The New York Times Book of World War II, 1939-1945

by The New York Times

  Seemingly Large Enough To Hold a City, It Is About Ready for Giant Output Of Bombers

  By SIDNEY M. SHALETT

  Special to The New York Times.

  DETROIT, May 21—There she stood—one of the seven wonders of the world of war; vast enough to swallow up an entire city; awesome enough to reduce man, her creator, to a lost speck in a jungle of giant machines.

  The name is Willow Run. Mark it. If America’s coming offensive depends on her power to blast, and blast hard, from the air, the news learned here yesterday may presage one of the turning points of the battle of production. For Willow Run, the big bomber factory which “Charlie” Sorensen described as “the invitation for Hitler to commit suicide,” is “just about on the edge of turning over and becoming a real plant.”

  Newspaper correspondents on the “Production for Victory” tour arranged by the National Association of Manufacturers yesterday visited the Willow Run plant in the Detroit area and saw the first bomber that has made a test run of an assembly line unparalleled in the history of airplane manufacture. It was a monster Consolidated B-24-E, a bomber in the size-class of the Boeing Flying Fortress.

  They also heard Edsel Ford, president, and Charles E. Sorensen, vice president, of the Ford Motor Company, which will operate the plant for the government, explain how their stupendous dies and presses will stamp out the big bombers almost as easily as Model T’s once were produced.

  Bombers are not the only things on the crowded schedule in Henry Ford’s industrial empire. There are at least fourteen major jobs, including the Army’s new model medium tanks which Mr. Sorensen considers much better powered than the German tanks; a Pratt & Whitney airplane engine (the 2,000th of which was completed recently); another aviation engine; various types of armored cars, precision aircraft parts and high precision fire-control instruments. Then there is a new tank engine of the liquid-cooled V-8 type.

  As Mr. Sorensen put it, “Ford is ninety-nine and nine-tenths converted to war industry,” and, as Edsel Ford announced, its employment today is as large as it was in peacetime and probably will be doubled by the end of the year.

  But it was the Willow Run plant that made the executives leave their desks and ride a bus across the Michigan countryside to show it off. Financed by the government and operated by Mr. Ford, the huge factory stands on a site that was a farm field covered with soy-bean stubble only thirteen months ago. Mr. Sorensen—his colleagues call him Charlie—pointed out pridefully that even now the machine-installation crews were pushing the still-working contractors out of the last incompleted stretch. Edsel Ford, a quiet son of a famous father, fiddled in his pocket as the bus neared the war plant and said: “I guess I’d better get out my badge.”

  ELDER FORD GREETS VISITORS

  Henry Ford, too, walking with a springy step despite his nearly eighty years, was waiting to greet the visitors. The elder Ford smiled warmly as he shook hands, and the son, looking at his father affectionately, said: “He put a lot of his own ideas into this place. He’s quite proud of it.”

  It loomed there, an unbelievable symbol of the machine and bomb age. Great doors, which one day will spit out the big bombers, yawned open. A mammoth air field and concrete apron made a crisscrossed lap for the giant.

  View of the former Ford Willow Run plant after its wartime conversion where workers lay out and construct parts for military airplane wings, near Ypsilanti, Michigan, 1942.

  The newspaper men on the “Production for Victory” tour have been cooperating with Army and Navy censors in observing regulations against printing anything that would give aid and comfort to the enemy. Mr. Sorensen, the Danish-born mechanic who teamed up with Henry Ford at the beginning of the Dearborn days and rose through the years to the vice presidency of the company, felt “cramped” by some of the rulings. Making a sweeping gesture within the incredible confines of the factory, he said in a voice that had a bite in it:

  “Bring the Germans and Japs in to see it—hell, they’d blow their brains out.”

  ENTHUSIASM AMONG OFFICIALS

  This is only the sketchiest description of the way the planes will come off at Willow Run, but it may be said that the system looked convincing, and the parts being run through sections of the line yesterday seemed extremely well-fashioned. The place suggested tremendously exciting possibilities in the turning out of sky-commanding bombers along automobile mass-production lines, and it was easy to catch the enthusiasm that Mr. Sorensen, Mr. Ford and the other officials displayed. Once it gets moving, it should be the most amazing sight in plane manufacture anywhere in the world.

  MAY 24, 1942

  GERMAN DRIVE AND ‘SECOND FRONT’ LOOM LARGER

  Next Developments in Europe Hang on Outcome of Russian Fighting

  By HANSON W. BALDWIN

  The gradual increase in the tempo of the Russian fighting and the arrival of more American troops in Northern Ireland focused attention last week on probable Nazi moves in Europe and possible counter-operations of the United Nations.

  One week of May remains and the Nazis have not yet opened the gigantic offensive against the Red armies which has so long been expected. Last year the Nazis did not move against the Russians until June 22, but the prior Balkan campaign unquestionably delayed their attack. This year there is no second land front in Europe, and the warm sun of late Spring is drying the vast plains of Western Russia. In the south the ground for some weeks has been fit for the passage of land armies, yet the Nazis have launched only a preliminary and localized but significant offensive, which has resulted in the taking of the Kerch Peninsula in the Crimea and a localized counter-drive south of Kharkov.

  GERMAN PRESSURE

  However, yesterday’s news showed that German pressure was gradually building up from Taganrog to Kharkov and that the initiative in the Kharkov sector was passing, as expected, to the Nazis. The “big push” may come at any time.

  There is as yet not much reason for surprise at what some observers believe to be Hitler’s new Fabian tactics. For actually it is premature to say that the German Spring offensive has been delayed. The ground in the central and northern fronts in many places is still covered with melting snow patches and vast acreage of mud. In Karelia and in the northern tundra, dispatches from Russia last week reported, lakes and swamps are still frozen, though not sufficiently to bear the weight of man and his war machines.

  In parts of the central and most of the northern fronts, therefore, this is still a period of thaw—the period when land armies are chained and bogged down by water and mud. This period is rapidly passing, and if Hitler does not move against Russia, or elsewhere, in great force within the next three weeks, there will then be sufficient reason for surprise and perhaps new evaluation of Nazi plans, strength and weakness.

  There is as yet no certainty that Hitler’s first great blow of 1942 will be against Russia, though the blow there is most probable. Hitler might strike against Britain. Some observers believe that he could land several hundred thousand troops by transports and gliders in Britain during the course of three or four nights and that these troops might seize and establish village strong points and perhaps eventually several beach-heads by which they would be reinforced by sea-borne troops—if necessary at the cost of sacrificing the entire Germany Navy in the action.

  Such a blow against Britain is possible at any time. So, too, is an air-borne and amphibious expedition against Cyprus, Syria and the coast of the Levant from bases in the Dodecanese and the Greek islands, or (less likely) a land push through Turkey. Either of these moves would probably be accompanied by one toward Suez by General Erwin Rommel, commanding the North Africa Corps in Libya, and the Summer heat of the desert can be expected to hamper but not to prevent altogether such a drive.

  OFFENSIVE IN RUSSIA

  Though these possibilities exist, a German offensive in Russia still seems far more probable, and it is likely that the battles that are now joined are actually the start of a fierce Summer of conflict between the armie
s of Stalin and Hitler. The limited operations now under way may gradually be enlarged until the whole 2,000 miles of Russian “front” are aflame once again, as it was last Summer and Autumn.

  And it is quite possible, indeed probable, that the German drive may have considerable successes—successes so large that the establishment of a “second front” becomes imperative as a diversionary measure. It is also possible that the Germans will sustain major reverses—reverses so considerable that a “second front” will become feasible and desirable urgency but as a step toward exploitation of the enemy’s weakness and victory quicker than it could be achieved without that step.

  In any case, an attempt to establish a foothold upon the Continent of Europe may be one of the moves the United Nations will make this year, though the shipping shortage, our long lines of communication and our lack of readiness for a major strategic offensive would handicap any such operation. The arrival of more American troops in Northern Ireland last week concentrated attention upon this possibility, but the successful transport of troops across the Atlantic certainly does not imply that the United Nations are immediately ready for any attempt to invade Europe. The troops that arrived in Northern Ireland included units plainly identifiable as armored forces, and the convoy was said to be the largest yet, including “thousands upon thousands” of American “dog-faces” (the 1942 slang for “doughboys”). But it takes many thousands (about 16,000) to make one division, and our forces in the British Isles certainly cannot yet be large—measured in divisions—beside the forty to 100 divisions the Germans and their allies may be able to concentrate in Western Europe.

  Moreover, the British air offensive—in itself a “second front” of the air—has not yet reached its peak; American planes piloted by Americans have not yet augmented the weight of the British raids and British air superiority is not yet decisive enough to permit much hope of immediate invasion. And there is always the problem of shipping; it takes about 100,000 ship tons to move one division.

  COMMANDO RAIDS

  Despite these difficulties the “second front” on land in Europe remains a possibility. It may take many forms. It will certainly take the form of Commando raids, intensified, enlarged, striking at German submarine bases and military objectives of all sorts—harassing, worrying and chivvying the enemy.

  If we should attempt more than an intensive bombardment of the Reich, more than intensified and repeated commando raids, the land offensives of the United Nations might take shape: (1) in Russia by the Red armies; (2) in North Africa by the British supported by their allies; (3) against Sardinia or other Italian points; (4) on the coast of Western Europe.

  Either of the first two offensives is quite possible—though probably for the time being on a limited scale. An invasion of Sardinia, Italy and Sicily or other Mediterranean points is probably impractical until such time as the enemy is driven out of his position in North Africa.

  An attempt to establish a foothold in Western Europe would be fraught with hazard, but so is all war. Any landing on the coast of France or in the Low Countries might be covered by air power based on Britain and it is quite probable that the British—so long as the Russian armies remain in being—could establish a local air superiority sufficient to permit a landing.

  CHIEF INVASION PROBLEM

  The communications network of France and the Low Countries and the large numbers of airfields in this area would permit a very rapid concentration by the enemy against any United Nations beach-head. The problem clearly is not so much in making a landing—that probably could be done at a number of points—but in maintaining a foothold once the landing was made, against ground forces that are almost certain to be superior in numbers to our own. Our numerical inferiority might be compensated in part by air superiority (established from near-by British bases) and mechanized superiority; yet we might have to face the possibility of eventually being pushed back into the sea.

  The establishment of a “second front,” therefore, would require the frank facing of grave risks. For the immediate months to come—unless Germany is defeated in Russia—the odds against success would be large.

  But the power of the United Nations is slowly growing, and the “second front” in the air above Western Europe is becoming a tangible and effective instrument in the strategy of victory. A “second front” on land may well have to be the product of opportunistic strategy, but the “second front” in the air plus strong Russian resistance may in time help to provide that opportunity. Much, indeed most, depends on the Russian armies.

  MAY 31, 1942

  HEYDRICH ATTACK LAID TO ’CHUTISTS

  Germans Execute 44 More in Hunt for Men Who Bombed Nazi in Czechoslovakia

  LONDON, May 30 (AP)—The Germans were reported tonight working on the theory that parachutists dropped from foreign planes had a hand in the attempted assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, as the Gestapo speeded its executions of Czechs to a total of sixty-two, putting to death forty-four during the day.

  The German-controlled radio in Prague stated flatly that foreign saboteurs had landed by parachute in Bohemia and Moravia. It said some of those executed “had been convicted of having sheltered agents who had landed in the protectorate from airplanes by parachute in order to perpetrate acts of sabotage.”

  Ten women were among the forty-four executed today by the Germans in ruthless reprisal for the attack upon Herr Heydrich, the Gestapo’s second in command, who was critically wounded.

  The Prague radio announced the latest victims died before firing squads immediately after they were sentenced by a quick-action Nazi court-martial. Up to today eighteen Czechs had been shot following the attack Wednesday upon Herr Heydrich, Adolf Hitler’s Protector for Bohemia and Moravia, the German-ruled remnants of dismembered Czechoslovakia.

  All of those executed were accused of failing to register with the police or harboring or aiding unregistered persons accused of anti-German activities.

  The executions today were carried out at Prague and Bruenn, said the announcement from Prague. The youngest victim was 18 years old. The others included two former officers of the Czech Army and a former public prosecutor. The State confiscated the victims’ property.

  COMPLETE RECOVERY DOUBTED

  Herr Heydrich, whose orders have resulted in the deaths of several hundred recalcitrants and innocent hostages in occupied France, was reported in a serious condition and injured so severely that should he live he probably would be forever a crippled invalid.

  The car in which he was riding from Prague to Munich was said to have been waylaid by assailants who tossed a bomb and followed up with a burst of gunfire. Herr Heydrich was reported to have been wounded in the back and spine.

  Czech circles here said the firing squad victims all died proudly with their lips sealed.

  Heinrich Himmler was reported directing the manhunt for his assistant’s assailants, and the Prague radio broadcast purported descriptions of the men, one of whom was declared wounded. Rewards of the equivalent of $250,000 were first offered for information leading to arrests. A Prague broadcast later announced that the reward had been doubled.

  JUNE 1, 1942

  COLOGNE ‘INFERNO’ ASTONISHES PILOTS

  Defenses Overwhelmed, British Fliers Say—Germans on Air Describe Horrors

  By The United Press.

  LONDON, May 31—Seven-eighths of Cologne, a city the size of Boston, was in flames, an inferno “almost too gigantic to be real,” when the history-making raid was over last night, pilots who took part in it said tonight.

  “When we got there, I almost felt like leaving and trying to find another target. It didn’t seem possible to do more damage than had already been done,” Wing Commander Johnny Fauquier, Canadian pilot officer, related.

  “Cologne was just a sea of flames,” said Squadron Leader Len Frazer of Winnipeg, one of the more than 1,000 Canadian airmen who had a hand in the epic raid.

  “I saw London burning during t
he Battle of Britain, and it was nothing compared with Cologne,” Pilot Officer H. J. M. Lacelle of Toronto, gunner in the tail of a Canadian bomber, contributed.

  Their reports were typical of the thousands being sifted tonight and compiled into a record of the mightiest piece of destruction ever devised by man.

  DEFENSES OVERWHELMED

  The lurid sky over Cologne for ninety minutes was as busy as Piccadilly Circus as the great Lancasters and Halifaxes, Stirlings and Manchesters, streaked in at the rate of one every six seconds to unload their total cargo of steel-cased death.

  Before the overwhelmed and bewildered German defenses could focus on one plane, it was zooming away and another was on its tail. The Royal Air Force plan of super-saturating the enemy’s target field was described as an absolute success. German fighter planes were there, but not enough to interfere seriously with the attack.

  “It was almost too gigantic to be real,” said the pilot of one Halifax. “But it was real enough when we got there. Below us in every part of the city buildings were ablaze. Here and there you could see their outlines, but mostly it was just one big stretch of fire.

  “It was strange to see the flames reflected on our aircraft. It looked at times as if we were on fire ourselves, with the red glow dancing up and down our wings.”

  “I could identify every type of bomber in our force by the light of the moon and fires,” another said.

  Many of the airmen had been in the bombings of Rostock and Luebeck, and they said Cologne made those places look like a warm-up.

  Members of the Royal Air Force who helped to make history over Cologne in the early hours of May 31, 1942