by any stretch of the imagination. That's like saying slavery wasn't that big of a deal because they mostly "got along". Except they mostly "got along" because they knew what would happen if they didn't stay "in their place".
It was greatly divided concerning whether or not we should have been involved in the war, Pearl Harbor changed that overnight however. Just like 9/11 did, stop and think about it, the day after the terrorist attacks the people of this country were more united than I've ever seen them in the 55 years I've been on this planet, and two years later when US forces invaded Iraq the vast majority of the people were united in that cause, even more so the year before when they went into Afghanistan.
@@dukecraig2402 You keep wanting to make this a black-white thing. In Long Beach, California during WWII there were few, if any, black people at the defense plants. My issue, which still stands, is the divide between right and left we have now. Look at the photos of those ladies at the WWII aircraft factories with the scarves on their heads. Nowadays half of the workers would want to wear red caps. Such a divide never helps teamwork.
The design Wright sent to Chrysler had many problems, The engines overheated . Chrysler (Dodge) made hundreds of improvements to the engines to remedy the problems inherent in the Wright design which really helped. The efficiency of this plant reduced the cost to the govt. and saved the taxpayers millions of dollars.
There were many design flaws in that engine which limited what the B-29 was able to do. The story goes that Stalin wanted a heavy bomber. The TU -5 was an exact copy of the B-29. They took apart B-29s that made emergency landings in Vladivostok. They experienced the same issues on their copy of the engines as on the originals!
Now just imagine what Germany did, maintaining and building their war plants while under constant air attack, having electric power, and other utilities constantly interrupted. During the war their production rates actually increased as they distributed their manufacturing around the country. There are a lot of industrial and manufacturing lessons to be learned from that war
gk10002000 its all irrelevant now...design, manufacturing processes and automation are waaaay more advanced now...also, I don't think in next major war north america will be able to enjoy the piece and quiet during manufacturing they had during ww2.
One of the lesson you can find if you go read "The Strategic Bombing Survey" is that we did NOT bomb German electrical power generating sites..They were in known locations and we and the British for some reason didn't bomb them... And "under constant air attack might have made a bigger dent maybe, if the definition of "precision Daylight Bombing" wasn't 50% of the bombs in a 4 mile radius---which even that the US couldn't manage...The German production of everything was seriously hampered by their class-bound rigid thinking that machine operators must be journeyman level machinists---which is what I've been doing for more or less 40 years..more...The US applied lessons learned mainly by GM in the 30s: specialised single purpose machines carefully designed and manufactured that would allow a guy right off the farm to do ONE OPERATION correctly with minimal trianing--hours or a few days , and still get a correct result..versus the German --and the Italian and the Japanese putting highly skilled machinists behind general purpose machines like ordinary turret lathes or horisontal mills..Our methods requirered far more Process Engineering and planning and much higher capital outlay, but less operator skill and input...and we made scores of thousands while they made hundreds..Same in ships and same in tanks..same in radar, same in code breaking...So many men were involved in production of long range heavy bomber that both USA and Britain had serious shortage of infantrymen despite our population being twice that of Germany's---and by time USA got around to serious levels of fighting, the Germans already having lost nearly 3,000,000 battle dead...and I think you know where 88% of those men died...
gk10002000, You have said it so well....the German people are to be admired for many reasons; .sadly, they "bought into" an Ideology that they hoped would restore pride and prosperity to the "Father Land"! Does not that same hope resonate in America today? Ironically it does...we now have another bombastic egotist that promises to restore America to some imaginary "Camelot" from the past.....
Now it's true that there was significant resistance from both management and workers towards "american" production methods, but the threat of air raids made it impossible from the start to build gigantic factories such as seen here or to use specialised machines that lacked the flexibility to retool for what was needed. Nevertheless, under unimaginable conditions germany still managed to produce over 2000 machines a month in the fall of 1944..
Galland You are right, and that's what I find so astonishing....near the end of the War they almost got their act together...thank goodness time ran out!
From Wikipedia After the war, a lease for the plant was awarded to the Tucker Car Corporation, and it later used by several automobile manufacturers including Ford Motor Company. Tootsie Roll Industries moved into a vacated portion of the plant in 1967. To this day, TRI uses these tunnels for archives and storage as well as locker rooms, as Ford City uses them for a strip of boutiques
Yes Sir I am Choking to the fact most of those parts are obsolete and or unavailable. But reproduction parts are making there way to be made available for those magnificent antiques.
*Winston's,* There's a field assembly video for the P-47 that's really cool. In its way, it's the opposite of this clip. I bring it up because I recently read there's a guy who bought a war-surplus P-47 in a crate, like the one in that clip, and he keeps it stored in the bomb bay of his B-36! I just thought you might like to hear about that, in case you haven't. Imagine a carbon fiber airframe P-47 or Spitfire, everything else the same, yikes.
And just think, this was only one engine for one Plane. I've wondered many times if we could ever or would ever rise to the occasion like this again. I wonder...
Other engines like the Pratt and Whitney R-2800 that powered Thunderbolt's and Hellcats were already proven. They were 2,000+ HP engines in some versions but these engines had to approach 3,000 HP.
"I've wondered many times if we could ever or would ever rise to the occasion like this again". We just don't have the manufacturing base today what we had back then so I too wonder BUT after being in Mfg. for 50+ years I kind of doubt it.
? Today we have war fighting machines/personnell in place and ready to go and have constant upgrades/R & D and training, back then we didn't and needed to gear up after the war started. The difficult thing today would be the political will, not the weapons/troops.
King Rose Archives; I once saw a Tucker automobile in Kansas City, Mo. As I recall it had a center mounted headlight that moved as the car was steered through a turn. In 1949 Ford came out with a radical new design that incorporated a spherical feature in the center of a chrome grille. At that time; a story was "going around" that Ford meant to install a headlight in that part of the grille, ....as the story goes; Tucker sued Ford and the resulting 49' Ford Grille is what we remember today. I'm pretty sure that it was just an "Urban Myth", but I found it interesting.
soaringtractor You are so right...my brother In-law owned one....I was just a kid at the time...if that timeline doesn't make sense; it's because I was a "mistake"...an unintended child....my nearest sibling is 92 years old.The other two have been dead for a while.
the Wendover B29 Lenolia gay assembly hanger /BASE, is still in wendover UT, been there and its spooky empty old base , lots of homeless living in the old barracks, using wood from old buildings for heat, shortened runways are used for small aircraft, WW11 runs were 12,000ft long and if you over shoot straight ahead was the smooth Bonneville salt flats. i couldnt even guess what it cost to build such a base, but plans at local BBB museum says 1939, so we must have had plans for it. while i was down town in local UT grocery store noticed an old commercial refridgerator(back room), looked it over date of manufacture was 1940, i bet a lot of beer was bought there, at its peak there were 40,000 men.
The B-29 "Enola Gay" was built by Martin at Bellevue,Nebraska at what is now Offutt Air Force Base. Paul Tibbets named the B-29 after his mother. I believe "Bockscar" also rolled of the assembly line at Bellevue. I have been through Wendover many times and often thought of the Army Air Corp men who made the journey to Salt Lake City for R&R after grueling work schedules training to deliver the "Fatman" and "Little Boy" weapons. Little Ojo was fast asleep in Albuquerque when the first A bomb components rolled through town going south on US 85 on their way to Trinity site. The Atomic Age and Cold War were just a few years away. See "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes for one of the best accounts ever written about the Manhattan Project.The training at Wendover is covered. The movie "Bombardier" and "Above and Beyond" both have Wendover connections. I believe parts of "Bombardier" were filmed at Kirtland AFB located in Albuquerque. Kirtland trained bombardiers during WW II and I watched many AT-11s fly over our home on the east mesa. Just the ramblings of an 78 year old fart.
A true testament to what the American worker can accomplish when the calling comes. Since then, most manufacturing jobs have been sent oversees for costs cuts. Our labor force suffered and we no longer are the leaders in engineering and production. We won the war but lost our capability to build greatness.
I never knew they completely disassembled the motor after testing it. Holy cow it's crazy all the fighting in the comments that started with this video.
+C Smith The Internet in general, and TH-cam specifically is peopled by angry lonely people who get no satisfaction in life outside of being hateful, reactionary, and muckraking on their computer. Don't worry about the haters, just be sorry for them.
Half of the fun in watching these TH-cam videos is to read the comments. Some well informed comments punctuated occasionally by foul-mouthed people like ELECTROSTATIC DISC LIFTERS.
I worked on the R-3350's and flew the SP-2H's in the NAVY. Powerful and sounded great. I had no idea they ran them and then totally disassembled and reran them in the building process.
It's to my understanding that every aircraft engine was made that way during the war, even the Packard made Merlin engines, they actually had oval shaped racks that the engines hung from and moved from one stage to the next where each worker had one single part to take off of an engine that had already been test run so that they could be inspected and cleaned, then they moved to another oval shaped rack where reassembly happened.
Most of the people who flocked into these plants to work were unskilled and were trained on the job. Now they demand a college degree to get a $15 entry level position and you are expected to know everything already.
You are quite correct Ray. While everyone is babbling about German aircraft advancements of WW2, most of which were never built or flown in combat, the B-29 is without doubt the most advanced production aircraft of the war. Just about every system pioneered how aircraft are still built today. And Boeing remains the manufacturer of the world's best airliners - although as a Canadian Bombardier builds some great, but smaller, ones too. It is worth just standing outside the Boeing assembly building, but if you get a tour of the place it's mind-boggling. The Museum of Flight nearby also deserves a day-long visit.
Lucky Airbus (Germany, France, UK, Spain, etc) was still at loggerheads. Not to defend the Nazi mob, but there were quite a lot of progressive ideas on the drawing board only to fail an idiot dictator not realising their real potential. The Allies has a great "shopping" rush after the Downfall to boost their aviation industries.
Dad was a B29 pilot. He said that the hydraulic coupling from the engine to the prop was iffy and a lot of engines failed on takeoff due to the prop stopping.
My wife's former boss was a B-29 pilot flying out of China. During a TV interview he said the B-29 required all of a 10,000 foot runway to get to takeoff speed of 140 MPH. Many didn't make it, and he lost several buddies when they couldn't lift off.
America at its best - those were the days (for most people), one God, one nation, on purpose, one duty... I give all my gratitude to all the workers, maintainers, mechanics and controllers that made me come back home "safe" after 118 combat missions, Ciao, L Veteran.
Well, I've read many comments before mine, I was a young lad then, and I knew many of my adult neighbors as well as two of my siblings who were involved, either as a young soldier, or a worker in a defense plant. In the town I grew up in, there was a B-25 Bomber plant and a Pratt & Whitney aircraft engine plant, as well as a glider mfg. plant known as Commonwealth Aircraft.. They built" plywood coffins" that were towed behind DC-3's, aka., C-47.s over western Europe during the D-Day invasion. Politically, let us not forget, when you might rail against so called "Big Government", many a man and woman learned skills, and even a trade during that time....and of course, we shouldn't forget "Rosie the Riveter"...my elder sister was working next to her! She is now 91 years of age. Happy Independence Day to all!
The country and a good part of the world pulled together to fight Fascism. We wouldn't have won without the Arsenal of Democracy -- the factories in the US that had to diversify, letting women work on the shop floors. After the War, women were shoved aside but there was no going back. And since the factories were unionized they were able to demand good wages, health care, two week vacations, 40 hour work weeks and all the support systems that built the middle class and became known as the American Dream. That sense of progress, of unity and fairness is something we've lost. But people feel there's something missing. Thanks for commenting. Hope you had a wonderful 4th.
King Rose, your commentary about what happened during, and after the War, is so true...and there is an economic lesson to be learned from this "real world example" of bottom-up economics, versus "Top down economics"! WW-II seems to have been the last war in modern times in which we all shared in the sacrifices that helped to ensure that our men and women who were directly involved in the war effort, might succeed. Gasoline, rubber, silk stockings, along with many foods, were rationed. In other words we all pitched in to do our part for the war effort. Ergo, when the war ended, there was a pent up demand for consumer goods of all kinds, and the economy boomed. In other words, demand proceeded investment, and if consumers have the means to purchase the desired goods and services, those with capital; the Entrepreneur class will invest in plant and equipment to fulfill the market's demands! Sadly, many Conservatives find this economic Philosophy; Known as Keynesian, flawed. Really? What intelligent investor would spend money to produce goods and services when there is either no demand, nor the ability on the part of the consumer to purchase? Duh, they ain't dumb! Sorry about my wild "economic dissertation" but the aftermath of that war is a real life example of how the Real World, actually works! Kansas voters might want to study Economics 101, obviously; Brownback hasn't!
soaringtractor I too lived during the post War years. Somehow your memories are different than my own.. The economists of that time predicted a great post War recession...and yet that never happened. Why? Because they never took into account that there was a pent up desire to have consumer goods that they had to sacrifice for the War effort. In addition, the young men who went to the War as teenagers, came home as adults...they married and started families. And families need homes; and the demand for housing soared, thereby creating a demand for labor and materials to meet the need. In addition to consumer's needs, there was another factor that lead to an economic boon; technology....the only positive aspect of War.
soaringtractor Perhaps what you say might be true...but I'm still not sure what your point is. Are you saying that our Post War Government was inept? If so; please explain...if that's not your message, please share your position on post war economics...I love to express my opinions on that subject. There's nothing more that I would rather do than to have a friendly debate.....
I duuno about that, Wesley Hill- I think the other positive aspect of war is to avoid being tossed into slavery by inhuman monsters. And let us not forget the economic aspect. That war sure ended the Great Depression, didn't it?
The documentary "Requiem for the American Dream" Has some interesting viewpoints on why we don't manufacture anymore. Another is that it became more profitable for banks to make money through financial engineering rather than loaning it to industry. GE as an example has made more money financing things than building things. And so it goes....
Well said brother, are you old enough to recall the GE. commercial: "Better Things Through Science", oops! that may have been a commercial by DuPont....Jeez, I sure hope that I'm not suffering from the early onslaught of dementia! Oh well; what were we talking about? Pardon me while I take my pills...oh, here is that cute little nurse with my cookies and milk....God how vivacious, now I understand Bennie Hill! No relation......
Little known fact is that USA is still the worlds largest manufacturing country. China is getting close. The dollar stores do not tell the true story about what we still make today. Fact check it! We lost a lot, but we still are on top.
Funny thing is that GE have gotten out of the financial business and also wish to sell off the locomotive manufacturing business just after dominating the market with the Evolution Series of locomotives It seems that management thinks medical diagnostic and imaging equipment is the way to go for profits.
I guarantee that construction job with the time constraints was one gigantic headache with more curse words spoken than any other communication. Just the magnesium foundry alone is a crap-shoot of an explosion waiting to happen. Hooking up all that machinery had to be a cluster fk in progress.
I graduated in 1965. My Highschool had a drafting 1,2 and 3 class available only to Juniors and Seniors. I would sneak into the advanced classes to get a challenge for my drafting skills. When I asked to enroll during my senior year, though, the class was filled- and I never was able to go on. I enlisted in the Army that September. Yet, here I retired in Las Vegas as a senior architectural digital modeler, with Autocad- all self-taught. I never did use my "by hand" drafting skills. I built many of these new casinos and almost all of City Center, and World Market in a computer from below-ground up to the flag pole, every detail, including fireplaces, wall art, furniture, faucets, and even door hinges. Funny how life takes control of your future.
Speaking of dumbing-down, NOTHING shown in this film (e.g. machinery, design, testing, etc.) had anything to do with computers or digital technology. Hard-work and ingenuity are foreign concepts to many people, now.
That is the way the "elites" want it, so that workers can be fired and newbies trained to do low level work and robots or CNC machines can do the difficult tasks.
@@boondocker7964 - No need to bring the 'elites' into it. Those who were skilled enough previously moved on to designing, building, operating and maintaining the CNC machines. One skilled guy operating one machine is now looking after a group of CNC machines at double the wage. The 'low-level' guys were the floorsweepers and box movers now moved up to loading and overseeing the CNC machines. Everyone's been upgraded. It's because the world needs only a limited amount of mass-produced stuff that the 30,000 factory workers are now spread across other things. Things like ice cream parlours, fishing lakes, dress and jewellery designers - you know, all those harmless leisure things the fighting was actually for.
It was interesting to see that all engines were disassembled and inspected after a trial run, then rebuilt and tested again before shipping. Very inefficient and labor intensive, but it was the only way to ensure the engines would survive in the field. And many early R-3350's didn't. A B-29 deploying to the Pacific had a spare 3350 slung in the bomb bay to replace one of the other 4 that was likely to fail. The R3350 was a wartime crash program, and it was rushed into production before it was fully developed.
Andy: Yes, I read this, it's a handy way to transport spare engines. The engines overheated in the Pacific and the engine cowling had to be redesigned, plus the fuel heated up so they put cooling fins on the fuel pumps to prevent fuel lock. They also redesigned the GE superchargers, because they overheated as well in the tropics. Same problem, (GE supercharger) happened to the P-38.
Word is that after the war it was refined into a pretty decent powerplant. The two remaining airworthy B-29's now fly on engines largely assembled from those later commercial versions of the R-3350. And of course they fly without bomb payloads and the engines aren't run at the high manifold pressures [turbo-supercharger boost] that was required of combat missions. The heavily-leaded avgas isn't available anymore so they can't run at those power settings.
Russ G Any idea as to the octane level they did run at during the war? I think that we would be able to run at a similar level with the additives we have today, but they are nursing the engines to prolong their service life.
To state the obvious. The russians won the war. Usa and brits, polen etc just went in when germany was already starting to lose. Probably to avoid russia owning to much of europe.
Marcus it is clear that you have not been of a student of WW-II....you might want to "bone up" on the history of what lead up to the War, who was responsible for what action during the War, and what finally ended the War! Rather than crediting the Russians; you might want to credit Germany.....they gave us the Intellectual human resources, scientific knowledge and much more that enabled us to build that "Bomb"! Of course that wasn't their intent.....
In the summer of 1943, the Truman Committee revealed that the Lockland, Ohio, plant of the Curtiss-Wright company had been supplying defective aircraft engines to the Army Air Force; charges included conspiracy and collusion with AAF inspectors. This scandal became an inspiration for playwright Arthur Miller’s play All My Sons.
MrShobar ----- All this talk of the greatest generation is a bit of rose colored hindsight. There was a lot of slacking, graft and outright stealing going on as well. I'm old and a listener. I heard these stories when the older guys guard was down. A friends dad was sent to a plant outside of New York City to straighten out the corruption where the unions were busier stealing than manufacturing. In the London bombings fire fighters and thugs were out stealing everything they could get their hands on. The estimated participation in the black market was 100%. The corruption during the Vietnam war was legendary. I am not buying the BS that other generations were better than the current batch of young people.
speedskiff2 Initially the 3350's TBO was 200 hours, but by the end of the war it was up to 750, this at a time when German engines typically went only about 50 hours, and only half that in the case of their jet engines. I have been unable to find numbers for Japanese aircraft engines, but I doubt that they were much better than the German ones.
CaptHollister magnesium overcast book states XC-99 had one 4360 go 814 hrs and two others @ 524 and 630 hrs. 500 hrs was about 20 flights. Technological wonders, but maintenance intensive! Some senator during B-36 hearings claimed it cost 15K an hour in 1952 dollars to fly it.
Too bad these engines didn't live up to their design specifications; the B-29 had problems getting airborne at full rated weight in the hot, humid conditions of the South Pacific with four of these engines running at high manifold pressure and high octane aviation gas. I think Chrysler did the best they could but the engine's design just wasn't proven due to the demands of wartime. Sadly, many USAAF crewmen paid for those shortcomings with their lives.
There were many bombers that crashed with their bombs and a full load of avgas at Tinian on takeoff. Ernie Pyle visited Tinian, but he did not tell the folks at home of the horrific crashes that killed crews at that little island.
@@DavidN23Skidoo Maybe the men who lost their lives would feel a bit better if they knew that there were two B-29s to carry only two bombs that finally got the emperor to end the war.
@@enthalpiaentropia7804 Hiroshima & Nagasaki are the result of the then fanatical Japanese government bent on fighting to the last man and woman had the planned Allied invasion of the home islands of Japan taken place in late 1945 into 1946.
the early Wright R-3350 for the B-29 were beset with dangerous reliability problems as some bombers were lost due to these engines the design of them the exhaust of front bank of cylinders exits the front and the front collector ring is in the path of the airflow. as the two airworthy B-29s had their original dodge built engines replaced with hybrid cross of the later model Curtiss- wright R-3350 engines.
It must have been a terrible experience to one day be churning out vital parts for America’s war effort, and then suddenly no longer needed as the war was over, I can imagine that on one hand they were overjoyed that the war was finally over, but on the other, wondering how they would continue to put food on the table and pay the bills. I would think that a lot of these workers were unskilled when they went to work in this plant and by the time they were ignominiously made redundant were skilled or at least semi skilled, skills that were learned by thousands and thousands of American workers, so finding a job after the war would have been difficult.
The Greatest Generation does it again. Thank You
when i hear the production numbers it just blows me away. what a generation of hard working, extremely smart and patriotic people
Thats 53 engines a day! Production levels that would be just a dream these days. When a country is pushed into a corner so to speak, everyone does their bit. Just to look at the machines required to build the parts is more than just mind boggling. Someone somewhere had to design and test these machines and processes even before manufacture. America was more than just a powerhouse of production at that time.
instablaster...
@@bobolulu7615 I would bet that any major car manufacturer can out produce that number. With better reliability and quality control. It was outstanding for its time.
@@frankbutaric3565 today we rely on outsourced parts and labor from adversarial countrys. Plus, It would be a challenge just to keep the EPA and OSHA away as well.
@@roberta.6399,
If things get tight and there is a BIG thread, EPA and OSHA are the first things that are revoked by government.
My father worked as a machinist at the Chicago Dodge plant during WW2. I treasure the micrometers that he left to me that he used to help build the B-29 engines. America had patriots in the factories as well as in the armed forces in those days. That was the greatest generation.
WOW!
AMAZING!!
Oh I'd love to see pictures of those micrometers.
@@sjhanson1690 Dear Stacy, It will require a couple days , but I will take some pictures for posting. Sincerely, Fred
@@fredericwidlak2071 My great Grandfather was a B-25 mechanic during WW2. I guess it's because of him that I have an interest in aviation.
I'd love to see those pictures as well.
@@cDog8766 Thanks for your interest. I will try to get some pictures to you, as well. Sincerely, Fred.
They manufactured 1,600 working, commissioned engines every month, 53 A DAY, provided no weekend interruption. All double-tested and double-assembled...... Just plain incredible. What organization, logistics and cleverness! Clockwork of 30,000 people every day. I doubt that is possible today.
Double-tested, double-assembled? What a truly brutal and honorable quality assurance. Gives me chills.
We were so unbeatable back then. Greatest generation by a long shot.
Yeah, what the hell happened?
It’s crazy how we went from not having planes to having 18 cylinder radial engines in just a few decades. The amount of engineering that went into designing and building is just monumental. Think about all of the tooling and machines that needed to be invented to make this happen. Minus the war going on it had to be a really cool time to be alive.
The scale of this operation, the millions of details, the custom machinery and fixtures, the time frame involved and then shutting it down almost "just after" it was completed really staggers the mind. And then he points out the "electrical savings" and the "savings" from the castors like that was something worth mentioning, when in fact the whole thing was "waste", thanks to the madness of war. I look at this in AWE as someone who spent his life in "very light industrial engineering", and it just leaves my mind numb thinking of what all was involved, AND then to think of how many more similar operations were taking place all over the country for all the needs of warfare, AMAZING. And to think that each engine was assembled twice, for the sake of those who had to go in harms way...
My dad worked in the Passkigula, MS ship yard. He always said he and a woman welder were number 1 & number 2 best welders in the whole shipyard. He said he worked all the double shifts that they would let him. I looked at some of his pay stubs and most were over 80 hours a week.
Heroes
Just to think. A weld might save some kid from dying somewhere in Europe. To be a dad, and do that as a job, I'd throw myself at it too. They are heroes.
Great tribute for what amounted to a fantastic amalgamation of efforts. On the other end, my father worked for the War Assets Administration at Boeing/Wichita. I was very young but remember him bringing home stories of how troublesome the first R3350s were with overheating and catching fire in the B-29s. C-W eventually redesigned the engine to direct the front cylinder bank exhausts to the rear rather than to the front which had been the source of so many failures and headaches. The big engine went on to serve admirably in post war applications on both military and civilian aircraft.
The engine powered the Douglas Skyraider over Vietnam. I've got a visualization thing about the big bombers, for instance when I see the Lancaster it looks like four Spitfires. I know the cowling isn't the same on the Skyraider and B-29 but I think you see where I'm going with it.
As a manufacturing engineer in today's world, it takes 5 months just to get the purchase orders sent to the tooling suppliers. Back then they designed and rolled out new equipment in less than 5 months. I grew up in the wrong era.
Not sure where you work but where and complexities but I worked about a month from concept to tool in hand. With today’s modern capabilities of CAD and CnC as well as rapid prototype better and quicker results are the norm.
@@frankbutaric3565I work at a place that has educated people that can write a simple paragraph, with correct grammer.
I bet he could buy a house in like 2 paychecks unlike today
Back in the '40s we built the facilities to build tens of thousands of trucks, aircraft, ships, and everything that goes along with them and did it in 4 years time. Now it takes 4 years to get the permits to build the building.
Today is a big laugh compared to the effectiveness of the generation of people in the 1940’s !
My dad was an AC, Flew 40 missions as AC. Was in the first group on Saipan. 73rd Wing,497th group,869 bomb sq. A Square.3. Never talked about the war. Finally got some talk when he was 92. His particular plane flew 50 missions. He lost 4 engines during the duration of his tour. Before he flew missions it was his job to test fly every plane that had been overhauled. Before he was assigned to B-29's he was an instructor , training B-24 crews before they flew to bases in North Africa.
It's truly mind boggling what has been done in the past.
Mean while somebody had to find, drill, pump, refine, all the oil to burn in those engines.
War is all about make work in the end. Just think of the global consumption of earth resources in w.w.ll alone. Staggering amounts of every type of material much of it to be dumped at sea at wars end.
All so "uncle joe" Stalin could take half the world in his greedy fingers.
This plant was just a tiny pin point in comparison to all the consumption in w.w.ll.
no its more mind boggling we cant do the same anymore without some shitty computer.
@@billbright1755 "all so we could DEFEAT NAZI GERMANY AND THE EMPIRE OF JAPAN"
Fixed that for you.
If anyone thinks that they're clever or smart, let them compare themselves to Jacque Droz.
Without a doubt the most mind-boggling craftsman I have ever seen...1700 s
Look him up and let me know what you think.
Just think about that. Without a single computer, just brains and braun this plant went from an open field to producing many many thousands of engines in a matter of 8 months.
As I read all of your comments below, I feel the dedication and feeling of pride that america experienced during WW2. Thanks to all of you and your family members for coming together and defending our way of life and our allies. America did rise to the occasion and many sacrificed their lives for us. So many paid the ultimate price. How can we adequately show our appreciation? Maybe by never forgetting why so many lives were given for us, the survivors.
Thanks for fixing the volume.
This footage certainly shows how far this country has fallen since the end of WW2. This is the time when calculations were done on a slide ruler, and figured things out without the help of a computer - all drawings were done by hand. We can't even build a car from start to finish without parts outsourced to China or some other country. So sad. Thanks for sharing.
72 years later it's still a-frikkin'-mazing!
And the engines ran on compress air no fuel is or was ever used in aircraft engines. Free energy has been here for over a hundred years
Wow.....The incredible desire to succeed, to win, to defeat tyranny....The sheer will and determination of this generation I fear shall never be equaled again....Now, our youth play pokemon...
It was remarkable.
WW3 will only last about 40 hours. Why not play Pokemon?
Veronica Kovacic Really? You know nothing about me yet you wish to disrespect me? I'm a USAF vet...I fought for your freedom to act like an ass...Now go on, go play pokemon....You must be one of those safe spacers....I'll send you a safety pin.
FR u r missing the point.
Everything is too easy for people now. Stores are stocked to the ceilings with things you can walk up and grab. It’s been this way for a number of generations now. It’s made us become weak. I dread the day the rug gets pulled out from underneath us.
We owe everything we have to the greatest generation. They allowed us to live this life style. Things are so out of balance in our society, we wouldn’t know what to do if things went horribly wrong.
Man to have these parts today for Warbirds restoration WOW!
I dont think America has the capacity to replicate such a masterpiece again.
This was the great AMERICA that once was!!
And the engines ran on compress air no fuel is or was ever used in aircraft engines. Free energy has been here for over a hundred years
Yeah, building massive fleets of airliners for free to get people together to celebrate Unity and everlasting World Peace, to transport food to stop World starvation. And the list of humanitarian progress does go on ...
@@williamjones7604 idiot
@@kerrytodd3753 Yes an out of the box thinker
the high octane gas of those engines was so volitile the guys used it in their cigarette lighters
Interesting clip - thanks for upping. I had no idea they disassembled every engine and then reassembled. At Derby, RR used to do the same to one Merlin in a batch. Painstaking stuff, but the size of operations during "total war" made this possible.
I was amazed to hear that.
Assembled, test run for several hours, disassembled, inspected for wear due to a defect, then reassembled for delivery. There were a couple of more steps. Yeah, I see your comment was from six years ago, hope everything's going well.
This documentary and the River Rouge plant in Detroit are miracles That should be understood by modern America but the world has largely forgotten this greatness. Imagine Iron Ore and raw materials arriving in one end and finished cars out the other!
That's what China is doing now.
That is "Dino" stuff. Building the same object, an engine, does require far more different components and numbers of units these days. The production process has to be far more efficient to be cost effective and still profitable. No company can survive without profits for future sustainability. And the greed of CEOs and shareholders is another "killer factor" to be accounted for.
As usual, the worker is expected to bear the load by accepting low wages. And that is the reason AMERICAN producers gave the job to China.
CUT the tax cuts for the top end. CUT their horrendous salaries. And then production might come back.
If only the quality was that good these days..
This is more than fantastic. Could this type of factory be operated today? Look at the incredibly short time it took to build the factory. The amount of machines required for specific jobs is mind boggling, then there is the people who actually designed and built these machines! The foundry, the machining, the assembly - just out of this world stuff.
Imagine having to design production assembly techniques and fixtures so that the common person was able to to his/her task correctly every time with very little skill.
I wonder if there was any one person who knew everything about the entire building and its production process at each point. One other thing is - could it be done today? Could it even be built today? The amount of paperwork and red tape would put it years behind what has been achieved here.
Remember this is not the only thing that was going on in the war. Planes were being built, ships built, guns, ammunitions, even uniforms and food. America during World War 2 was one big manufacturing powerhouse.
Incredible achievements, very inspirational, should be used in schools as a teaching aid showing what can be achieved by a community determined
What an amazing feat. Could we do this today? We need manufacturing skills back here in America now! Five thousand sub-contracters. Can you imagine the jobs that created?
My Dad was aircrew on Lockheed EC-121H Warning Star Constellations in the early 1960s and they flew with the R-3350s. Amazing engines second oy to the R-4360s, which had 28 cylinders in 4 rows of 7 jugs, each.
amazing watching these videos. All the engineering to build the factories, the tools needed to make the parts, then the engineering that went into the design of the engine.
No shit.
Imagine the sound near the test cells of all those engine's being run up.
Earth moving my friend all that power being unleashed, , ,WOO HOO.
And they did it in months instead of the decades it takes to build anything like that today. What have we become since then?
The Dodge Chicago plant was built to manufacture R3350’s during the war. After the war, Preston Tucker built his Tucker 48’s there. Then Ford owned the plant and built R4360 engines then later J57 Turbojets. Then it was sold to land developers and turned into the present day Ford City mall. You can still see the exhaust stacks from the engine test cells there.
Tootsie Rolls Candy occupies the northern portion of this plant on Cicero Ave. Apparently they have a Wright 3350 engine on display in their facility.
I just saw “Tora Tora Tora” a few days ago. I was reminded of the line said by the actor playing Admiral Yamamoto at the movie end when he found out Pearl was attacked before Japan declared war. He said “I feel all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” What you are seeing here is resolve.
My dad worked on these engines on a KB-29 at Sculthorpe RAF in England in the mid 50's.
Yes, I remember that base well. I've been thinking of trying to go back for a visit to all the old RAF bases I was involved with. Thanks for bringing her up.
The plant extended from 7100 to 7900 South on Cicero avenue in Chicago. Most of the land is currently a shopping mall, however some buildings of the plant still stand;those smokestacks still stand today.
and the tootsie roll plant
And Cicero was filled with Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Poles that came from desperate poverty and brutal governments long before the war. They worked the hardest as they knew what losing the war would mean better than anyone else. Ask my father and mother.
in the 1970s, I worked in the plant housing the upsetters that made 75% of the pistons for the workhorse B24 bomber. Many of my colleagues were men who had been hired in the late 1930s and who had been excused from serving in the military during the war, because the work they did was deemed essential for th war effort.
Those were lucky guys - all the lonely women and no men around to service them.
These engines had a history of catching fire. In fact, the prototype B-29 with Boeing’s chief pilot, Eddie Allen and a cadre of engineers were killed on a test flight when one of its R-3350 engines caught fire and caused a wing to collapse. Overheating was a huge problem during WWll.
Caught on fire because they swallowed valves, there were mountains of these engines piled high on the island march to Japan because of reliability issues of Wright, after a very low total time they just changed the engine.
I’m a Brit living in Texas and I never cease to marvel at how fast the US went to full war production not only in existing factories but new sites built from scratch. The shipyard, aero plants and weapons and munitions. Watching those stories makes one wonder how Germany or Japan could even dream of winning. Add to that a fully mobilized UK manufacturing which was also significant and the Axis were literally drowned in allied production. The video series War Factories really makes all this so clear.
This plant was at what is now Ford city mall. Some of the buildings still exist. You see them on google earth. It was reopened during the Korean war. This was the Tucker plant then Ford plant.
An aerial photo in 1941 showed miles of empty land surrounding the plant. Now 80 years later aging subdivisions.
Built this huge plant in 10 months
Oct. 6, 2018---I remember reading some where some big shot was being given a tour of the final assembly and testing of the B-29's before they were to go over seas and into combat. He thought it was too complicated and doomed to failure. The Boeing guy told him to find anyone he wanted and bring that person back where they were. The VIP did, with the Boeing rep gave the unknown man the manual for engine starting procedures. Man read the manual with everyone behind watching him. He started all 4 engines by himself using the manual. Don't think any aircraft manufacturer would be willing to do this today, but then things were different back then.
The B-29 development program was the most expensive undertaken during WW2. It even exceeded the costs associated with the Manhattan Project.
+MrShobar WRONG, you're full of BULLSHIT.
+ELECTROSTATIC DISC LIFTERS Go to hell.
MrShobar
Another pissed off ignorant fuck.
Yes he was.
I've seen it in writing and on other documentaries. The B-29 project cost hundreds of millions, but the A-bomb was mostly research so didn't cost as much. The uranium refining process was the most expensive part, but still didn't cost as much as 4 Iowa battleships. (at $100 million each!) Why? Lower labor costs mostly, plus so many parts in a plane compared to three bombs.
I stood to my feet, took my hat off and put my hand across my heart at the end!
Stuart, I do that quite often when watching these fine stories. WHAT A COUNTRY we once were! Now we are a colliection of crybabies.
@@glenkelley6048 Not so. Unity is still there but not reported because it does not sell newspapers or attract eyeballs. Negative sells and it all started with our 24 hour news cycle and the monster it created and must be fed. Less CNN and Fox news viewing may be the answer.
We never could have done this marvelous production program if our country had been as divided then as it is now.
Any idea how bad the racism and sexism was back then?
It was more divided. The difference between now and then, is that people who aren't male and white no longer keep quiet out of fear like they did back then.
Not the same thing as not being divided at all.
@@lordgarion514 Actually I do have an idea about how it was then. I was a kid living in Southern California in a city full of defense plants. My mother worked at Douglas Aircraft building C-47’s. Certainly there was racism and sexism then, as there always has been in our country, but enough people worked together to see that we won. These days we would just be calling each other names and running in opposite directions as we are now. These days South Korea, Japan , Germany, New Zealand, etc. all work together to solve their biggest problem. Daily it becomes more obvious that we can’t. But then, each of them has a leader. Hopefully we will get one again next week.
@@jimpal
Like I said, the non white males knew to keep their mouths shut.
That's not the same thing as "getting along"not by any stretch of the imagination.
That's like saying slavery wasn't that big of a deal because they mostly "got along".
Except they mostly "got along" because they knew what would happen if they didn't stay "in their place".
It was greatly divided concerning whether or not we should have been involved in the war, Pearl Harbor changed that overnight however.
Just like 9/11 did, stop and think about it, the day after the terrorist attacks the people of this country were more united than I've ever seen them in the 55 years I've been on this planet, and two years later when US forces invaded Iraq the vast majority of the people were united in that cause, even more so the year before when they went into Afghanistan.
@@dukecraig2402 You keep wanting to make this a black-white thing. In Long Beach, California during WWII there were few, if any, black people at the defense plants. My issue, which still stands, is the divide between right and left we have now. Look at the photos of those ladies at the WWII aircraft factories with the scarves on their heads. Nowadays half of the workers would want to wear red caps. Such a divide never helps teamwork.
Great engine, which was also used in the Lockheed Constellation, Lockheed P2V Neptune, and AD-1 Douglas Skyraider. Second, in size, to the R-4360.
The design Wright sent to Chrysler had many problems, The engines overheated . Chrysler (Dodge) made hundreds of improvements to the engines to remedy the problems inherent in the Wright design which really helped. The efficiency of this plant reduced the cost to the govt. and saved the taxpayers millions of dollars.
great engine-but not reliable enough.
There were many design flaws in that engine which limited what the B-29 was able to do.
The story goes that Stalin wanted a heavy bomber. The TU -5 was an exact copy of the B-29. They took apart B-29s that made emergency landings in Vladivostok.
They experienced the same issues on their copy of the engines as on the originals!
absolutely staggering what we can accomplish and produce when properly motivated!
We shall hopefully never experience “Total War” again but that may yet again happen.
Now just imagine what Germany did, maintaining and building their war plants while under constant air attack, having electric power, and other utilities constantly interrupted. During the war their production rates actually increased as they distributed their manufacturing around the country. There are a lot of industrial and manufacturing lessons to be learned from that war
gk10002000 its all irrelevant now...design, manufacturing processes and automation are waaaay more advanced now...also, I don't think in next major war north america will be able to enjoy the piece and quiet during manufacturing they had during ww2.
One of the lesson you can find if you go read "The Strategic Bombing Survey" is that we did NOT bomb German electrical power generating sites..They were in known locations and we and the British for some reason didn't bomb them... And "under constant air attack might have made a bigger dent maybe, if the definition of "precision Daylight Bombing" wasn't 50% of the bombs in a 4 mile radius---which even that the US couldn't manage...The German production of everything was seriously hampered by their class-bound rigid thinking that machine operators must be journeyman level machinists---which is what I've been doing for more or less 40 years..more...The US applied lessons learned mainly by GM in the 30s: specialised single purpose machines carefully designed and manufactured that would allow a guy right off the farm to do ONE OPERATION correctly with minimal trianing--hours or a few days , and still get a correct result..versus the German --and the Italian and the Japanese putting highly skilled machinists behind general purpose machines like ordinary turret lathes or horisontal mills..Our methods requirered far more Process Engineering and planning and much higher capital outlay, but less operator skill and input...and we made scores of thousands while they made hundreds..Same in ships and same in tanks..same in radar, same in code breaking...So many men were involved in production of long range heavy bomber that both USA and Britain had serious shortage of infantrymen despite our population being twice that of Germany's---and by time USA got around to serious levels of fighting, the Germans already having lost nearly 3,000,000 battle dead...and I think you know where 88% of those men died...
gk10002000, You have said it so well....the German people are to be admired for many reasons; .sadly, they "bought into" an Ideology that they hoped would restore pride and prosperity to the "Father Land"! Does not that same hope resonate in America today? Ironically it does...we now have another bombastic egotist that promises to restore America to some imaginary "Camelot" from the past.....
Now it's true that there was significant resistance from both management and workers towards "american" production methods, but the threat of air raids made it impossible from the start to build gigantic factories such as seen here or to use specialised machines that lacked the flexibility to retool for what was needed. Nevertheless, under unimaginable conditions germany still managed to produce over 2000 machines a month in the fall of 1944..
Galland You are right, and that's what I find so astonishing....near the end of the War they almost got their act together...thank goodness time ran out!
From Wikipedia
After the war, a lease for the plant was awarded to the Tucker Car Corporation, and it later used by several automobile manufacturers including Ford Motor Company. Tootsie Roll Industries moved into a vacated portion of the plant in 1967. To this day, TRI uses these tunnels for archives and storage as well as locker rooms, as Ford City uses them for a strip of boutiques
After WW2, Preston Tucker leased this plant from the War Assets Administration to build the now-famous Tucker '48.
You're absolutely right.
What happened to the plant after the Tucker era?
The Ford Motor Company used it for an assembly plant, then it was used to make candy ("Tootsie Rolls").
Is the plant still working today? And making what?
Went to college Fall of '75 in Quanset Huts that were built for Ford War plant in '42.They are still up as part of Daley College.
Those engines look like a nightmare to maintain.
The B29 project cost more than the Manhattan project. The atomic bomb was cheaper than the plane that dropped it.
modern day restorers cringe at the sight of tons of extra parts that will go the smelter..
Yes Sir I am Choking to the fact most of those parts are obsolete and or unavailable. But reproduction parts are making there way to be made available for those magnificent antiques.
*Winston's,* There's a field assembly video for the P-47 that's really cool. In its way, it's the opposite of this clip. I bring it up because I recently read there's a guy who bought a war-surplus P-47 in a crate, like the one in that clip, and he keeps it stored in the bomb bay of his B-36! I just thought you might like to hear about that, in case you haven't. Imagine a carbon fiber airframe P-47 or Spitfire, everything else the same, yikes.
It's just labor.
And just think, this was only one engine for one Plane. I've wondered many times if we could ever or would ever rise to the occasion like this again. I wonder...
Other engines like the Pratt and Whitney R-2800 that powered Thunderbolt's and Hellcats were already proven. They were 2,000+ HP engines in some versions but these engines had to approach 3,000 HP.
"I've wondered many times if we could ever or would ever rise to the occasion like this again". We just don't have the manufacturing base today what we had back then so I too wonder BUT after being in Mfg. for 50+ years I kind of doubt it.
? Today we have war fighting machines/personnell in place and ready to go and have constant upgrades/R & D and training, back then we didn't and needed to gear up after the war started. The difficult thing today would be the political will, not the weapons/troops.
@@aeromach2007 It's the people we have here now.
King Rose Archives; I once saw a Tucker automobile in Kansas City, Mo. As I recall it had a center mounted headlight that moved as the car was steered through a turn. In 1949 Ford came out with a radical new design that incorporated a spherical feature in the center of a chrome grille. At that time; a story was "going around" that Ford meant to install a headlight in that part of the grille, ....as the story goes; Tucker sued Ford and the resulting 49' Ford Grille is what we remember today. I'm pretty sure that it was just an "Urban Myth", but I found it interesting.
Not sure but you can see it in the Ford design. We should ask the Tucker family to chime in.
wesley hill
King Rose Archives That might be instructive...
soaringtractor You are so right...my brother In-law owned one....I was just a kid at the time...if that timeline doesn't make sense; it's because I was a "mistake"...an unintended child....my nearest sibling is 92 years old.The other two have been dead for a while.
wesley hill b
the Wendover B29 Lenolia gay assembly hanger /BASE, is still in wendover UT, been there and its spooky empty old base , lots of homeless living in the old barracks, using wood from old buildings for heat, shortened runways are used for small aircraft, WW11 runs were 12,000ft long and if you over shoot straight ahead was the smooth Bonneville salt flats.
i couldnt even guess what it cost to build such a base, but plans at local BBB museum says 1939, so we must have had plans for it.
while i was down town in local UT grocery store noticed an old commercial refridgerator(back room), looked it over date of manufacture was 1940, i bet a lot of beer was bought there, at its peak there were 40,000 men.
Ron Brothers Fascinating. Have to see that some day.
The B-29 "Enola Gay" was built by Martin at Bellevue,Nebraska at what is now Offutt Air Force Base. Paul Tibbets named the B-29 after his mother. I believe "Bockscar" also rolled of the assembly line at Bellevue. I have been through Wendover many times and often thought of the Army Air Corp men who made the journey to Salt Lake City for R&R after grueling work schedules training to deliver the "Fatman" and "Little Boy" weapons. Little Ojo was fast asleep in Albuquerque when the first A bomb components rolled through town going south on US 85 on their way to Trinity site. The Atomic Age and Cold War were just a few years away. See "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes for one of the best accounts ever written about the Manhattan Project.The training at Wendover is covered. The movie "Bombardier" and "Above and Beyond" both have Wendover connections. I believe parts of "Bombardier" were filmed at Kirtland AFB located in Albuquerque. Kirtland trained bombardiers during WW II and I watched many AT-11s fly over our home on the east mesa. Just the ramblings of an 78 year old fart.
A true testament to what the American worker can accomplish when the calling comes. Since then, most manufacturing jobs have been sent oversees for costs cuts. Our labor force suffered and we no longer are the leaders in engineering and production. We won the war but lost our capability to build greatness.
I never knew they completely disassembled the motor after testing it.
Holy cow it's crazy all the fighting in the comments that started with this video.
+C Smith The Internet in general, and TH-cam specifically is peopled by angry lonely people who get no satisfaction in life outside of being hateful, reactionary, and muckraking on their computer. Don't worry about the haters, just be sorry for them.
Half of the fun in watching these TH-cam videos is to read the comments. Some well informed comments punctuated occasionally by foul-mouthed people like ELECTROSTATIC DISC LIFTERS.
@@ightwoman I wish I could be so succinct! Thank you.
13:50 The captions says: "If necessary dildos were packed around the engine to absorb moisture"
Mt. Rainier, Washington at 0:32. It was frequently used as a backdrop for Boeing airplanes in flight.
I worked on the R-3350's and flew the SP-2H's in the NAVY. Powerful and sounded great. I had no idea they ran them and then totally disassembled and reran them in the building process.
It's to my understanding that every aircraft engine was made that way during the war, even the Packard made Merlin engines, they actually had oval shaped racks that the engines hung from and moved from one stage to the next where each worker had one single part to take off of an engine that had already been test run so that they could be inspected and cleaned, then they moved to another oval shaped rack where reassembly happened.
I was born in the 60s. Guys I grew up with couldn't rebuild a lawn mower engine. Sad.
Most of the people who flocked into these plants to work were unskilled and were trained on the job.
Now they demand a college degree to get a $15 entry level position and you are expected to know everything already.
TheB-29 WAS a super bomber. very advanced for the time. A BOEING of course.
Its on my bucket list to visit Boeing if I can.
thanks
You are quite correct Ray. While everyone is babbling about German aircraft advancements of WW2, most of which were never built or flown in combat, the B-29 is without doubt the most advanced production aircraft of the war. Just about every system pioneered how aircraft are still built today. And Boeing remains the manufacturer of the world's best airliners - although as a Canadian Bombardier builds some great, but smaller, ones too.
It is worth just standing outside the Boeing assembly building, but if you get a tour of the place it's mind-boggling. The Museum of Flight nearby also deserves a day-long visit.
Thats neat. As a kid I lived near Farmingdale AND Bethpage[Republis and Grumman]. The dogfights over Great South Bay were fun to watch
Lucky Airbus (Germany, France, UK, Spain, etc) was still at loggerheads. Not to defend the Nazi mob, but there were quite a lot of progressive ideas on the drawing board only to fail an idiot dictator not realising their real potential. The Allies has a great "shopping" rush after the Downfall to boost their aviation industries.
Dad was a B29 pilot. He said that the hydraulic coupling from the engine to the prop was iffy and a lot of engines failed on takeoff due to the prop stopping.
My wife's former boss was a B-29 pilot flying out of China. During a TV interview he said the B-29 required all of a 10,000 foot runway to get to takeoff speed of 140 MPH. Many didn't make it, and he lost several buddies when they couldn't lift off.
America at its best - those were the days (for most people), one God, one nation, on purpose, one duty... I give all my gratitude to all the workers, maintainers, mechanics and controllers that made me come back home "safe" after 118 combat missions, Ciao, L Veteran.
Well, I've read many comments before mine, I was a young lad then, and I knew many of my adult neighbors as well as two of my siblings who were involved, either as a young soldier, or a worker in a defense plant. In the town I grew up in, there was a B-25 Bomber plant and a Pratt & Whitney aircraft engine plant, as well as a glider mfg. plant known as Commonwealth Aircraft.. They built" plywood coffins" that were towed behind DC-3's, aka., C-47.s over western Europe during the D-Day invasion.
Politically, let us not forget, when you might rail against so called "Big Government", many a man and woman learned skills, and even a trade during that time....and of course, we shouldn't forget "Rosie the Riveter"...my elder sister was working next to her! She is now 91 years of age. Happy Independence Day to all!
The country and a good part of the world pulled together to fight Fascism. We wouldn't have won without the Arsenal of Democracy -- the factories in the US that had to diversify, letting women work on the shop floors. After the War, women were shoved aside but there was no going back. And since the factories were unionized they were able to demand good wages, health care, two week vacations, 40 hour work weeks and all the support systems that built the middle class and became known as the American Dream. That sense of progress, of unity and fairness is something we've lost. But people feel there's something missing. Thanks for commenting. Hope you had a wonderful 4th.
King Rose, your commentary about what happened during, and after the War, is so true...and there is an economic lesson to be learned from this "real world example" of bottom-up economics, versus "Top down economics"!
WW-II seems to have been the last war in modern times in which we all shared in the sacrifices that helped to ensure that our men and women who were directly involved in the war effort, might succeed.
Gasoline, rubber, silk stockings, along with many foods, were rationed. In other words we all pitched in to do our part for the war effort.
Ergo, when the war ended, there was a pent up demand for consumer goods of all kinds, and the economy boomed. In other words, demand proceeded investment, and if consumers have the means to purchase the desired goods and services, those with capital; the Entrepreneur class will invest in plant and equipment to fulfill the market's demands! Sadly, many Conservatives find this economic Philosophy; Known as Keynesian, flawed. Really? What intelligent investor would spend money to produce goods and services when there is either no demand, nor the ability on the part of the consumer to purchase? Duh, they ain't dumb! Sorry about my wild "economic dissertation" but the aftermath of that war is a real life example of how the Real World, actually works! Kansas voters might want to study Economics 101, obviously; Brownback hasn't!
soaringtractor I too lived during the post War years. Somehow your memories are different than my own.. The economists of that time predicted a great post War recession...and yet that never happened. Why? Because they never took into account that there was a pent up desire to have consumer goods that they had to sacrifice for the War effort. In addition, the young men who went to the War as teenagers, came home as adults...they married and started families. And families need homes; and the demand for housing soared, thereby creating a demand for labor and materials to meet the need. In addition to consumer's needs, there was another factor that lead to an economic boon; technology....the only positive aspect of War.
soaringtractor Perhaps what you say might be true...but I'm still not sure what your point is. Are you saying that our Post War Government was inept? If so; please explain...if that's not your message, please share your position on post war economics...I love to express my opinions on that subject. There's nothing more that I would rather do than to have a friendly debate.....
I duuno about that, Wesley Hill- I think the other positive aspect of war is to avoid being tossed into slavery by inhuman monsters. And let us not forget the economic aspect. That war sure ended the Great Depression, didn't it?
I know I've asked this before, but would someone please fix the volume on this video?! It sounds like was at minimum setting. Thank you.
My God all the work and effort...
Makes me sad to think of all the finished parts being destroyed
Amazing! Simply amazing what they had to come up with to build one major component.
This would never be possible today in 2019!
Happens now in China or other low wage countries
The documentary "Requiem for the American Dream" Has some interesting viewpoints on why we don't manufacture anymore. Another is that it became more profitable for banks to make money through financial engineering rather than loaning it to industry. GE as an example has made more money financing things than building things. And so it goes....
Well said brother, are you old enough to recall the GE. commercial: "Better Things Through Science", oops! that may have been a commercial by DuPont....Jeez, I sure hope that I'm not suffering from the early onslaught of dementia!
Oh well; what were we talking about? Pardon me while I take my pills...oh, here is that cute little nurse with my cookies and milk....God how vivacious, now I understand Bennie Hill! No relation......
U
U-2 Donalda....whoops! That's a U.S. Spy plane....I shoulda, coulda, said: U-Too Donalda..........but alas; I didn't!
Little known fact is that USA is still the worlds largest manufacturing country. China is getting close. The dollar stores do not tell the true story about what we still make today. Fact check it! We lost a lot, but we still are on top.
Funny thing is that GE have gotten out of the financial business and also wish to sell off the locomotive manufacturing business just after dominating the market with the Evolution Series of locomotives
It seems that management thinks medical diagnostic and imaging equipment is the way to go for profits.
Lots of impressive things in this video, but most of all for me was all the staggering numbers mentioned. 30,000 employees? 150 acre plant?
3 shifts around the clock, do the math and it's not unbelievable.
I guarantee that construction job with the time constraints was one gigantic headache with more curse words spoken than any other communication. Just the magnesium foundry alone is a crap-shoot of an explosion waiting to happen. Hooking up all that machinery had to be a cluster fk in progress.
My goodness me!!! I had no idea!
If you had a workplace injury, please call the Law Offices of....
Spooky, i'm watching this on August the 14th. VJ Day.
Draftsmen...lots and lots of draftsmen. Every one of those parts had to be drawn out. No CAD no CAM...JUST hands.
I graduated in 1965. My Highschool had a drafting 1,2 and 3 class available only to Juniors and Seniors. I would sneak into the advanced classes to get a challenge for my drafting skills. When I asked to enroll during my senior year, though, the class was filled- and I never was able to go on. I enlisted in the Army that September. Yet, here I retired in Las Vegas as a senior architectural digital modeler, with Autocad- all self-taught. I never did use my "by hand" drafting skills. I built many of these new casinos and almost all of City Center, and World Market in a computer from below-ground up to the flag pole, every detail, including fireplaces, wall art, furniture, faucets, and even door hinges. Funny how life takes control of your future.
And a slide rule
It’s amazing. Isn’t they down tools and walked away at the announcement of the victory
It's amazing what can be accomplished in a very short period of time when you are all pulling on the same end of the rope.
Hooking the plane engines up to generaters now thats dam smart !!!!
Truly, that was America's greatest generation.
Speaking of dumbing-down, NOTHING shown in this film (e.g. machinery, design, testing, etc.) had anything to do with computers or digital technology. Hard-work and ingenuity are foreign concepts to many people, now.
That is the way the "elites" want it, so that workers can be fired and newbies trained to do low level work and robots or CNC machines can do the difficult tasks.
Have you thought what it takes to build a microprocessor? What it takes to program a computer. The skills required aren't less, just different.
@@boondocker7964 - No need to bring the 'elites' into it. Those who were skilled enough previously moved on to designing, building, operating and maintaining the CNC machines. One skilled guy operating one machine is now looking after a group of CNC machines at double the wage. The 'low-level' guys were the floorsweepers and box movers now moved up to loading and overseeing the CNC machines. Everyone's been upgraded. It's because the world needs only a limited amount of mass-produced stuff that the 30,000 factory workers are now spread across other things. Things like ice cream parlours, fishing lakes, dress and jewellery designers - you know, all those harmless leisure things the fighting was actually for.
It was interesting to see that all engines were disassembled and inspected after a trial run, then rebuilt and tested again before shipping. Very inefficient and labor intensive, but it was the only way to ensure the engines would survive in the field. And many early R-3350's didn't. A B-29 deploying to the Pacific had a spare 3350 slung in the bomb bay to replace one of the other 4 that was likely to fail. The R3350 was a wartime crash program, and it was rushed into production before it was fully developed.
Andy: Yes, I read this, it's a handy way to transport spare engines. The engines overheated in the Pacific and the engine cowling had to be redesigned, plus the fuel heated up so they put cooling fins on the fuel pumps to prevent fuel lock. They also redesigned the GE superchargers, because they overheated as well in the tropics. Same problem, (GE supercharger) happened to the P-38.
Curtis LeMay said that there were more bugs in the B29 engines than in the insect collection at the Smithsonian Museum.
Word is that after the war it was refined into a pretty decent powerplant. The two remaining airworthy B-29's now fly on engines largely assembled from those later commercial versions of the R-3350. And of course they fly without bomb payloads and the engines aren't run at the high manifold pressures [turbo-supercharger boost] that was required of combat missions. The heavily-leaded avgas isn't available anymore so they can't run at those power settings.
Russ G Any idea as to the octane level they did run at during the war?
I think that we would be able to run at a similar level with the additives we have today, but they are nursing the engines to prolong their service life.
These engines required 140 oct., the same that the H-21 helicopter we had in our transportation company in Virginia.
That was when America really was great, sadly we are never going to see those days again. The nation worked as one, not divided like now.
Amazing how it took only 1000 days between builing this factory and winning the war.
To state the obvious. The russians won the war. Usa and brits, polen etc just went in when germany was already starting to lose. Probably to avoid russia owning to much of europe.
Marcus it is clear that you have not been of a student of WW-II....you might want to "bone up" on the history of what lead up to the War, who was responsible for what action during the War, and what finally ended the War! Rather than crediting the Russians; you might want to credit Germany.....they gave us the Intellectual human resources, scientific knowledge and much more that enabled us to build that "Bomb"! Of course that wasn't their intent.....
Superbombs fine. Russia was def not the best in that. pure soldier & material & money kills is russia. They decimated whole armies
One thing I can surely agree on; the Russians bore the brunt of human sacrifice in WW-II..
Death toll Russians WW2: 26,600,000
Funny I used to know some WWII vets that flew the B-29, they complained that the engines had horrible reliability compared to B-17's and B-24's.
Now it takes 5 years to rebuild a mile of street in my city.
Their motors were on the ragged edge metalurgically. My father in law replaced many cylinders.
@Kathleen Shaw he mentioned pistons...
@Kathleen Shaw Good comment. thanks, and sounds quite plausible.
True but, they were not built for longevity. Most war machines are not.
How they did all this without PCs, Email, CAD etc. is beyond me...
That was the greatest generation. Could we today manufacture at such a scale? I doubt it.
In the summer of 1943, the Truman Committee revealed that the Lockland, Ohio, plant of the Curtiss-Wright company had been supplying defective aircraft engines to the Army Air Force; charges included conspiracy and collusion with AAF inspectors. This scandal became an inspiration for playwright Arthur Miller’s play All My Sons.
MrShobar ----- All this talk of the greatest generation is a bit of rose colored hindsight. There was a lot of slacking, graft and outright stealing going on as well. I'm old and a listener. I heard these stories when the older guys guard was down.
A friends dad was sent to a plant outside of New York City to straighten out the corruption where the unions were busier stealing than manufacturing.
In the London bombings fire fighters and thugs were out stealing everything they could get their hands on. The estimated participation in the black market was 100%.
The corruption during the Vietnam war was legendary.
I am not buying the BS that other generations were better than the current batch of young people.
don't know about the 3350, but read the P&W 4360 averaged about 200 hours between rebuilds which isn't a whole lot of air time.
speedskiff2 Initially the 3350's TBO was 200 hours, but by the end of the war it was up to 750, this at a time when German engines typically went only about 50 hours, and only half that in the case of their jet engines. I have been unable to find numbers for Japanese aircraft engines, but I doubt that they were much better than the German ones.
CaptHollister magnesium overcast book states XC-99 had one 4360 go 814 hrs and two others @ 524 and 630 hrs. 500 hrs was about 20 flights. Technological wonders, but maintenance intensive! Some senator during B-36 hearings claimed it cost 15K an hour in 1952 dollars to fly it.
@@speedskiff2 , Part of that cost must have been changing the 336 spark plugs fouled by tetraethyl lead from that 130 octane avgas.
Too bad these engines didn't live up to their design specifications; the B-29 had problems getting airborne at full rated weight in the hot, humid conditions of the South Pacific with four of these engines running at high manifold pressure and high octane aviation gas. I think Chrysler did the best they could but the engine's design just wasn't proven due to the demands of wartime. Sadly, many USAAF crewmen paid for those shortcomings with their lives.
There were many bombers that crashed with their bombs and a full load of avgas at Tinian on takeoff. Ernie Pyle visited Tinian, but he did not tell the folks at home of the horrific crashes that killed crews at that little island.
@@DavidN23Skidoo Maybe the men who lost their lives would feel a bit better if they knew that there were two B-29s to carry only two bombs that finally got the emperor to end the war.
@@johndaniels6089 Hiroshima & Nagasaki are a crime against humanity....you will pay one day..
@@enthalpiaentropia7804 Hiroshima & Nagasaki are the result of the then fanatical Japanese government bent on fighting to the last man and woman had the planned Allied invasion of the home islands of Japan taken place in late 1945 into 1946.
americans united yeah!!!
Great film. Lousy sound...needs and deserves remastering for prosterity
Things have come so far since then, and some are not as good as then.
Where is the volume? I can’t hear this at all.
im glad it isnt just me
you're kidding right?
roll your cursor over the screen..lower left screen ...like every you tube .video ever made
the early Wright R-3350 for the B-29 were beset with dangerous reliability problems as some bombers were lost due to these engines the design of them the exhaust of front bank of cylinders exits the front and the front collector ring is in the path of the airflow. as the two airworthy B-29s had their original dodge built engines replaced with hybrid cross of the later model Curtiss- wright R-3350 engines.
I wish someone would have saved ten of everything we made during that time in some secret location in the dry desert somewhere!
60 thousand cylinder heads a month. damnn
It must have been a terrible experience to one day be churning out vital parts for America’s war effort, and then suddenly no longer needed as the war was over, I can imagine that on one hand they were overjoyed that the war was finally over, but on the other, wondering how they would continue to put food on the table and pay the bills. I would think that a lot of these workers were unskilled when they went to work in this plant and by the time they were ignominiously made redundant were skilled or at least semi skilled, skills that were learned by thousands and thousands of American workers, so finding a job after the war would have been difficult.
Thanks!
Great engineering...A long way from the Wright brothers