OPINION — In 1942, Ford Motor Co. was building heavy bombers. At Willow Run in Michigan, a mile-long factory produced a B-24 Liberator every 63 minutes. Ford had never built bombers before. It did it anyway.
Across the country, General Motors produced tanks and aircraft engines. Chrysler built Sherman tanks. Packard manufactured Rolls-Royce Merlin engines that powered P-51 Mustangs. Throught greater Phoenix, companies like Goodyear Aerospace Corp., AiResearch and ALCOA manufactured blimps, aircraft components, planes and pontoon bridges.
These companies were fierce competitors in peacetime. In wartime, they became something else: an industrial ecosystem capable of outproducing every adversary on earth.
