Recent submissions to Willow Run Memories Project tell the stories of a “Rosie the Riveter” who helped make the legendary top-secret Norden Bombsights on Willow Run’s B-24 Liberator bombers, local residents who housed and helped Willow Run’s pilots during WWII, GM Powertrain memories from the 1980s, and a young lady’s memories of Willow Run Airport.
Click here to see ALL submissions to the Willow Run Memories Project to date (the Project is ongoing through 2017 and beyond.) Learn how to submit your own personal and family Willow Run Memories here. Stories and recollections, with or without photos, are welcomed. Please note, we are not looking for donation of actual photos necessarily, just a digital image is fine.
Photos submitted recently to the Willow Run Memories Project: (Click any image to view larger and in more detail. Hit your browser’s “Back” arrow to return here.)
And scroll down for the stories…
It’s always special when we hear from the WWII-era Willow Run Bomber Plant workers themselves. WWII-era worker and Army veteran Ivan W. shared a favorite photo [above] of himself along with two other wartime Willow Run workers and one of our “Save The Bomber Plant” Willow Run Tribute Rosies, taken our first open house at the Bomber Plant in October of 2013.
Our correspondent below was also both a WWII Home Front worker and veteran….
My father was responsible for all the asbestos in the bomber plant. He was a Sales Engineer for Johns-Manville. One of his customers was Ford Motor Co. and, when the bomber plant was being built, he got the contract for roofing, pipe insulation, boiler insulation, roofing insulation and wall insulation. During the summer of 1942, prior to my being called to active duty, he talked one of the contractors into hiring me as a timekeeper. My job was to walk around the plant wherever our workmen were and record them on the time sheets. Most of the work was up at roof levels so I had to look up and find the men and try to understand their name when they shouted it down to me. I am sure I screwed up a lot of time sheets before I went into active duty in the AAF in August, 1942. The building we were working in was the final assembly building. The assembly line made a right angle turn that the nearly finished B24 bombers had to negotiate. During the day I would have some free time occasionally so, I would walk down to the end of the building and see B24 bombers being assembled and moving toward the building we were working in. Because I was waiting to be called to active duty by the Army Air Force, I was really interested in those airplanes. By the time the job ended, those airplanes were turning the corner and the outer wing panels were being installed and so was the tail turret and that big double tail assembly. I never saw a B24 again until I ended up in England as a B17 pilot with an air crew.
– Robert S. via email
Other WWII-era Willow Run memories and photos come via family stories passed down from earlier generations, including a description of how local citizens helped out the B-24 bomber pilots stationed at Willow Run’s AAF base, and a female war worker who components for the bombers’ top-secret Norden Bombsights…
When my father died, I knew he was in WWII based out of Belleville, but it wasn’t until my uncles told me more. Vets of that time never talked much of their time in the war, they considered it a call of duty to do their job, and then move on. He was in high school at Belleville when the war broke out. Turns out, my grandparents’ house on Columbia would house pilots, and my late father would take them to Willow Run, go to school, and then go to work at the plant until he was old enough to enlist. He then went in as a MP, seeing service in France, Belgium, and Germany. [See photo above] This is he, on the left, with my now late uncle (he passed away early December) during the war years. I’m very proud to still have all of his WWII uniforms, medals, money, etc. Good luck on your continued effort to save history. May we never forget.
– Patrick McN. via FacebookWhile attending an air show in Howell, MI, I talked with your Tribute Rosie the Riveters, they indicated I should share the war memories of my mother, Ruth H. She worked as a “Rosie the Riveter” during WWII. She was a crew leader at Abrams Aerial Survey Corporation in Lansing. She made intervalometers, which were part of the Norden bombsight, which took time-lapse photography of bombing runs and their targets. She worked there for over two years while her fiancée, Everett F., was a chief gunnery sergeant with the 119th Field Artillery. He was stationed in the Aleutian Islands with the U.S. Army. Attached are a few pictures I would like to share of the workers at the Abrams Instrument Company. On the back of one picture is a personal, hand-written “Thank you for a War job well done” signed by the owner Talbert “Ted” Abrams. The smaller picture [above] is my mother’s crew. She is the woman in pigtails to the right of the pedestal.
– Larry F. via Contact Page on this website
And the pioneering female production workers, known affectionately as “Rosie the Riveters”, passed down memories as well, including memories of a visiting movie star, and fateful telegrams…
My aunt who is 95 told me about 10 years ago about her time at Willow Run working on planes. Fascinating. I asked her why she never talked about it and she said no one cared. She is still alive but failing in health. Believe it or not she started slowing down at 92. But I have heard that she met [famous 1940s movie star] Walter Pidgeon and there were times that people would faint when someone handed them a telegram. She also told me how her family used to have POWs over for dinner. They housed the POWs on Belle Isle.
– Andrea W. via Contact Page on this website
Moving forward in time, the vast Willow Run complex with its attached airport was put to commercial use after the war was over. The Bomber Plant in the 1950s through 2010 became General Motors’ Hydramatic/Powertrain transmission production facility where over 90 million automobile transmissions were built…
I met [the Save The Bomber Plant “Willow Run Tribute Rosies”] at the balloon fest in Howell and told them that I used to work in the Willow Run Plant making automotive transmissions in the early 80s. This is an amazing building. I told them about the balcony that had rows and rows of reciprocating compressors, that were used to supply all the air rivet tools in the whole building. My aunt was a Rosie Riveter, Maxine Downing, I don’t know when she worked there, but we had a picture of her in uniform years ago
– Jamie, via Contact Page on this website
The prosperous postwar decades at Willow Run were lively, especially in the immediate vicinity of the commercial pilots and crews at Willow Run Airport, as this female airport worker recounts…
I worked at Zantop at Willow Run Airport’s Hangar 2 in the 1960s. I was in charge of pilot training records at Zantop. My office was at one end of the building, and the pilot records that I was in charge of were located at the opposite end of the building. I liked my work, but I was young and had a hard time handling it when the guys in the hangar whistled and flirted, including the pilots, who were so handsome in their uniforms. So, being young and easily flustered, I would walk outside for the whole length of the building, even in the snow, when I needed to get from one end of the building to the other.
– Karen T. via transcribed oral statement
Send us your own Willow Run Memories! You can learn more about the Willow Run Memories Project here.
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