Historical Significance of the Willow Run B-24 Production Plant, Here showing the Assembly Line.

The stakes for Willow Run's historical contribution were high. 

The 3,000 mile range and 8,000 pound payload of the B-24 heavy bomber represented the Allied Forces supreme effort to regain the initiative over Hitler and his Axis powers.

A year before Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the government came to the Ford Motor Company for help, and Mr. Ford sent Charles E. Sorensen, his Director of Production, to San Diego to review the company which had designed the B-24. They were manufacturing two airplanes a month. 

Within twenty-four hours, Sorensen advised the U S. Air Corps that he would build them a new factory, and mass produce the bombers at the rate of one an hour. An unbelievable rate that the aircraft industry thought was impossible. 

Two days less that a year from breaking ground for the factory, Sorensen produced the first Center Wing Section for the plane. By April 1944, he was producing four hundred and sixty-two bombers per month at a rate of one every 59.34 minutes. 

The enormous accomplishment of the men and women from Willow Run can only be appreciated when one fully realizes that in 1941, before Ford entered the aircraft industry, it required 201,826 man-hours to manufacture a single B-24 bomber. In March 1944, Ford's procedures of mass production had reduced those man-hours to only 17,357. 

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