Customer Reviews

The American Aircraft Factory in World War II

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Some years ago I had the opportunity to interview a group of older women. I asked each of them what had been the best time of their lives. They all responded alike: the war years. Men, dances, and work, they said, and giggled with the rush of memory. The war created the first real optimism in a generation. The war banished the world-weariness of the twenties and swept away the pervasive hopelessness of the Depression. There was work. There was purpose. Those powerful emotions show palpably in the photographs of this excellent volume.

While the author culled most of these selections, many in color, from publicity photos and noted collections of World War II memorabilia, there is no denying his knack of choosing prints which convey the sense of busyness. Women in neat kerchiefs and housedresses- not many jeans here-and a few men insert bolts into Plexiglas or weld the naked frames of bombers. Energy colors the faces of drill press operators and riveters, engine inspectors and metal polishers. One particularly excellent photo shows three women dizzily framed in the receding cross-section of a B-17. Another, echoing Raphael's Madonna of the Chair, offers a woman encircled by the interior of a nacelle. Rows of lights reflecting off aluminum and plastic and the very groundplans of the factories themselves add a dynamic geometric dimension to many of the selections. All the illustrations represent multiple themes both artistic and historical.

The planemaker's art had also come a long way in a few years. Mr. Yenne thoughtfully documents the development of aircraft building techniques and gives us some priceless views of the early factories and their picturesque founders. I have only one complaint. Absent is the great Howard Hughes who, I believe, is still the only fixed wing test pilot to wear a fedora. Igor Sikorski also donned this headgear to take the VS-300 on its first flight.

I see no point in enumerating all the types of aircraft represented in this work. Liberators, Mustangs, Fortresses, Avengers, Texans. They are all here. Some masses of longerons and bulkheads too raw to name, others being pushed by many hands onto the tarmac. There are roomfuls of props and engines and parts of all sorts, lines of bombers waiting to mate with their engines, turrets wanting guns. And everywhere in the distant background read the words of war. Buy Bonds, We Can't Win Without Them, Keep`Em Flying. How different from a sign appearing on a Naval Aircraft Factory gate in 1918:

"Spanish flu has endangered the prosecution of the war in Europe.... Don't spit."

Mr. Yenne has produced a wonderful volume. Nothing to spit at here.

There are plenty of visual treatments of the battles of World War II, but relatively few covering the underlying military support systems at home. The American Aircraft Factory in World War II fills this gap, covering the history, work, and production efforts of military aircraft factories across the country that contributed greatly to the success of soldiers. This was a major manufacturing shift which changed the business and military face of America: chapters document the production of fighters by manufacturers using new and converted factories alike, and even pack in fifty unusual color photos new to print, here. An eye-catching, outstanding production results.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I couldn't have been happier. This book does an outstanding job of telling the story of building aircraft in World War II. I was at an age -- at that time -- when I soaked up everything I could find about our war planes. The book filled a lot of blanks for me.

The American Aircraft Factory in World War II by Bill Yenne is truly magnificent. When I first had the book in my hand I thought "coffee table book". After reading the book and looking at the pictures it is so much more. It is a wonderful tribute to the men and women who built the airplanes. It is an excellent history of the aircraft industry in the Unites States. The author gives a great background and understanding of the founders and companies like Boeing, North American, Curtiss, Consolidated, Douglas, Grumman, and Lockheed.

I learned of the Air Mail Act of 1934. The act required the separation of the airlines from manufactures. It caused some like William Edward Boeing to leave the industry. He gives great tribute to the gender shift in the work place and the ramping up of the industry for the war. He takes us through the construction of the facilities as well as the transition back to a peace time production.

The photographs in the book are amazing. I have never seen so many high quality photographs of this era in one collection. Without the pictures the book is a wonderful history of the aircraft industry. With the pictures it is transformed into a work of art.

I highly recommend the book for all aviation and World War II buffs. It would be an excellent addition to community and public school libraries as well. This is a masterpiece that will stand the test of time.

One of the best of it's kind, full of beautiful glossy photos of airplanes and people. Captures the era, with many public relations type photos.

I am a 68 year old history buff. I have been reading about Allieedd bombing campaignss during WW 11. I wantedd to see the B-29 in particular as I knew the Pilot of the Enola Gay. I was amazed to see how many female aircraft workers as every full color photo had at least one female worker depecticed. These were youg house wives, the age my mother would have been back then. The book is very well done and most interesting to see. Most every major wartime plane was shown in the process of construction. Geat full color photos!
This book also has photos of our most cherished natural resouse, "the skilled heavy industry worker, skills that are sadly all to rare. How are we going to gear up for another war timme footing in the absense of these huge factories, and especially the skilled workers? I highly recomend this "table Book".
John T. Wagner, Ohio

As more and more of our aircraft production is outsourced to foreign locations, it is important to remember the glory days of American aircraft production. The various tables that list production numbers point out just how far the industry came from its weak start at the beginning of the war. The photos of the workers, even the staged ones, help humanize the tremendous effort.

I'm a bit disappointed that some major facilities are shown quite frequently while others are largely ignored. For instance, the "Bell bomber plant" here in Marietta, which built plenty of B-29s, and is the building that I currently work in, is not even mentioned!

Very good book. Worth the money. It shows the large role women played in winning the war.
Lynn Parsons B-17 Radio operator

That Bill Yenne is an accessible author and passionate researcher has never been more clearly seen than in his book, The American Aircraft Factory in WWII. Filled with a plethora of photographs, the text offers readers reams of information regarding U.S. wartime plane production.

Yenne begins by detailing the industry's beginnings, showing how the ideas of the Wright Brothers - "aeronautical geniuses but not entrepreneurs" - were taken by business people and transformed into an enterprise. But not very quickly: American aviation, Yenne points out, "barely made it into the game" of WWI but grew in the 1920's with the rise of different plane manufacturers, companies about which Yenne provides pages of detailed information.

The main thrust of the book, obviously, is plane production during WWII, and Yenne dovetails information regarding the industry with then-current international events. For instance, prior to Pearl Harbor, some within US government wanted a build-up of American air power when they saw that the Luftwaffe (literally, "air weapon," the name of Nazi Germany's air force) was the focus and representation of Germany's military strength. In the chapter entitled, "Backing into WWII," Yenne explains that FDR requested congressional permission to create 50,000 planes on May 16, 1940, "two days after the Netherlands' government fled in disarray [and] Hitler's blitzkrieg was on the move and France teetered on the brink of collapse."

Yenne obviously loves numbers and when placed within their historical context, they are often quite illuminating. For instance, he mentions that American aircraft factories produced 2,383 planes "in the last pre-Pearl Harbor quarter" but two years later, during the third quarter of 1943, 11,776 aircraft were created by US factories. And as the daughter of a young tail gunner who flew missions in several types of B-26's rather late in the European theater, I was interested to learn from Yenne's book that 1,883 B-26B's were built in Baltimore and 1,210 B-26C's in Omaha (and I also enjoyed viewing the photographs of partially-finished B-26's included in the book).

Filling the page opposite the book's introduction, there is an immensely appealing color photograph of a female aviation factory worker leaning on the inside of a partially-finished plane (one presumes), hair net in place, tool in hand, a stunning, red-lipped smile across her face, and a big wink for the camera. The caption mentions that the war's "Rosie the Riveters" were the most well paid in the aviation sector and Yenne's book is filled with a plethora of such photographs, many of them staged, some of them not obviously so.

It is photographs like these that provide the book with a general appeal for WWII aficionados but for those with a particular interest in US wartime aviation production, this detailed book is a must-read.

Three and one-half stars.

The fledgling U.S. aircraft industry's meteoric rise is a wonderful history and it's covered thoroughly in this book, both by words and pictures. Easy reading, extensive researched subjects, this book should be in all aviation enthusiasts' library.