Women Workers & World War II Aircraft Production

These two WWII era linen postcards are as close as I can come with postcards to the theme of the Sepia Saturday 80 image from the Library of Congress Photo collection. That photo's description says "Women are trained as engine mechanics in thorough Douglas training methods, Douglas Aircraft Company, Long Beach, Calif." Its topics are listed as follows:

* Douglas Aircraft Company
* airplane industry
* Women--Employment
* World War, 1939-1945
* engines
* Assembly-line methods
* United States--California--Long Beach

My first postcard says to "Keep 'em Flying" and shows a variety of airplanes. Many of the workers employed in aircraft production during WWII were women. The second postcard is "A Busy Worker's Correspondence Card." Women are prominent among the workers pictured on the card. The idea behind this type of postcard was that a busy person could just check the appropriate message, saving the time and trouble of writing. The message options with particular relevance to wartime workers are those in the second (blue) group. These include spaces to fill in the hours worked, and choices of "buying war bonds" and "finding scrap."

The two photos below are also from the Library of Congress and show women involved in airplane production. I chose these because I like their graphic quality. Both of these photos show woman workers at the Long Beach, California, plant of Douglas Aircraft Company. In the second photo the women are installing fixtures and assemblies to a tail fuselage section of a B-17F Bomber.

I found the number of airplanes produced in the early 1940s mind boggling. Here are some figures from an article on The American Aerospace Industry During World War II:

During 1939-1945, the industry became the largest single industry in the world and rose from 41st place to first among industries in the United States. From 1939, when fewer than 6,000 planes a year were being produced, the industry doubled production in 1940 and doubled it again in 1941 and 1942. In the first half of 1941, it produced 7,433 aircraft, more than had been produced in all of 1940. From January 1, 1940, until V-J Day on August 14, 1945, more than 300,000 military aircraft were produced for the U.S. military and the Allies.

This table on United States aircraft production during World War II is from Wikipedia:

For a humorous look at WWII Aircraft Production, see Production Line's Gettin' Too Fast on my Postcard Funnies blog.

Visit Sepia Saturday for More Vintage Photos