The American Aircraft Factory in World War II Review

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(More customer reviews)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.


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Few industrial phenomena have been as dramatic as the United States\' mid-20th-century shift from peacetime to wartime production. The American Aircraft Factory in World War II documents the production of legendary warbirds by companies like Boeing, North American, Curtiss, Consolidated, Douglas, Grumman, and Lockheed. It was a production unmatched by any other country and a crucial part of why the allies won the war. Author Bill Yenne considers the prewar governmental acts that got the plants rolling, as well as the gender shift that occurred as women entered the work force like never before. He also describes the construction of megafactories like Willow Run, factory design considerations, and the postwar conversion back to peacetime production. Illustrated with 175 period photographs—including 50 rare color photos never before seen in print.

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