New dealers get Knudsen fired from OPM. OPM and SPAB replaces by new agency WPB. War Production Board. Knudsen devastated but lands 3-star generalship on military side of effort. Only civilian to get that. Kicked... sideways?
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Henry Kaiser builds a big steel plant in California. Looks like this was when California started transforming into an industrial powerhouse. This plant inspired Ayn Rand’s Rearden Steel in Atlas Shrugged and was also where Terminator 2 climax was filmed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser_Steel …
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Back to Detroit. After a survey of impressive production statistics, the story of Ford’s Willow Run plant for making B24s, and Knudsen’s evil twin Charles Sorensen who pushed through a dating vision to make planes like cars. 250k parts instead of 15k. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_E._Sorensen …
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Excellent story. Huge problems with production design and labor. And dual purpose of both parts supply and full assembly resolved to focus on latter. Innovation of field modification allowed production to get past constant stream of design mods and hit pace of 300/mo.
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B24 Liberators were less popular with crews than B17s but more capable. VLR version won’t the Atlantic war by closing the gap in coverage for U-boat defense. Funny I never looked up this story despite being in Ann Arbor for years and a fan of WW2 aircraft lore.
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Generally impressive the extent to which this generation of engineering leaders had mastered enormously complex command economy production, just a couple of generations after boutique early mass production. Artisan production craft turned to manufacturing science in 50 years.
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A big part was being asshole dictators. Sorensen was apparently called the Mussolini of Ford. Leaders of this era punched each other up. Still the culture in large-scale manufacturing but less so.
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1943, Big Labor broken as public and even FDR lose patience with strikes disrupting war effort. This is the weakest part of the book. I’m guessing there was more than this cartoon villainy portrait to labor side of war story. Congress passes War Labor Disputes Act over FDR veto.
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More production go brrr. Kinda gets lost in the record breaking that much of this output was used to bomb Germany to rubble and kill on an industrial scale. The engineering story is great but the slaughtering race is depressing to contemplate.
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Parade of stories big and small, from GM’s plant in Iran to assemble trucks for Russia to small garage startup making machine tools and tank parts. The sheer number of things being made by unlikely companies in impressive. Frigidaire made machine guns for eg. Wtf.
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This is mainly a mechanical, metallurgical and chemical engineering story but tons of electrical too. GE made ridiculous numbers of types of lighting, motors, etc. Also bazookas. The generality of industrial capacity in the 1940s is amazing.
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Key principle: WIB could restrict consumer demand, regulate wages and prices, and stop the production of non-essentials but could not order companies to make specific things. Producers chose how to insert themselves into war effort. Based on skills, benefits.
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Not a free market but not a command economy either. More like a 50-50 mix. Shape demand and restrict supply but leave matching free. Regulate the macro and boundary conditions but not the micro.
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Starting in 1941 Business Week apparently ran an advice column responding to reader queries about war materiel production contracts and opportunities
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This book published in 1942 was a guide to getting into war production. Your business goes to war.https://books.google.com/books?id=znTMAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA410&lpg=PA410&dq=your+business+goes+to+war&source=bl&ots=Ue0W-Yr6Nr&sig=ACfU3U16AaKmyMNR8porbZuxyWSmVGMYuQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjk6divl8fqAhVPjp4KHbKJCCEQ6AEwBXoECAQQAQ#v=onepage&q=your%20business%20goes%20to%20war&f=false …
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Half a million new businesses, including Pacific Hut which saved steel by replacing steel Quonset huts with coated plywood huts. The war transformed the economy into modern form.
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On the labor side, 20 million migrated to the new industrial base. A step function in industrialization I guess. Up from what was already the highest level in the world. No wonder 1930s and 1950s seem worlds apart. The 50s seem familiar in a way the 30s do not.
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Wages rose by 70%. About 7 million left farming for military or industry, driving farm automation and fertilizer use. The war was pretty good for the American economy. The US bought itself a modernization via wars wrecking Europe and Asia.
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Blacks fought for a big social level up: executive order 8802, patchy desegregation in industry (though nothin the military), race riots in Detroit. Book skips rather lightly over this bit. Sounds like a whole other book could be written about this alone.
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8802 introduced minimal anti-discrimination protections fir race, color, religion, creed, but not sex. But women made the biggest gains despite headwinds. Kinda tedious how incumbents predictably resist any new entrants to anything.
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“By July 1944, 36% of all workers in prime defense contractors were female” Steel: 22.3% GM: 30.7% Kaiser yards start Richmond: 70%
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“Rosie the riveter” archetype was really 3 women: Vera Lowe of Lockheed, used in Lockheed PR after a photo appeared in Life magazine Geraldine Huff for “we can do it” ad council poster by J. Howard Miller May Doyle, Norman Rockwell’s model for Saturday Evening Post
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Shipyard diary of a woman welder, 1944 bestseller. On google bookshttps://books.google.com/books/about/Shipyard_Diary_of_a_Woman_Welder.html?id=9vQ9AQAAIAAJ …
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Back to Henry Kaiser. Now he’s building baby aircraft carriers and developing a very high public profile. Then ships cracking mysteriously topple his rising reputation. Brittle steel, not his fault.
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Kaiser partners with Howard Hughes to build an airplane version of the liberty ship, the gigantic Spruce Goose. Spoiler: project went nowhere. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_H-4_Hercules …
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Now into B-29 story, probably the most complex project of the war, costing more than the Manhattan project. Bridge between early and modern planes, except for jet engines it had most familiar features of today.
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Lots of production innovations: multi lining being the big one. Unlike one long assembly line like at the B-24 Willow Run plant. Interesting that this is still how it’s done if you visit the Boeing plant in Everett. 40k parts instead of 25k for B24. Built at 4 plants.
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Serious crash kills test pilot and sets back B-29. Knudsen called in to rescue the program. Wings prone to catching fire.
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Such a lovely plane. Gotta remember though — only plane yo actually drop nuclear bombs in war.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncUdqT8AxY0 …
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I will admit I got sucked into watching a bunch of bomber videos on YouTube today. Well back to the book.
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Knudsen working through endless B-29 production troubles. Manhattan project starting up. Apparently the B-24 and B-17 couldn’t handle the nuke. So if the B-29 hadn’t made it in time, it would have been British Lancasters that did the job.
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