Like I said earlier, the Japanese were tearing up China from 1937 or so onward, US naval rearmament started in earnest about that time though our army and air forces didn't do as well. By 1938 Hitler had taken the Rhineland and Austria, by September 1939 Europe was at war; by the time the Germans took France off the board in 1940 the Dutch and French had orders for US aircraft being delivered but too little too late. The British started buying everything they could get their hands on, and by 1940 Canada was building what would eventually become the world's third- or fourth-largest navy.
well, that's probably because the rest of the world was already in it and we'd been selling/lend leasing equipment to other countries as early as 1937, My guess is that this plant was converted to fill orders for arms from the UK or Russia...
The SPAD XIII was given to the school in 1918 to train new aircraft mechanics during WWI. It was regularly rolled out into the courtyard and fired up well into the 1930's. During WWII it was pushed off to the side to make room for the Dauntless, the F4F and the FU-4. After the war, my Dad's cousin (cl*** of '49) remembers the old SPAD hanging from the ceiling in the old Aviation wing: "The tires were flat and pretty rotted and the canvas on the wings was ratty, but it was in pretty good shape". When the new Aviation/Automotive shop wing was built in 1953, SPAD wound up dis***embled and in storage until the mid 1970's when it was sold. The latest update I have for the SPAD was that it was (or is still in the process of being) restored in California in the late 80's or early 90's. I don't know who owns it now. I will have to dig for it, but I do have a photo of the fully restored airframe (minus canvas) taken at Gillespie Field in 1991. I would love to find out where she is now.....
Paccar built in tanks in Renton. Sadly the original plant was torn down in the mid-90s. Kenworth built parts of the B-17s and B-29s and Boeing went from building p***enger planes to B-17s and B-29s The whole Puget Sound area was a hot bed of repurposed manufacturing during the war. When I went to school to learn machining at Renton Vo-tech almost all of our manual machines were WWII era equipment that had been donated. It was really cool working on machines that we knew had built so many things for the war.
In the late 80's I was in charge of a production line with some old Cincinati H-mills... I happen to look at the tags on the sides of the mills and they were stamped with something like: U.S. War Dept. and the Chevrolet Motor Division...
We were beginning to arm and mobilize by 1940...draft started up and was then increased more than a year before Pearl Harbor. Lotd of stuff was built and sold, and some things sold to the losers of '39 but not delivered were diverted into British and USA use...both military and industrial mobilization were well under way.
I learned very recently that lend lease went both ways. I was told that my dad was a camera operator in a Mosquito over the Philipines. He was in the US Navy. I learned a few years ago he must have been in a Canadien built Mosquito on lend lease. The Mosquito was a British medium twin made of wood with two Merlins and it went like stink.
A few years ago, I found an interesting article on the net that listed all the companies in Michigan that geared up for WWII and what parts they made... Wish I could find that list now.. I tried a number of times to find it but no dice!
We had one of those Cincinnati Mills too! It was in the Freshman Machine Shop and had the same "War Department" tag.
The .30 cal. M-1 carbine was produced by Rock-o-la Jukebox Co., Underwood Typewriter Co., & Saginaw Steering Gear Div. of G.M., besides the usual arms manufacturers.
How about those old bar feeder screw machines they had back then???... Even the little mom an' pop shops contributed to the war effort.. There were millions of those little machine shops back in them days...
The Jalopy Journal
