Home » Open thread 5/14/2025

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Open thread 5/14/2025 — 14 Comments

  1. Absolutely fascinating.

    The U.S. Once Built Airplanes Quickly
    https://archive.md/l3V4t

    By the time Willow Run was operating at full capacity, a B-24 was rolling off the mile-long rural assembly line every 55 minutes. A Liberator an hour. The nation needed those planes, and it got them. By war’s end, factories across the U.S. had built nearly 300,000 military aircraft.

  2. Mike – Fox Business has a program called “American Built” hosted by Stuart Varney. I remember a show about Willow Run and how Ford was involved in building that production line. It is on Fox Nation Season 2. The link seems to work without the need to have a subscription. I finally signed up for it since there are some interesting history programs.

    Here is the link – https://nation.foxnews.com/watch/72df0c5660ff9c06a915e9d0bf271627/

    He also did shows on the Ford Rouge River plant, the Mackinac Bridge, and the Michigan Stadium.

  3. Mike,

    You should check out this book. It has tons of detail on the Willow run operation and much more along those lines. How tanks and Liberty ships were mass produced is included.

    Actually, there was much studying and analysis of how large airplanes were currently being made before they could even begin to plan out something like Willow Run.

    Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II Paperback – July 2, 2013
    by Arthur Herman (Author)

  4. sdferr,

    Your Orioles are nearly as bad as my White Sox. What’s going on in Charm City?

  5. The easy answer is put down to key injuries, but as losses mount the questions widen to issues like young guys expected to “grow and improve” failing at that, instead forgetting how to play with basic competence, grinding against their own desires, locking up with over-burdened anxiety, on the one hand, and a poorly functioning front office off-season performance (hiring Charlie Morton say, rather than going hard after young studs like Crochet), on the other. It’s painful though, I gotta say, but not unaccustomed. I mean, I lived through 0-21 in ’88, so this is a cakewalk by comparison.

  6. And Gunnar cranks a 2r hr as we speak. It ain’t over ’til it’s over . . . and Kremer gives up a solo shot to follow: 3-1 O’s vs Minn.

  7. At least they’re still drawing well. Was there in April for two games against the Reds. The Friday night game was packed, and good crowd Saturday as well. Beautiful ballpark. Went to the Babe Ruth museum before the game. Highly recommend.

  8. RTF and sdferr,

    Not as bad as the Rockies.

    On Willow run. B24s are much less complicated than a modern jet . I’m not trying cut Boeing any slack as their production is obviously in the toilet.

  9. Heh, so you didn’t catch that Sunday game, Mike! The less said about that, the better.

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