In a word, terrific.
291 pages, 21 photos, and took about 8 hours to read
the story of Edsel Ford is the thread wound through this incredibly deep thoroughly researched history of how the Ford motor company began and was a success in the assembly line method of building cars even in the depression, and then when Hitler attacked other countries for conquest, and England implored the US for military assistance, events progressed to where President Roosevelt changed the course of American history from it's trend to neutrality and drawing down it's military to less than that of an ability to defend itself from hostile military takeover (Germany and Hitler) because of it's safe zones of the oceans to either side, and friendly neighbors to the North and South.
The sheer amount of history I learned from reading about the military status of the USA in the late 1930s was shocking. You'll probably find that to be true for you as well, as the high school history education in the 1980s I had in Michigan was useless in most aspects, and certainly about the years and events between the great depression and the onset of the USA's involvement in WW2. You might like reading this book just for that. But that is only a couple chapters.
You might value it for the extraordinary education about Henry, Edsel, Henry II and the way that family operated the Ford Motor Company before WW2, and how Edsel as president of the company had to fight his dad Henry, who never did loose the reins of the business, who was a pacifist and didn't want the company to make machines for war to kill an army that wasn't attacking the USA.
You'll likely never before have considered how the Ford family had to deal with their factories in Germany, France, etc that they had friends and business colleagues managing, were getting into a no win situation in enemy territory, and forced to build and sell Ford trucks and vehicles to the Nazi army, and communicating with those managers now making producing for, and collaborating with the Nazis.
Once the determination was made to stop making cars, and shift into production of B24s, they had to create an assembly line production for making airplanes... and no one was doing that. B24s were being made individually, and not very well... and for those of you that have ever worked in a factory, with engineering drawings, you will probably grasp the difficulty of starting to build a 4 engine bomber. I believe the book said the number of drawings for individual parts, and some of you will know that you have to make every single nut, bolt, rivet, and washer to the drawing spec, and the number of drawings was something like 5.9 million individual drawings. That's just for one plane.
The plant to make the bombers, Willow Run, was so enormous, it took 156000 lights in the ceiling to make it lit well enough to work, and keep in mind it was a dark out building so it wouldn't be seen at night in case of a bombing run by the Nazis. No windows. There are a couple chapters on how they had to design the factory to make so many different machines, foundry processes for a half dozen metals, chemical processes to treat the metals, x ray machines to check for bad forgings and castings, and the list just keeps growing of all the many things under that one roof it took to make the B24s. It's fascinating. And that's just the machinery, consider the people, the workers, and all the variety of things to make it a place that thousands of people could work together. Hospital beds, nurses, doctors and operating rooms for the workers injured on the job. Cafeterias for eating, bathrooms, break rooms, and all the rest. Training rooms for riverters, welders, mechanics, and the other specialist jobs.
Throughout the book are stats, facts and figures that I just found incredible, but a couple in particular are amazing. Like the way the author explained the interior size of Willow Run to be so large, every major league baseball team could have played 8 games simultaneously, with a crowd of 30,000 spectators for each game, and there would still be enough room left over for a football stadium and another 30,000 spectators. Ponder that.
The book is the best education you'll probably get on what it took to win the war from the standpoint of raw materials made into war machines. Of all the nations iron, 1/2 went to Detroit, as well as 3/4s of the plate glass, the leather, rubber, etc etc
A chapter or two go into the difficult problems they had with hiring thousands of people and not having anywhere to house them. Tent cities with no water, laundry, showers, or sewage systems. Once getting people to Detroit, training them and then little by little finding them leaving due to being drafted, injured, or moving on, they had to search farther out for workers, and went through the south on hiring trips to keep up the number of workers. It was the twelfth year of the great depression and 17 million people left home to find work in a war factory int he first half of the 40's, and Detroit grew to be the 4th largest city in the USA. The book also goes into the race riots, brought on by the racist southerners, the strikers, and the antagonists that wanted it all to fail. Ever hear about the Battle of the Overpass? You're going to get an astonishing amount of history in this book.
You'll be amazed at the pivotal moments that Henry and Edsel's wife made in keeping Henry in check. Blown away. You're likely already aware that Henry Ford is credited by most of history as having changed the world. He was stubborn enough to accomplish about anything, and there were times when he had to have his mind changed about a couple of things. I'll leave it a mystery you can get to when you read the book.
Throughout the book the author has brilliantly placed excerpts or condensed versions of the diaries of people that kept a journal of their arrival at the factory, how they coped with the complete change of civilization, from normal life to ration stamps for food and gas.
It's one of the most amazing books I've read.... and you regular readers probably recall the other book reviews I've done, and you have no idea how many books I've read... before becoming a blogger I was an avid reader.
You can read a far briefer review at http://travelforaircraft.wordpress.com/2014/07/07/the-arsenal-of-democracy-write/ though it seems far more professional than my own way of writing and describing the book.
http://www.amazon.com/Arsenal-Democracy-Detroit-Quest-America/dp/0547719280/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404917634&sr=1-1&keywords=arsenal+of+democracy
291 pages, 21 photos, and took about 8 hours to read
the story of Edsel Ford is the thread wound through this incredibly deep thoroughly researched history of how the Ford motor company began and was a success in the assembly line method of building cars even in the depression, and then when Hitler attacked other countries for conquest, and England implored the US for military assistance, events progressed to where President Roosevelt changed the course of American history from it's trend to neutrality and drawing down it's military to less than that of an ability to defend itself from hostile military takeover (Germany and Hitler) because of it's safe zones of the oceans to either side, and friendly neighbors to the North and South.
The sheer amount of history I learned from reading about the military status of the USA in the late 1930s was shocking. You'll probably find that to be true for you as well, as the high school history education in the 1980s I had in Michigan was useless in most aspects, and certainly about the years and events between the great depression and the onset of the USA's involvement in WW2. You might like reading this book just for that. But that is only a couple chapters.
You might value it for the extraordinary education about Henry, Edsel, Henry II and the way that family operated the Ford Motor Company before WW2, and how Edsel as president of the company had to fight his dad Henry, who never did loose the reins of the business, who was a pacifist and didn't want the company to make machines for war to kill an army that wasn't attacking the USA.
You'll likely never before have considered how the Ford family had to deal with their factories in Germany, France, etc that they had friends and business colleagues managing, were getting into a no win situation in enemy territory, and forced to build and sell Ford trucks and vehicles to the Nazi army, and communicating with those managers now making producing for, and collaborating with the Nazis.
Once the determination was made to stop making cars, and shift into production of B24s, they had to create an assembly line production for making airplanes... and no one was doing that. B24s were being made individually, and not very well... and for those of you that have ever worked in a factory, with engineering drawings, you will probably grasp the difficulty of starting to build a 4 engine bomber. I believe the book said the number of drawings for individual parts, and some of you will know that you have to make every single nut, bolt, rivet, and washer to the drawing spec, and the number of drawings was something like 5.9 million individual drawings. That's just for one plane.
The plant to make the bombers, Willow Run, was so enormous, it took 156000 lights in the ceiling to make it lit well enough to work, and keep in mind it was a dark out building so it wouldn't be seen at night in case of a bombing run by the Nazis. No windows. There are a couple chapters on how they had to design the factory to make so many different machines, foundry processes for a half dozen metals, chemical processes to treat the metals, x ray machines to check for bad forgings and castings, and the list just keeps growing of all the many things under that one roof it took to make the B24s. It's fascinating. And that's just the machinery, consider the people, the workers, and all the variety of things to make it a place that thousands of people could work together. Hospital beds, nurses, doctors and operating rooms for the workers injured on the job. Cafeterias for eating, bathrooms, break rooms, and all the rest. Training rooms for riverters, welders, mechanics, and the other specialist jobs.
Throughout the book are stats, facts and figures that I just found incredible, but a couple in particular are amazing. Like the way the author explained the interior size of Willow Run to be so large, every major league baseball team could have played 8 games simultaneously, with a crowd of 30,000 spectators for each game, and there would still be enough room left over for a football stadium and another 30,000 spectators. Ponder that.
The book is the best education you'll probably get on what it took to win the war from the standpoint of raw materials made into war machines. Of all the nations iron, 1/2 went to Detroit, as well as 3/4s of the plate glass, the leather, rubber, etc etc
A chapter or two go into the difficult problems they had with hiring thousands of people and not having anywhere to house them. Tent cities with no water, laundry, showers, or sewage systems. Once getting people to Detroit, training them and then little by little finding them leaving due to being drafted, injured, or moving on, they had to search farther out for workers, and went through the south on hiring trips to keep up the number of workers. It was the twelfth year of the great depression and 17 million people left home to find work in a war factory int he first half of the 40's, and Detroit grew to be the 4th largest city in the USA. The book also goes into the race riots, brought on by the racist southerners, the strikers, and the antagonists that wanted it all to fail. Ever hear about the Battle of the Overpass? You're going to get an astonishing amount of history in this book.
You'll be amazed at the pivotal moments that Henry and Edsel's wife made in keeping Henry in check. Blown away. You're likely already aware that Henry Ford is credited by most of history as having changed the world. He was stubborn enough to accomplish about anything, and there were times when he had to have his mind changed about a couple of things. I'll leave it a mystery you can get to when you read the book.
Throughout the book the author has brilliantly placed excerpts or condensed versions of the diaries of people that kept a journal of their arrival at the factory, how they coped with the complete change of civilization, from normal life to ration stamps for food and gas.
It's one of the most amazing books I've read.... and you regular readers probably recall the other book reviews I've done, and you have no idea how many books I've read... before becoming a blogger I was an avid reader.
You can read a far briefer review at http://travelforaircraft.wordpress.com/2014/07/07/the-arsenal-of-democracy-write/ though it seems far more professional than my own way of writing and describing the book.
http://www.amazon.com/Arsenal-Democracy-Detroit-Quest-America/dp/0547719280/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404917634&sr=1-1&keywords=arsenal+of+democracy
Sounds like a great read. In case you haven't heard, the Willow Run assembly plant is being demolished, but the Yankee Air Museum, located at Willow Run airport, has agreed to buy and restore a 150,000 square foot part of the factory for their museum. They have a C-47, B-17 and B-25 that are restored and flying, and some other static display planes. Their website says they wanted to find a B-24 built at Willow Run for the museum, but supposedly only 8 B-24s survive and 4 of them were built there.
ReplyDeleteMy dad was an engineer for Hydramatic at the Willow Run plant, and I took a tour of either that plant or the GM assembly plant when I was a kid. It was so long ago, I don't remember anything about it now.
http://savethebomberplant.org/the-new-yankee-air-museum/
then they should do a simple search for B24's like I did, and find that the one in Australia needs a new hanger http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2014/03/b-24-being-restored-in-australia-for-19.html and you are mostly correct about the 8 B24s as the Australian one isn't listed among the 8 on http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2014/03/what-became-of-100s-of-b-17s-b-24s-and.html
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