I was reading the latest issue of Autoweek magazine. It's not the place one would expect to see news pertaining to the air war in Europe but in this case it was. As part of its bankruptcy proceedings, General Motors will close the Willow Run factory in Ipsilanti, Michigan. This huge facility was built in 1940 by the Ford Motor Company as an assembly plant for B-24 Liberator bombers. The building's dimensions are staggering at a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide. At peak production 34,500 were employed within its walls. The plant is a testament to the industrial might of the United States. By 1944 the plant was producing more than 650 of the big bombers each month. That's about one an hour! By war's end 8,800 of the 18,000 Liberators were built by Ford at Willow Run.

This got me wondering about the Willow Run plant and its connection to the 492nd Bomb Group. The information was easily obtained thanks to the tireless research done by Dave and Paul Arnett in building the best bomb group website on the internet. I found that fourteen of the 492nd BG Liberators were built at Willow Run. Ten of them were lost, eight with the 492nd, and two with other groups after the 492nd was disbanded. Of these eight, two crews flew their battle damaged aircraft to neutral countries and were interned. The Gaulke crew made it to Sweden and the Platinsky crew to Switzerland.

Another Ford built B-24 was lost with the McMurray crew on June 15, 1944. The airplane was shot down by a German fighter. The crew bailed out over in the vicinity of Normandy where the D-Day landing had taken place only nine days earlier. The men landed on both sides of the front line but all eventually made it back to friendly territory and returned to duty. But this apparent stroke of good luck was short lived. Three weeks later the McMurray crew was one of twelve crews lost on the Bernberg mission of July 7th. All nine members of the crew were killed. The Watson, Newman, and Haag crews also went down on the Bernberg mission. The Sachtleben and Segar crews were lost on June 4th and July 11th respectively. Only four of these fourteen aircraft returned to the United States.