Building a bomber plane in just a day

[Gerald]

In the midst of World War II, workers at a Welsh aircraft factory gave up their weekend off to build a Wellington bomber from scratch in just 24 hours. Why? To set a new world record.The workers in action - and what Wellingtons did in the war

When the country was under attack and under rationing, that, surely, was no time to be worrying about world records.

But after months of nightly bombing raids by the Luftwaffe, the Ministry of War was keen to show the world - friend and foe - that Britain could dish it out as well as take it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11107561








Note: 13 September 2010 Last updated at 09:29 GMT

[Oberon]

Very nice...very nice indeed.
When our back is against the wall...we can do it.

[Rockstar]

Why wait until your backs are against the wall again?

Take the offensive today conquer Europe and the middle east oil wells. Bomb the snot out of Russia and set up a puppet government.

Do it today rule the world

[Reece]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Why wait until your backs are against the wall again?

Take the offensive today conquer Europe and the middle east oil wells. Bomb the snot out of Russia and set up a puppet government.

Do it today rule the world

This is good positive thinking in action!

[mookiemookie]

So the plane was a metal frame covered in linen? Amazing.

[TLAM Strike]

Impressive but in the US the Ford plant at Willow Run had a B-24 coming off the line every 63 minutes...

[Weiss Pinguin]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

Impressive but in the US the Ford plant at Willow Run had a B-24 coming off the line every 63 minutes...

And you could get one in any color as long as it was black, right?

[Raptor1]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

Impressive but in the US the Ford plant at Willow Run had a B-24 coming off the line every 63 minutes...

But were these B-24s actually built in 63 minutes or were sufficiently large numbers built in parallel over a longer period of time?

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by Weiss Pinguin

And you could get one in any color as long as it was black, right?

I don't know all the pictures from back then were in black and white...

Originally Posted by Raptor1

But were these B-24s actually built in 63 minutes or were sufficiently large numbers built in parallel over a longer period of time?

I thought that too then I looked at the numbers and it was almost a "bomber an hour"

Jan 1941 to Aug 1945 = 236 weeks
8,800 B-24 Manufactured at Willow Run = 37 Aircraft a week average = 5 Aircraft a day avg.

...and thats just the B-24! They made C119s as well.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

They made C119s as well.

But not at the same time. The first C-119 didn't enter service until 1947 - two years after the B-24 ceased production.

And no, no-one that I'm aware of built a B-24 from start to finish in one hour. Or in twenty-four hours for that matter.

[TarJak]

Sorenson’s production goal at Willow Run was enormous, its achievement prodigious. His task was to increase production output from a craft production rate of a bomber every thirteen days to a mass production rate of a bomber an hour. And, in two days less than a year from ground breaking, he had produced the First Center Wing Section for the airplane in a still unfinished factory. By April 1944, he was producing four hundred and sixty-two bombers at the rate of one every 59.34 minutes.


The enormous accomplishment of Sorensen and the men and women from Willow Run can only be fully appreciated when one 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, Sorensen’s Willow Run Procedures of mass production had reduced those man-hours to only 17,357.

Reading this from the Book Willow Run Colossus of Industry by Warren Benjamin Kidder, I'd say that even at the peak production rate they did not have 17,357 people working on each plane, the figure required to get a B24 built from start to finish. The production per hour has to have been based on completions per day not on start to finish each aircraft.

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by TLAM Strike

Impressive but in the US the Ford plant at Willow Run had a B-24 coming off the line every 63 minutes...

Well, logistically speaking a B-24 coming off of the line every 63 minutes does not mean that it only took 63 minutes to build the plane. It just means with the parallel assembly lines working together there was 63 minutes between finished aircraft.

When you think about it, 63 minutes to build an aircraft is a bit hard to believe considering adhesives, epoxy, and other sealing material needed to cure (no crazy glue in WWII).

Where that number came from is that at its peak production the Willow Run facility could turn out 600 B-24's per month working 24 hours a day

600 Aircraft / 720 hours = 50 minutes actually. But again, that is not the same as saying that it only takes 50 minutes to make a B-24.

[bookworm_020]

Remember the average times may only reflect when it was at peak operating efficiency. I believe there was a joke going around about Willow Run at one time that it was misnamed, it should have been called "Will It Run?"

The Wellington record is pretty impressive by itself, this was in a country that was being bombed every night and under the treat of invasion.

A record that I can also remember is the speed of HMS Dreadnought was built. 1 year and a day was Fishers claim, but she was only read for trials, and wasn't fully ready for another 2 months.

[TLAM Strike]

Originally Posted by bookworm_020

A record that I can also remember is the speed of HMS Dreadnought was built. 1 year and a day was Fishers claim, but she was only read for trials, and wasn't fully ready for another 2 months.

As I recall a Liberty ship could be built in about 40 days, the record was 4 days.

[papa_smurf]

For those in the UK, BBC Four has a program tonight about the building of the Wellington bomber at 8pm.