Willow Run: where Rosie the Riveter built bombers

Just east of the city of Ypsilanti, in Ypsilanti Township, stands the Willow Run bomber plant. It was one of the most important factories of World War II. When America entered the war, the Ford Motor Company built this enormous plant to mass-produce the B-24 Liberator, a heavy bomber. Famed Detroit architect Albert Kahn designed it. It was once called the largest factory under one roof in the world. The scale was staggering. At peak, a finished bomber rolled off the mile-long assembly line about once an hour. By the end of the war, Willow Run had built more than 8,600 B-24s. That’s roughly half of all the B-24s made in the entire country. More than 40,000 people worked there. Many were women who took over jobs once reserved for men. One of them was a real riveter named Rose Will Monroe. She was filmed for a wartime promotional movie and became a face of “Rosie the Riveter.” Rosie was the iconic symbol of the women who powered America’s “Arsenal of Democracy.” So many workers poured in that the government threw up a whole new village of housing next door. After the war the plant was sold off — first to the automaker Kaiser-Frazer, then to General Motors. GM built cars and transmissions there for decades. When the plant faced demolition, local aviation lovers fought to save a piece of it. Today part of the historic bomber plant area is home to an aviation museum.

You can see B-24 history, flyable warbirds, and a Rosie the Riveter exhibit at the Michigan Flight Museum (formerly the Yankee Air Museum). It’s at Willow Run Airport, 47884 D Street, Belleville.