Economy of Metropolitan Detroit - Historic Highlights

Historic Highlights

President Franklin Roosevelt referred to Detroit as the "great arsenal of Democracy." The Ford Motor Company played a pivotal role in the allied victory during World War I and World War II. With Europe under siege, Henry Ford's genius would be turned to mass production for the war effort. Specifically, the B-24 Liberator bomber, still the most produced allied heavy bomber in history, quickly shifted the balance of power. The aviation industry could produce, if everything went all right, one Consolidated Aircraft B-24 Bomber a day at an aircraft plant. Ford would show the world how to produce one B-24 an hour, and at peak production Ford produced 650 per month at Willow Run by 1944. Ford's Willow Run factory broke ground in the April 1941. At the time, it was the largest assembly plant in the world, with over 3,500,000 square feet (330,000 m2). Edsel Ford, Henry Ford's son, under stress, died in the Spring of 1943 of stomach cancer prompting Henry Ford to re-assume day-to-day control of the Ford Motor Company. Willow Run completed its first B-24 in October 1942, with production increasing substantially by August 1943. Pilots and crew slept on the 1,300 cots waiting to fly the B-24s as they rolled off the assembly line at Ford's Willow Run facility.