Freedom's Forge

by Arthur Herman

  Fleet told him they intended to make 350 B-24s a year. Sorensen sensed at a glance that the facilities were woefully inadequate to hit that number. Yet no one wanted to stop to revamp or expand, for fear it would undercut existing production. Dr. Mead told him they preferred a little bit now, rather than none at the moment but lots later.

  “All this was pretty discouraging, and I said so.” Fleet and his engineers looked at each other, then posed the obvious question: So how would you do it?

  “I don’t know,” Sorensen said, “but I’ll have an answer for you tomorrow morning.”40

  All through dinner that night with Edsel and the Ford team, Sorensen kept running over the options in his mind. Comparing a Ford V-8 to a B-24 was like comparing a garage to a skyscraper, he knew, but the principles for assembling the one and the other were the same. “First break the plane’s design down into essential units,” he kept saying, “and make a separate production layout for each unit.” Then you deliver each unit to its assigned place in the sequence until you have a finished plane. Finally you build a plant large enough to house the entire process—something much bigger than Consolidated’s current plant.41

  After dinner Sorensen went back to his room at the Coronado Hotel. He was too restless to sleep. Instead he sat down with his notes from the day’s tour on one side, a pad of blank paper on the other, and rethought the entire problem.

  He broke the bomber down on paper, section by section and subassembly by subassembly, and schemed out the production time of each based on his notes. As the hours ticked by, he added in the notes he had on Consolidated’s labor force and average job performance, and the overhead costs. “I computed each unit operation, its timing, and required floor space as I saw them, and paper began to fly.” Soon there were stacks of paper representing each unit piled up all around the room. In his mind he was back at the Piquette Avenue plant, sketching out Ford’s assembly-line layout—and in his head he kept hearing Old Man Ford’s words: “Unless you see a thing, you can’t simplify it. And if you can’t simplify it, it’s a good sign you can’t make it.”42

  By 4 A.M. Sorensen had the proper sequence down, and the production time allotted for each unit. Then he sat down once more and sketched out the floor plan of a plant that would produce B-24 bombers in this mass-production way: more bombers than anyone had reasonably imagined. Consolidated hoped for a bomber a day. Sorensen figured he could give them a bomber an hour. If Sorensen could get a dozen plants going at once, America was looking at close to three hundred brand-new bombers every twenty-four hours. “I was elated by the certainty that the Germans had neither the facilities nor the conception” to mass-produce planes in this way, Sorensen remembered.43 It would turn the tide of airpower in the future.

  And, he must have thought as the sun shone through the windows and he turned off the light, it would finally give him one up on Big Bill Knudsen.

  At breakfast he showed Edsel Ford the sketches he had made. The son of the master of mass production was dazzled and urged him to go see the Consolidated people at once. Sorensen went to Reuben Fleet’s office with his papers under his arm and Edsel’s two sons in tow. Fleet was a former Army pilot who had founded Consolidated in 1923 with $15,000 of his own money and $25,000 borrowed from his sister.44 Underneath his smooth executive exterior, he was an old fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants man, and he was somewhat dazed by the scale of Sorensen’s proposition. It’s not clear if he really understood it all.

  Fleet suggested maybe Ford would make the parts for wing sections, and offered a contract for one thousand sets of wings.

  Sorensen’s face became set. He repeated what he had said to Knudsen the previous October. “We’ll make the complete plane,” he said, “or nothing.”45

  Then Sorensen laid the full proposal out to Dr. Mead. If the Army Air Forces spent $200 million for the plant and equipment, he told him, Ford would do what no one, not even Knudsen, had imagined: build bombers with the speed and ease of building cars. Mead signed on at once; that left Fleet no choice but to go along. On February 25, 1941, Sorensen got his contract with Washington and Consolidated agreed to license the design for its heavy bombers. Ford was in the airplane business.

  Back in Dearborn, the old man was fascinated. He immediately told Consolidated to fly out a B-24 for them to look over. He and Sorensen then had workmen take it apart piece by piece, rivet by rivet, so they could look at every component from propeller to tail, and then put it back together again.46

  It was no small task. The B-24’s 488,193 separate parts broke down into 30,000 components. Working side by side, Ford and Sorensen managed to work out the plane’s preassembly into nine different departments, one for each section. Those were center wing section, two wings, two wing tips, nose and front pilot sections, then the nacelle and tail sections.47 It was a little more complicated because the British order substituted a standard self-sealing tank for the Duprene-covered version. But things were beginning to come together and make sense in reality as well as on paper.

  Then came thinking about the plant itself. Consolidated’s plant had fifty-four separate workstations, which required an average of six hours for each unit to clear before it was ready to move on to the next station. Since Sorensen intended to cut the manpower hours from 140,000 to less than 100,000, a production flow chart based on six-hour intervals was useless. Instead he had architects draw up an imaginary cross section of a plant high enough to allow even the biggest sections to be stood on end if necessary (the tail assembly alone was as long as a city bus) with room for an overhead crane system; wide enough to allow an aisle between machines and the assembly line you could drive a car through; and long enough to more than double the number of subassembly stations (Consolidated had two sections for its fuselage, while Ford would have thirty-three), all in order to speed up the manufacturing process.48

  When they finished, the result impressed even Sorensen. It would be the single biggest factory in the world. The main assembly line of Consolidated’s San Diego plant was three thousand feet long, or ten football fields. This one would be one mile long. Sorensen knew there was only one man in the world with the skill and vision to design such a plant. He placed a call to Albert Kahn’s office, and overnight Kahn was working on the preliminary drawings.

  That left the question of how to proceed. Even Sorensen knew he wasn’t going to be able to start producing planes right away, no matter how sophisticated the plant facilities. There was too much to learn, and too many variables. He figured he would build the B-24s in three stages. First would come an “educational order” for making parts and dies. Then Ford would make all the parts for the B-24, which would then be assembled by the plane makers Consolidated and Douglas at new plants in Forth Worth, Texas, and Tulsa, Oklahoma.49

  Finally, when Sorensen’s team was really ready, Ford would embark on the third stage: manufacturing the complete plane from start to finish. Sorensen calculated that he could have the first “knockdown” versions of the B-24 shipped out to Tulsa and Fort Worth, one hundred per month, by May 20, 1942. The first finished Ford bombers would roll down the assembly line that September.

  He had no doubt everything would come together as planned. “It can’t be done” was a phrase that didn’t exist in his vocabulary. In fact, old-timers could remember Cast-Iron Charlie firing men on the spot who dared to utter those words in his presence.50

  The final word, however, belonged to the old man himself. Ford was impressed by Sorensen’s preparations. But he couldn’t disguise his skepticism. “By the time you get your first planes finished,” he told his old protégé, “the war will be over.”51

  Henry Ford was wrong. Thanks to Sorensen, the U.S. Army Air Forces would get more B-24s than any other bomber. But even Ford could not have guessed what an avalanche of problems Sorensen’s vision—his obsession almost—was about to bring down on his company’s head.

  * * *

  * The issue was finally put to rest when Nelson’s assistant and investmen
t banker Ferdinand Eberstadt devised the Controlled Materials Plan, which matched the supplies of critical raw materials like steel, copper, and aluminum directly to orders from the War and Navy departments.

  † Supplying the packing material was Dow Chemical Company, which had invented a clear plastic sheeting that sealed every tank, machine gun, and airplane part tight against moisture and dust. It was called Saran, and so Saran Wrap made its debut solving one of World War II’s most difficult logistical problems.

  ‡ As for Knudsen, forty years later he could barely bring himself to mention Sorensen’s name.

  B-24s in assembly line at Willow Run. From the Henry Ford Collection (P.833.77362.4/THF91632)

  “But, Mr. Sorensen, I don’t know a thing about airplanes.”

  “Who the hell does over there?”

  —Exchange between Walter Wagner and Charlie Sorensen, December 1941

  IN MARCH 1941, Willow Run was a sleepy creek west of Detroit, surrounded by woods and farmland. Early on the morning of the twenty-eighth, its rustic tranquility was broken by the sound of bulldozers.

  Construction workers began cutting down and uprooting trees and filling and leveling the land. In little more than a month, it would be transformed into the site of the biggest factory on earth. In 1939, Henry Ford had established a summer camp at Willow Run for inner-city youth. Now as he inspected the site and saw the huge piles of oak, maple, and elm logs stacking up from the land clearing, he said, “Let’s build a sawmill and saw up the timber right here.” The lumber the Ford sawmill generated would almost all go into housing for the workers who would soon be flocking to work at the Willow Run plant—some 50,000, it was estimated—once ground was broken on April 18.1

  In the end, Sorensen never got his mile-long factory. Kahn’s final design, however, did incorporate a mile-long assembly line housed in a giant L-shaped steel reinforced plant 3,200 feet long and 1,279 feet across at its widest point. Total factory area came to 3.5 million square feet covering 80 acres. (Once complete bombers were being built, it would grow to 4.7 million square feet.) Another 850 acres were set aside for a landing field with seven concrete fields where (it was hoped) in a little less than sixteen months Ford-built B-24s would be taking off around the clock, one every hour.2

  Old Ford hand Harry Hanson had the staggering task of laying out the machinery and assembly stations in this vast space—“the most enormous room,” Time magazine put it, “in the history of man.” Technicians flew out from Detroit to San Diego seventy at a time, to learn all they could about the tools and dies and the sequence of operations and engineering skills needed to produce a fleet of bombers, while others chased down the aluminum, glass, steel, and bricks for the factory as well as the materials for making the planes themselves.3

  Sorensen was learning this was a more complicated process than even he had imagined. The first thing he needed, he told Consolidated, was the blueprints for the plane. Consolidated had to inform him there weren’t any—certainly not any complete set. Consolidated engineers largely made them up as they went along, modifying here and incorporating new elements and changes there, as field tests and new Army specifications came along.

  “All right,” Sorensen said, “we’ll send out enough engineers and draftsmen to make a complete set.”4

  An entirely new Ford team took two freight car loads of drawings and plans from San Diego and redid the blueprints for everything, down to the tricycle landing gear (which the Ford people later completely redesigned). As for Consolidated, it began making changes of its own, including abandoning the old outdoor assembly process. Sorensen’s man on the spot, Roscoe Smith, wrote, “There is considerable comment in circulation to the effect that Ford has gotten them off their fanny.”5

  When Smith flew back from San Diego to Detroit in late July, with his two hundred technicians and engineers in tow, he found at Willow Run the steel outlines of a factory, with bricklayers piling up the bricks—4.3 million of them—to build the walls. The last concrete floors were being poured. The site for the airport, which when Smith had left had been a sea of mud, was dry and level, with an elaborate sewer system. A special spur of the New York Central Railroad had been opened, for delivery of materials. A couple of weeks later, the first machine tools arrived.6 On August 29 the U.S. Army Air Forces command approved the final changes Ford proposed to make on the bomber design. September 7 saw Roscoe Smith, whom Sorensen appointed to head the plant, bringing in his first workers to work the first punch presses. They were still a long way from making planes, but Smith was ready to start training his labor force. On November 15 the first limited production of plane parts began.7

  Charlie Sorensen gazed out on his creation with impatience, but also satisfaction. Much had been accomplished. Things were on schedule—a schedule unaffected by the events at Pearl Harbor. By the end of December, Willow Run still didn’t look like the industrial wonder he had planned. No part of the factory was done; the airfield was still a bare if vast empty plain. Most of his machine tools, including the huge Ingersoll mill he had ordered for drilling and milling the crucial wing sections, performing forty-two separate operations in thirty-five minutes, still hadn’t arrived.8 As for his workforce, they existed largely in his imagination.

  Sorensen estimated he would need 60,000 workers once Willow Run was up and running—although others thought the number might go as high as 100,000. No one, however, had a clear idea of where they would come from. Ypsilanti, a small, sleepy college town, couldn’t provide anywhere near that number—and the whole idea of moving the plant outside Detroit was to avoid tapping into the already overstretched labor market in that city. No one had called the War Manpower Commission, which kept track of such things, to see if there were better labor pools closer to Ford satellite plants like Houston or Cleveland—one time when advice from Washington would have been helpful. Cast-Iron Charlie’s attitude was, build the plant, and they will come.9

  They did, but very slowly. Getting full production started was going to require 45,000 workers at a minimum. By April 7, 1942, there were only 9,000.10 At the end of May, that had inched up to 15,000, including 1,800 women. Most had no place to live and were camped out in trailers and tents. Just training these newcomers to the laws of the assembly line took time and resources away from finishing the plant—and there were other interested visitors waiting in the wings. Walter Reuther of UAW and then CIO’s Philip Murray came by for a chat. Murray asked how many workers Sorensen would finally have. Sorensen said he estimated 60,000. Murray’s eyes lit up, thinking no doubt of all the new union members, and new union dues.

  “Of course,” Murray said casually, “we will take advantage of all our prerogatives,” meaning for enforcing union maintenance. Sorensen watched him, sensing trouble ahead. He was right.11

  Eventually the only place Sorensen was going to get his workers was from Detroit. But the roads to Ypsilanti were lousy and dirt paved: No one was going to be able to drive out unless something was done. So more construction time had to be diverted to building a multilane modern highway complete with concrete bridges and median strips.12*

  Then there was the confusion over phasing in the plant layout. Sorensen’s machines began to arrive, some 16,000 tools and 7,000 jigs. The Ingersoll milling machine for the central wing sections was meant to reduce the work done by thirty men at Consolidated to three, and the man-hours spent riveting from fifteen hundred to twenty-six. The problem was where to put it. The walls and roof were still not done. Installing and wiring up all the new tools didn’t just require more workers, it meant more managers, as well—and Sorensen was short on both.

  He heard that one of his men, engine tooling expert Walter Wagner, had been offered the post of manager of the Ford plant in Houston, at three times his current salary. Sorensen called him over to the unfinished engine building and grabbed him by the lapel.

  “Listen,” he barked. “You belong to us. I’m going to take you over to the bomber plant and you’re going to be a superinten
dent.”

  Wagner must have wondered if Sorensen was going to hit him. “But, Mr. Sorensen,” he complained, “I don’t know a thing about airplanes.”

  Sorensen responded, “Who the hell does over there?”13

  It was a cry of frustration, as the unfinished walls of Willow Run began to close in. He made Wagner the assistant to Logan Miller, one of Mead Bricker’s staff. Wagner was shocked the first time he entered the plant. It looked to him like an abandoned cave with workers and machines strewn about and huge gaps in the roof. How the place was supposed to make anything, let alone four-engined bombers, seemed anyone’s guess.14

  Finally Henry Ford turned to an old friend to help out. Charles Lindbergh had been one of the pillars of his America First Committee, and longtime advisor on matters aviational. In April he was asked to come to Willow Run as a consultant and help to pull things together from an aeronautical point of view. The plant would soon be scheduled to turn out its first knockdown B-24s—a goal that seemed nowhere in sight.

  Lindbergh drove out to Willow Run on April 7, 1942. Starting at the unloading platforms where New Central’s freight cars would pull into the building, he walked through all the various departments. The sheer size of the place was stupendous. It seemed to him “a sort of Grand Canyon of the mechanized world,” with machine tools going full blast making parts in one corner while contractors were still erecting steel walls in another. Most of the machinery was not yet installed, and the concrete was still being poured for the final assembly floor. Yet Lindbergh felt certain the first bombers would be coming out even before construction was done (handmade Consolidated versions, not the full mass-produced ones). “Since this has been done to a large extent on theory,” he added in his private diary, “we must expect many unforeseen problems.”15