thedrifter
02-24-04, 05:51 AM
Corsair story to be retold
Women, men who built WWII plane in Akron tell cherished memories ahead of June reunion
By David Giffels
In August 1945, an announcement came over the loudspeaker at Goodyear's Plant D:
The war is over. Take everything with you. We're locking the doors.
There were rousing cheers and tears, and then, goodbyes. Hundreds of men and women, young and old, some in blue ``Rosie the Riveter'' coveralls and head scarves, some in white shirts and ties, filed out of the cavernous Corsair plant next to the Airdock, past signs painted like 8-balls with the slogan, ``A plane every eight minutes.''
A one-legged man bade farewell to his line partner, a tiny West Virginia girl who'd bucked rivets inside the narrow tail section of the fighter planes. A busy father said goodbye to the elderly couple he'd watched working side by
side, night after night, filing sheet metal. The deaf workers -- Goodyear's ``silents'' -- waved farewell.
They all trooped out together onto Triplett Boulevard, then parted ways. One piece of their life had ended. Another began.
Walter Nonamaker, who'd learned how to handcraft parts for the cockpit dash, went home to his family on South Street.
Ellen Bond slipped a classified blueprint into her handbag, a mildly scandalous souvenir that she figured wouldn't do any harm. After all, the war had ended.
Front doors opened all over Akron and beyond, welcoming home people who had fought the war both far and near.
Helen David, recently married, was already home on Bloomfield Avenue, having quit a short time earlier when pregnancy overtook her job riveting air scoops on the wings.
Akron had been a center of manufacturing for the war effort, bringing a distinct change to the work at the city's rubber factories. Machine guns had been built at Firestone, rubber rafts and life preservers at Goodrich, Mickey Mouse gas masks at Sun Rubber. And Goodyear Aircraft had devoted itself to bomber parts, wheels and brakes, blimps and Corsair fighter planes.
The history of the Akron-built Corsairs remains one of the proudest and most distinctive wrinkles in Akron time. Goodyear built about 4,000 FG-1D planes for the Navy and Marine Corps, plus 18 of the later F-2G model. The production, which ran from 1942 to 1945, is etched into the local memory in great part because the process reached so deeply into the local neighborhoods and suburbs, and because the Corsair's legend has endured.
The lightweight, single-pilot plane had the most powerful engine and largest propeller of any fighter, slicing through the sky at more than 400 mph. Its most distinctive feature was the ``gull wings'' that folded into an inverted V, allowing the fighters to be packed tightly onto aircraft carriers. The deep blue Corsairs were a familiar presence in the Akron skies, as test flights buzzed overhead and the planes left Akron Municipal Airport for the Port of Columbus.
Its most famous fliers, Pappy Boyington's Black Sheep Squadron, have been the subject of books and a TV series. The Corsair, nicknamed ``whistling death,'' is a favorite of aviation buffs. And whenever its story is told, Akron has a chapter.
Stories to be preserved
Two years before Pearl Harbor, 60 people worked at the Airdock. By 1943, new buildings had been erected and Goodyear Aircraft's employment rolls eventually swelled to nearly 40,000 people who worked on Corsairs and other aircraft projects under government contact.
But when the war ended, the machinery came to a halt. Many of the workers were women who returned to their households. Others gave way to the returning soldiers. Still others, who'd migrated from other states for wartime work, drifted back to West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Alabama.
For 60 years, the Corsair workers have told their stories around dinner tables and with grandchildren propped on their laps. But now, with many of the workers in the autumn of their lives -- the youngest are in their late 70s -- a reunion is taking shape. As part of its Aero Expo 2004, the Green-based Military Aviation Preservation Society is hunting for anyone associated with the Goodyear-built Corsairs: test pilots, draftsmen, production workers and others. The society, better knows as MAPS, plans to honor them in a ceremony the weekend of June 18.
So long removed from the intensity of their wartime work, they will once again be able to touch three of the planes they built, including the only F2-G still in operation. They will also have a chance to meet three members of the Black Sheep Squadron, finally closing a circle that began in Akron and ended over the South Pacific.
Job changes man's life
Walter Nonamaker, 98 years old, will be able to tell those pilots about the parts he made for their planes, carefully shaping and fitting the metal until it was a perfect fit.
He will be able to tell them how this work changed his life's direction, after 19 years driving trucks and snowplows for the Ohio road department. He was tired of being rousted from bed in the middle of snowy nights, and proud to take his place at a table in Plant D, next to the legendary Airdock.
``I never had one part that I had to do over. It was a good job,'' he said, then laughed. ``It was a sitting-down job.''
Nonamaker would work on a part for a while, filing the metal to match the template on a blueprint, then head out past the paint shop to where the nearly finished planes were parked outside. He'd pass men smoking cigarettes in the dark near the railroad tracks and climb a ladder to the cockpit of one of the Corsairs. Setting his piece into place, he would mark the edges where it needed more work. Then back to his table, more filing, until the fit was right. The piece would go into a wire basket at his side, and he'd start on another.
continued........
Women, men who built WWII plane in Akron tell cherished memories ahead of June reunion
By David Giffels
In August 1945, an announcement came over the loudspeaker at Goodyear's Plant D:
The war is over. Take everything with you. We're locking the doors.
There were rousing cheers and tears, and then, goodbyes. Hundreds of men and women, young and old, some in blue ``Rosie the Riveter'' coveralls and head scarves, some in white shirts and ties, filed out of the cavernous Corsair plant next to the Airdock, past signs painted like 8-balls with the slogan, ``A plane every eight minutes.''
A one-legged man bade farewell to his line partner, a tiny West Virginia girl who'd bucked rivets inside the narrow tail section of the fighter planes. A busy father said goodbye to the elderly couple he'd watched working side by
side, night after night, filing sheet metal. The deaf workers -- Goodyear's ``silents'' -- waved farewell.
They all trooped out together onto Triplett Boulevard, then parted ways. One piece of their life had ended. Another began.
Walter Nonamaker, who'd learned how to handcraft parts for the cockpit dash, went home to his family on South Street.
Ellen Bond slipped a classified blueprint into her handbag, a mildly scandalous souvenir that she figured wouldn't do any harm. After all, the war had ended.
Front doors opened all over Akron and beyond, welcoming home people who had fought the war both far and near.
Helen David, recently married, was already home on Bloomfield Avenue, having quit a short time earlier when pregnancy overtook her job riveting air scoops on the wings.
Akron had been a center of manufacturing for the war effort, bringing a distinct change to the work at the city's rubber factories. Machine guns had been built at Firestone, rubber rafts and life preservers at Goodrich, Mickey Mouse gas masks at Sun Rubber. And Goodyear Aircraft had devoted itself to bomber parts, wheels and brakes, blimps and Corsair fighter planes.
The history of the Akron-built Corsairs remains one of the proudest and most distinctive wrinkles in Akron time. Goodyear built about 4,000 FG-1D planes for the Navy and Marine Corps, plus 18 of the later F-2G model. The production, which ran from 1942 to 1945, is etched into the local memory in great part because the process reached so deeply into the local neighborhoods and suburbs, and because the Corsair's legend has endured.
The lightweight, single-pilot plane had the most powerful engine and largest propeller of any fighter, slicing through the sky at more than 400 mph. Its most distinctive feature was the ``gull wings'' that folded into an inverted V, allowing the fighters to be packed tightly onto aircraft carriers. The deep blue Corsairs were a familiar presence in the Akron skies, as test flights buzzed overhead and the planes left Akron Municipal Airport for the Port of Columbus.
Its most famous fliers, Pappy Boyington's Black Sheep Squadron, have been the subject of books and a TV series. The Corsair, nicknamed ``whistling death,'' is a favorite of aviation buffs. And whenever its story is told, Akron has a chapter.
Stories to be preserved
Two years before Pearl Harbor, 60 people worked at the Airdock. By 1943, new buildings had been erected and Goodyear Aircraft's employment rolls eventually swelled to nearly 40,000 people who worked on Corsairs and other aircraft projects under government contact.
But when the war ended, the machinery came to a halt. Many of the workers were women who returned to their households. Others gave way to the returning soldiers. Still others, who'd migrated from other states for wartime work, drifted back to West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Alabama.
For 60 years, the Corsair workers have told their stories around dinner tables and with grandchildren propped on their laps. But now, with many of the workers in the autumn of their lives -- the youngest are in their late 70s -- a reunion is taking shape. As part of its Aero Expo 2004, the Green-based Military Aviation Preservation Society is hunting for anyone associated with the Goodyear-built Corsairs: test pilots, draftsmen, production workers and others. The society, better knows as MAPS, plans to honor them in a ceremony the weekend of June 18.
So long removed from the intensity of their wartime work, they will once again be able to touch three of the planes they built, including the only F2-G still in operation. They will also have a chance to meet three members of the Black Sheep Squadron, finally closing a circle that began in Akron and ended over the South Pacific.
Job changes man's life
Walter Nonamaker, 98 years old, will be able to tell those pilots about the parts he made for their planes, carefully shaping and fitting the metal until it was a perfect fit.
He will be able to tell them how this work changed his life's direction, after 19 years driving trucks and snowplows for the Ohio road department. He was tired of being rousted from bed in the middle of snowy nights, and proud to take his place at a table in Plant D, next to the legendary Airdock.
``I never had one part that I had to do over. It was a good job,'' he said, then laughed. ``It was a sitting-down job.''
Nonamaker would work on a part for a while, filing the metal to match the template on a blueprint, then head out past the paint shop to where the nearly finished planes were parked outside. He'd pass men smoking cigarettes in the dark near the railroad tracks and climb a ladder to the cockpit of one of the Corsairs. Setting his piece into place, he would mark the edges where it needed more work. Then back to his table, more filing, until the fit was right. The piece would go into a wire basket at his side, and he'd start on another.
continued........