How Detroit Won the War-- Part 2

The media was getting into this turn-around.

The Washington Post reported:  "What may not be generally known is the amazing story of how Detroit is rapidly being transformed from a center of peacetime production into the greatest war production area to be found anywhere on the globe."

Look magazine:  "The scale of Detroit's war boom stuns the imagination."

And, Willow Run took center stage in that production.  The length of its assembly line expanded to over three times the length of the Empire State Building and four times the height of the Eiffel Tower reported the Christian Science Monitor.

A Washington Post report said Willow Run was "the greatest single manufacturing plant the world has ever seen... All 16 major league baseball teams could play simultaneous games before crowds of 30,000 each [inside Willow Run].  And there would be room enough left over for a full-sized football game before an additional 30,000 spectators."

The Wall Street Journal called the bomber plant "the production miracle of the war."

Yet, at the time, the Willow Run plant had not even produced one plane.

I wish Mr. Baime had included the date for this segment of his book, but I guess that is why you need to buy it.  Looks like a really interesting bit of research.  I'm guessing the excerpt comes from sometime in l;ate 1942.

A picture accompanies the article of then-Senator Harry S.Truman and Ford executive Charles Sorensen with a B-24 Liberator at Willow Run, so obviously it did go into production.

--GreGen