Like the other men of that era, my father kept most of his stories to himself, but he shared one that still gives me chills. On that day when the skies cleared, he said the men around him heard and even felt the sound before they understood its source. Then, suddenly, the entire sky filled with planes from one end to the other. He actually waved his arm across some imaginary horizon to add emphasis. And they were all flying in one direction. "I couldn't believe one country could build that many airplanes," he told me years later, still in awe (and he had no concept of the massive numbers flying over the Pacific at the same time). Then he paused in his story and shared a very personal moment with a son who rarely, if ever, heard anything personal from this man. "It was the most religious experience of my life," he said, looking far off and not at me."The word went out in forty-one, Uncle Sam's gonna get the big job done, We hired out at Willow Run, Way down the road... Punch in, punch out, make your time, Hurry with the turret boys, you're getting behind, The bombers roared low in the blacked-out skies, Way down the road." -- Craig Johnson
At it’s production height, the Ford factory at Willow Run was completing one B-24 bomber an hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That’s how you fill a sky with planes.