Global Fastener News

FEATURE

Boeing Co.’s sprawling Plant 2, which built some of the world’s most significant aircraft, is being demolished after 75 years, the Associated Press reports.

The dilapidated factory in Seattle was a home to “Rosie the Riveter,” a composite character used during World War II to embody the thousands of women in the U.S. who performed industrial jobs, including building thousands of military planes.

“Thousands of people — at one point nearly half of them women — worked at the plant during World War II, breaking barriers and requiring Boeing to adopt new ways of treating employees,” AP reports.

“Sometimes I would be the only woman in that area, but they enjoyed working with me because I carried my weight,” stated Eva Vassar, a wartime riveter and mechanic who was hired at Plant 2 in 1951. “I’m not just bragging, but I did the job just as well.”

Boeing opened the factory in 1936 in a 60,000 sq ft facility to build the prototype for the B-17 Flying Fortress, of which nearly 13,00 were eventually built.
 

Plant 2 was also where Boeing developed the B-29 that dropped the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“In the late ’40s, Plant 2 was where Boeing developed the B-47, the first large swept-wing jet, and the B-52 bomber, still in service with the Air Force after six decades, AP reports. “In the 1960s it turned out the initial 737, now Boeing’s best-selling jetliner.”

The plant, which eventually expanded to 1.7 million sq ft, had tunnels beneath it leading to cafeterias, restrooms and classrooms that made life easier for workers and kept them near their jobs.  ©2010 GlobalFastenerNews.com

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