Page 32 - Volume 10 Number 8

Ohio-based Austin Company in January 1943. As fast as Austin Company employees finished one area within the facility and began another, Boeing moved in and began installing the first of 130,000 pieces of tooling. When Boeing finally took possession of Plant II, the Austin Company had built more than 2.8-million square feet of floor space – almost 180 acres – all under one roof.
It should be mentioned that all of the feverish activity in Wichita caught the attention of Air Corps General K.B. Wolfe, who telephoned Schaefer in June 1942 to inform him that in addition to building a factory for the B-29, Boeing-Wichita had been chosen as prime contractor to build 750 Waco CG-4A troop gliders. Schaefer would, however, receive help from Walter Beech and Dwane Wallace who led the Beech Aircraft Corporation and the Cessna Aircraft Company, respectfully. Their combined workforces would build subassemblies and ship them across town to Boeing-Wichita for final assembly. Wolfe got his 750 gliders, on-time and ready for the D-Day invasion of Adolf Hitler’s “Fortress Europe” two years later.1
What Julius E. Schaefer needed next was people to build the B-29. The call went out from coast to coast for patriotic Americans to leave their families, their homes and their professions and relocate to Wichita – fast! They came by the thousands from every state in the Union – housewives, church pastors, taxi cab drivers, farmers, oil field workers, clerks, and teachers, to name only a few occupations. Last but not least, they were willing to work a minimum of 80 hours a week. Many were native mid-westerners. Few of those who arrived in the “Peerless Princess of the Prairie” in 1942 and 1943 knew anything about airplanes, radial engines, propellers, tooling, materials and the thousands of processes involved in building a super bomber.
Workers were trained in special classes based on their demonstrated abilities and were quickly sent to the production line. Although some people were assigned to build the PT-13 and PT-17 trainers, the majority went to work on the B-29. To house the new workforce, Boeing, the Army and the City of Wichita rapidly erected what amounted to military barracks that offered only the bare essentials of home. Many communities in the surrounding area also helped by improvising living quarters and taking in boarders. Merchants kept their shelves stocked with necessities, and shuttle service took laborers to and from Plant II.
Gradually, the back shops began to hum with activity as thousands of parts began flowing into the main assembly area. A large number of these parts were fabricated by hand because tooling and fixtures had yet to be delivered. Quality, however, did suffer and was reflected in the fact that the empty weight of some bombers was hundreds of pounds higher than others, chiefly because of variations in materials, processes and manufacturing tolerances. It is important to remember that Boeing was still making changes to the airplane’s design while Plant II workers were trying to build airplanes.
In addition, the B-29 was not only the largest airplane to be manufactured in Wichita, it also was pressurized,
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and that technology presented its own set of unique challenges. Special seals around the cockpit windows and gun sighting blisters had to be matched perfectly to prevent air leaks, and it took workers time and plenty of mistakes to determine exactly how it had to be done. The wing was another area plagued by design difficulties during the early production phase. In Seattle, Boeing engineers scheduled static tests of the wing structures while wings for the initial batch of bombers were being built in Plant II. In the wake of the static tests, modifications to the wings were ordered, resulting in chaos on Plant II’s sprawling production line as workers struggled to incorporate the changes with a minimum of disruption. New tooling for the wings was eventually built and sent to Wichita, but production continued to be hampered by further changes until the final specifications were implemented.
Plant II was a massive enclosure, but the ramp outside boasted more than 1.5-million square feet and soon became “home” for bombers awaiting modifications. In the winter of 1943-1944, the temperature often dipped well below freezing, and occasionally, driven by a bone-chilling wind chill factor, fell below zero. Yet, the work went on and the work was done despite the harsh conditions. More than 1,200 technicians were pulled off the assembly lines and sent outside to complete modifications to the bomber’s airframe. The lessons and pitfalls of mass production were being learned the hard way by Boeing-Wichita. A new bomber that was supposed to have a five-year development and testing period before production began, was being designed, developed, tested and manufactured in only 36 months, all with a largely unskilled/semiskilled workforce, and before final engineering drawings and blueprints had been delivered to Plant II.
Another major problem centered on faulty electrical connectors, commonly called “cannon plugs,” that featured multiple contact points and facilitated electrical connections throughout the B-29’s 10 miles of wiring. After assembly, the plugs often failed but had worked perfectly during sub-assembly tests. The problem was traced to vibration on the ground and in flight that caused the metal pins to come loose. Once a fix had been developed, workers removed, rebuilt and reinstalled approximately 586,000 plugs, a task that consumed an incredible 40,000 man-hours.
While all those plugs were being rebuilt, it soon became apparent to pilots that the glass windows in the cockpit were distorting their forward view. They had to shift their vision from one pane to another in an attempt to see what lay ahead. The distortion went undetected by the supplier, who was producing and checking the windows according to strict specifications. The distortion was eventually removed, but the glass in 75 bombers had to be replaced, and the production line slowed to a crawl awaiting new windows for installation.
By late 1943, still very early in the B-29’s production run, Plant II was operating three seven-and-a-half-hour shifts, six days a week. General Arnold, however, was not
AUGUST 2016