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Women in Production
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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.
To the right, Wong Ruth Mae Moy works on an aircraft engine part, March 1943.
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Below, 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. |
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Olive Ann Beech (right) 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. d |
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Rose Will Monroe (right) 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. |
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Woman inspector checks electrical assemblies,
Vega
Aircraft Corporation, Burbank,
California,
June 1942 |
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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. To the left, 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. |
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Photo Credits (L to R): #1-2: The Library of Congress, #3: Wichita State University Libraries,
#4: Ford Motor Company, #5-6 The Library of Congress
(c) Copyright National Women's History Museum 2007