Starting from forests and bare fields...
BUILDING THE B-24 BOMBER DURING WWII 74182 - YouTube
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Starting from forests and bare fields...
BUILDING THE B-24 BOMBER DURING WWII 74182 - YouTube
Great film!! It's hard to believe that out of the 8,685 B24 produced at Willow Run only 4 Willow Run built B-24s exist today.
And the plant was destroyed just a few years ago. Mind, it would be very hard to maintain and preserve such a massive building just for posterity.
Apparently the two B24 Liberators in museums in the UK are Willow Run built aircraft.
List of surviving Consolidated B-24 Liberators - Wikipedia
20,351 Spitfires of all Mk's built. 35 still flying, world wide.
Amazing, so few or our enemies truly understood at what capacity we could wage war. There is a similar production film related to building a new factory to manufacture tanks, I would expect that for every part or necessity of the war effort.
Henry Ford was an early pioneer of the concept of the "production line" when he used it to construct the Model "T" Ford, at an affordable price and which you could have in any colour as long as it was black.
It is interesting to see that the spot welding of aluminium was used to speed up production as an alternative to drilling/riveting in order to join aluminium parts/panels together more quickly. They must have had close and strict quality control processes in place for the spot welding because it was aluminium which is more difficult to successfully spot weld than steel and also because it was for aircraft use and, therefore, potentially safety critical.
As much as I've read about history or at least how much I think I have read I was surprised even stunned when at the 27:00 minute mark they showed how production used a "midget" to climb into the wing to attach the outer wing to the wing structure assembly containing the engines. I knew they used slighter people, many of whom were women to assemble or complete assemblies that contained tight or restrictive spaces, but had not seen them use as they said midget's; apparently everyone had a part in the logistics chain.
Vertically challenged...? Yes, that was interesting. Wonder how the crew chiefs handled that sort of repair/replacement out in say, Italy?Quote:
Originally Posted by Sarge1998
My dad was a ground crew chief for B-24's in the Pacific with the 5th Army Air Force. The hardest repair on a B-24 was to find a shrapnel leak in a self sealing fuel bladder in one of the wings. It was a huge chore just to get the bladder out of the wing because of all the cross members in the way. Then once found and repaired was the next hard step to get it back in.