Women workers were regarded as particularly adept at working in small spaces and remaining focused while performing repetitive tasks. Women on the assembly lines produced aircraft, engines, tanks, and trucks at increasing rates of production without compromising safety. |
Part of the cowling for one of the motors of a B-25 bomber is
assembled in the Inglewood, California, engine department of North American Aviation, Inc., October 1942  Credit: Library of Congress |
Wong Ruth Mae Moy works on an aircraft engine part, March 1943  Credit: Library of Congress |
Rose Will Monroe was a Kentucky teenager, widowed with two children, when she moved to Ypsilanti, Michigan to take a job at Ford Motor Company’s enormous Willow Run aircraft factory. She became a riveter, playing the part of "Rosie the Riveter" in a government film promoting war bonds. |
Olive Ann Beech managed Beech Aircraft’s wartime production, employing and training 14,000 workers who manufactured over 7400 military planes. Ninety percent of American pilots and navigators were trained on the popular Beechcraft Model 18. |
| Women came from all over the country to work in the assembly lines of defense production plants that were converted or built to mass produce ever more sophisticated armaments. |
Woman inspector checks electrical assemblies,
Vega Aircraft Corporation, Burbank, California, June 1942  Credit: Library of Congress |
A riveting machine operator at the Douglas Aircraft Company plant joins sections of wing ribs to reinforce the inner wing assemblies of B-17F heavy bombers in Long Beach, California  Credit: Library of Congress |
