In 1940, America had few guns or planes. As our Mr. Alterman pointed out in June, it was F.D.R. who leaned on Henry and Edsel Ford to churn out 66-foot-long B-24 bombers, the so-called Liberators, whose four engines unleashed 4800 horsepower and a top speed of 303 mph. I still find this hard to believe, but Ford’s Willow Run plant in ­Ypsilanti—with 29 miles of conveyors dangling from the ceilings—eventually churned out 540 B-24s per month, thanks in part to Ford’s upfront investment of $47 million, not to mention the sweaty en­deavors of 42,331 men—including Jesse Owens, Jim Thorpe, and Charles Lindbergh—and women—including Rose Monroe, a.k.a. Rosie the Riveter. In all, 8685 Liberators were birthed at the Willow Run plant, then the largest man-made object known to, uh, man.

But the visionary far more respon­sible for transforming smoke-choked Detroit into the most terrifying war machine up until then was GM president William ­Signius Knudsen, working for $1 per year. His thinking matched Walter Reuther’s, who, in 1940, said: “England’s battles . . . were won on the playing fields of Eton. America’s can be won on the assembly lines of Detroit.”

B-24E Liberator bombers at Ford's Willow Run plant in Michigan.

After the 1940 New York auto show, Knudsen mustered as many Detroit execs as possible, then begged them to build 50,000 airplanes, 130,000 engines, 17,000 heavy guns, 25,000 light guns, 13,000 ­mortars, and 9200 tanks. Also maybe some candy and condoms.

It beggars belief that there was near-unanimous agreement, given our current climate of fear-mongering, fist-pounding denialists, devisionists, and declinists. Chrysler’s chief exec, K.T. Keller, agreed to make 30-ton M3 tanks, although he admitted, “I’ve never seen one of these things.” Packard’s Alvan Macauley agreed to build V-12 aircraft engines. Studebaker’s Harold Vance agreed to build troop transporters. GM’s Alfred P. Sloan Jr. promised to make 75-mm artillery shells. Hudson Motor ­Company began manufacturing parts for B-26 Marauders. Cadillac fashioned bombsights, howitzers, and 16.5-ton M5 tanks. Buick churned out aviation engines. Dodge produced gyrocompasses, ambulances, and radar sets. For all I know, ­Shinola was making the candy and Walt Disney the condoms.

Edsel also agreed to create—in the Rouge complex—4000 18-cylinder 2400-hp Double Wasp aircraft engines, as well as “Blitz Buggy” jeeps. Said Chrysler’s Keller, “We are ready to make a million of anything if they will let us know what they want.”

B-26 Marauders

None of this was easy. After Pearl Harbor, Henry Ford despairingly said, “We might as well stop making cars now,” fearful that it represented the last gasp of the very enterprise that had made him rich. Edsel suffered far more earnestly from soon-to-be-fatal stomach cancer. Just rounding up employees in Detroit was a perfect nightmare. Many of the able-bodied were in uniform, while the remainder struggled with rationed fuel and rubber, meaning they often couldn’t get to work. At Willow Run, Edsel had to erect a small city of homes, dorms, cafeterias, and movie houses in order to keep employees toiling in a factory whose length was three times the height of the Empire State Building. Likewise desperate for labor, Cadillac’s general manager hired 2000 Detroit prostitutes, claiming, “They know how to manage the women.” Eventually, of course, Southern-state residents poured floodlike into Detroit, buoying its population until the city nearly surpassed Philadelphia as America’s third-largest.

As the war drew down, Detroit was the No. 1 military contractor in the U.S. “It was without a doubt the greatest collective achievement of any American city, in any time,” wrote A.J. Baime in his delightful book, The Arsenal of Democracy.

On his cuff links, Edsel had engraved the phrase, “Omnium Rerum Vicissitudo”—or “all things change.” Few cities on earth have changed more than Detroit, a place nowadays cited as facile evidence of Ameri­ca’s general swirl down the porcelain bowl. But as VP Joe Biden told C/D in 2011: “Big countries have to be able to make big things. Have to.” So when you carp about the bailout, remember what Detroiters can build—at least, have built—when their tail feathers are set on fire. I mean, it was a Detroiter and ex-Packard engineer who built America’s first all-metal airplane, Maiden Detroit—as in “Made in Detroit.” And if that doesn’t amaze you, just remember that Detroit also gave us frozen peas and Casey Kasem.

From the October 2014 Issue of Car and Driver