Ford's Willow Run B-24 Liberator Plant Video
- Thread starter RALPHIE
- Start date
AJB
GT
ralphie...thanks ! I will forward to my dad. He flew the B-24 out of Southern Italy in WWII. They dropped bombs on Ploesti Romania, Munich and South France. (they crashed three of them, but Ford kept churning out the 'hardware' !
andy )AJB)
andy )AJB)
Indy GT
Yea, I got one...too
Mark McGowan
Ford GT Team Alumni
- Jul 31, 2006
- 148
Ralphie I live about 8 miles due north of KYIP (aka Willow Run). Fly over it almost every time I out flying the Mooney here is a photo of the plant today. GM builds automatic transmission in the plant today.
GT38
GT Owner
Thanks for the video Ralphie, and thanks for the photo Mark. Lots of stories if those walls could talk, and lots of stories if the aircraft built there could talk too.
My Dad was a gunner in the PB4Y, the Navy variant of the B-24. He flew them out of Okinawa bombing ships and subs at low altitude. He got there via merchant marine troop ship convoy, which was a harrowing experience in itself - attacked by subs and Kamikazes. A hurricane struck while he was there, but they had no time to evacuate to another base. They manned the aircraft, started the engines and "flew" them on the ground into the wind as the hurricane passed. He was still on Okinawa when both nukes were dropped. Before going overseas, he was on 30-day TDY at Litchfield Naval Air Facility west of Phoenix doing turret conversions. Yes, the Navy had a base in Arizona! The Navy spec'd different gun turrets than the Army. It was more expedient not to have that variable on the assembly line, but to build the Navy PB4Y's to Army B-24 specs and modify them later. They flew them to Arizona to replace the turrets at the Goodyear defense plant next to the NAF. That's how my French-Canadian New Englander Dad wound in Arizona and meeting my Mom, who was a secretary at the Goodyear plant.
My uncle (my Mom's brother) was an Army B-24 pilot with the 515th Squadron, 375th Bomb Group in the ETO. Just getting to the war zone proved dangerous. His crew ferried a B-24H to North Africa via Fortaleza, Brazil but they crashed on the next leg from Dakar and Marrakech while attempting to land in Tindouf, Algeria after loosing #3 & #4 engines. Later when flying out of Italy, he was shot down by flack over Graz, Austria while en route to bomb a ball bearing factory in Weiner Neustadt south of Vienna - part of a 600-plane raid on May 24, 1944. He was a POW for a year at Stalag Luft 3B, an experience he refused to talk about - that is, until I gave him a reprint of the B-24 flight manual for Christmas about 45 years later. After a few days reading the manual, out of the blue he started talking to me about the superchargers - almost as if he resumed a conversation from decades earlier. It was like the opening scene of "12 O'Clock High" - transported back in time by what he saw - and he told me the whole story of his shoot-down and POW experience in detail. I think he told me only because he thought I might at least begin to understand what he'd been though (as an ex-USAF pilot, with buddies who had been guests of Uncle Ho).
After he passed away, my Mom said he wanted me to have all of his military records, etc. Included was the diary he kept hidden in his boot while he was a POW. Here are the first two pages, which cryptically recounts being shot down. It was written on small pieces of paper, with light pressure to conserve his pencil's lead. His verbal description was much more detailed, but similarly matter-of-fact.
My Dad was a gunner in the PB4Y, the Navy variant of the B-24. He flew them out of Okinawa bombing ships and subs at low altitude. He got there via merchant marine troop ship convoy, which was a harrowing experience in itself - attacked by subs and Kamikazes. A hurricane struck while he was there, but they had no time to evacuate to another base. They manned the aircraft, started the engines and "flew" them on the ground into the wind as the hurricane passed. He was still on Okinawa when both nukes were dropped. Before going overseas, he was on 30-day TDY at Litchfield Naval Air Facility west of Phoenix doing turret conversions. Yes, the Navy had a base in Arizona! The Navy spec'd different gun turrets than the Army. It was more expedient not to have that variable on the assembly line, but to build the Navy PB4Y's to Army B-24 specs and modify them later. They flew them to Arizona to replace the turrets at the Goodyear defense plant next to the NAF. That's how my French-Canadian New Englander Dad wound in Arizona and meeting my Mom, who was a secretary at the Goodyear plant.
My uncle (my Mom's brother) was an Army B-24 pilot with the 515th Squadron, 375th Bomb Group in the ETO. Just getting to the war zone proved dangerous. His crew ferried a B-24H to North Africa via Fortaleza, Brazil but they crashed on the next leg from Dakar and Marrakech while attempting to land in Tindouf, Algeria after loosing #3 & #4 engines. Later when flying out of Italy, he was shot down by flack over Graz, Austria while en route to bomb a ball bearing factory in Weiner Neustadt south of Vienna - part of a 600-plane raid on May 24, 1944. He was a POW for a year at Stalag Luft 3B, an experience he refused to talk about - that is, until I gave him a reprint of the B-24 flight manual for Christmas about 45 years later. After a few days reading the manual, out of the blue he started talking to me about the superchargers - almost as if he resumed a conversation from decades earlier. It was like the opening scene of "12 O'Clock High" - transported back in time by what he saw - and he told me the whole story of his shoot-down and POW experience in detail. I think he told me only because he thought I might at least begin to understand what he'd been though (as an ex-USAF pilot, with buddies who had been guests of Uncle Ho).
After he passed away, my Mom said he wanted me to have all of his military records, etc. Included was the diary he kept hidden in his boot while he was a POW. Here are the first two pages, which cryptically recounts being shot down. It was written on small pieces of paper, with light pressure to conserve his pencil's lead. His verbal description was much more detailed, but similarly matter-of-fact.
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GT38
GT Owner
scode
Well-known member
Andy... My father was a bombardier in the 460th Bomb Group on 2 B-24s that flew the same missions as your father. He was on The Lucky Strike and the T S Express.
Indy GT
Yea, I got one...too
Dick-
Thanks for your post and the hand written notes.
Very interesting and we are all lucky to be speaking English thanks to these brave men...
Thanks for your post and the hand written notes.
Very interesting and we are all lucky to be speaking English thanks to these brave men...