Subject:  "Mom built B-24s during the big war" |
Author:
Leon Harrison
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Date Posted: 18:30:26 08/12/08 Tue
Leon Harrison
West Carrollton, Ohio
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
To: The Editor
Subject: My mother helped build Ford B-24 bombers in 1943
“Mom built B-24s during the big war”
My mother, Elizabeth-Allen Harrison, will be 90 years old [born August 17, 1918] by the time that this is printed. Sixty-five years ago (in 1943), before joining the WAACs, Mom had left Rowdy, Kentucky, to move to Yipsilanti, Michgan, and work at the Ford Willow Run aircraft factory; wherein she had wired radios and bucked wing rivets while helping to manufacture [four- engine] B-24 Liberator bombers. As a typicl baby-boomer boy [born in 1950], I had glued together, painted and decaled a plastic B-24 model, among many others that depicted the famous WWII aircraft that had flown to fill and fall from the sky during the big war. In 1973, I became a private pilot, getting my commercial ticket in 1977.
Last June, before and after photographing and riding inside a 1929 Ford Tri-motor airliner at the Dayton Wright Brothers Airport, I had looked at posted promotional notices on doors: that announced The [Aug. 11-13] Wings of Freedom Tour. I knew that I would have to attend this event with my cameras, if not with my mother or others.
Yesterday morning [Monday, Aug. 11], I drove to Clayton and picked up my mother. We went to Miamisburg, where we enjoyed eating a nice lunch at the Koffee Kup. Next, I drove us to the Dayton Wright Brothers Airport. On the way there, visible through the windshield in the distance, we could see a big B-24, slowly flying across the clear blue sky in front of us, such sights rarely seen during these past 60 years. This big brown bomber was taxiing in to park while we arrived outside. It was a nice day, temperatures in the seventies, not too hot or humid, even on the black asphalt tarmac around and under the three displayed aircraft: this B-24J Liberator, a B-17G Flying Fortress, and a P-51 Mustang fighter [shiny two-seat C model trainer].
At the souvenir and ticket table, a tour member told us that “Witchcraft” was a Consolidated B-24J that had been built at the Fort Worth, Texas, factory [as had “Strawberry Bitch” at the Air Force Museum]. It has been painted to depict the plane that had flown and completed 130 combat missions. Are there any more Ford B-24s, from among the total of 19,203 of all models that were produced? B-17 bomber production totaled 12,731.
I did not mind paying for Mom and me, to pass through the plastic barrier ropes by the souvenir table and enter the area around the planes. At the age of 90, Mom uses a cane now, still getting around but going slow. A former B-26 Marauder [twin-engine bomber] radio man was there and being pushed around in a wheelchair by his son. Some of those old war veterans proudly wear their commemorative caps and souvenir pins. They overheard bits of Mom’s memories as we overheard pieces of theirs, so few of them remaining from that generation, all of them having such a common bond of cameraderie and wartime experiences. Where had they and their friends been? What had they seen and done during the war? Mom remembered that it had been quite a sight, seeing those long lines and many rows of new B-24s, ready to be flown off to the wars in Europe, the Pacific, Africa and Asia.
In front of the B-24, I took some pictures of a younger man, for his absent veteran grandfather who had flown them over Europe. Mom and I walked around and under the wings of that big brown twin-tail bomber, pausing to pose and take photos. I stood beside her while polite friendly people took our pictures. Mom could not stand in line to climb up, enter and walk through the confined spaces within the fuselage, and I did not choose to. During the war, midgets and small women [like Mom] had been especially useful in aircraft manufacturing. At this airport, a couple of years or so ago, I had gone for a B-17 ride inside the shiny “Sentimental Journey”. This displayed B-17G had been painted brown, the insignia and markings depicting the “Nine-O-Nine” that had been flown on 140 missions.
Mom soon got tired and had to sit and rest at a nearby picnic table. Before leaving, we posed for a few more photos, a nice lady taking them for us. Mom had enjoyed the attention, the comments and the conversation. I bought a copy of a Fort Worth factory picture and a small steel B-24 model, the latter being one of Mom’s 90th birtday presents. We walked back to my car and then drove back to her house in Clayton.
Yesterday evening, I loaded my digital images and scanned others into this computer, some of them from books and Internet web sites, while learning and relearning about the Willow Run factory and some facts, figures, stories and statistics about the big war and the B-24. Soon, I will save and store this story with them on my hard drive and compact disks, to be shared with family, friends, kids and kin [and with a few better editors] out there.
Leon Harrison
West Carrollton, Ohio
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