Rosie the Riveter at Lima, Baldwin, during WWII?

colorado hirailer posted:

Just wondered if women were involved in production of railroad equipment during WWII, railcars, locos, or? Have not heard of other than aircraft ...

It wouldn't surprise me if they did.  With the shortage of men during The War, women stepped up in all sorts of industries.  My mother in law worked at the GM plant in Pontiac, Michigan making trucks for the war effort.  As to aircraft, my own mom worked at the Willow Run bomber plant while my dad was flying other planes. 

It would be interesting to know for sure if women also worked in railroad related jobs too.   God bless them all!

This story is not so much about women working during WW2 but the shortage of men being drafted, and joining the Armed Forces to go fight the Enemy, especially after the attack on Pearl Harbor....

Sometime after the 1st of the year in 1942, the C&O Railroad was very short handed on Railroad Engine Crews. I met and old engineer that worked 50 years to the day, to get his 50 year pin...He was playing basketball on the outdoor court in down town Pikeville, Ky. The C&O Yard Superintendent came to the play ground where my friend and his Buddies were shooting baskets. he grabbed the ball, stopped their game, and started questioning each kid there. He ask my friend how old he was, and he said he was 14 years old but nearly 6 foot, tall for his age. He made a line of the boys that were of what was then I guess a close age, then he got 4 young boys from that group, and told them to get their Butts over to the C&O Depot. He said to my old friend are you Lon Venters son, he said yes sir, they call me "Junior", he said this **** War is taking all of my railroaders, and all of you boys have been drafted to now work for the C&O Railroad.....Junior said he told him to go home , and get on his old cloths, and something to eat, and tell his mother that he would be back home about Midnight if they didn't have any problems switching at the Mines....Juniors Dad was already and Engineer, and was running from Russel Kentucky to Elkhorn City, which in later years Junior fired on 2700's for his Dad, before he got his Engineers rights....

This story of young boys going to work on the railroads in America during the war, was a common occurrence, in that era...

Junior told me the very 1st thing that he bought with his 1st Pay Check from the C&O was a "Boy Scout Uniform", as in those days there was no extra money for such items....

I didn't mean to take away from the women part of this Post.....But I've probably told this story now, more than Junior did, as he became my most Favorite Engineer, and being a qualified steam locomotive engineer at the ripe age of 17 years old, all I can say is Man that is some history.....!

Brandy posted:

This story is not so much about women working during WW2 but the shortage of men being drafted, and joining the Armed Forces to go fight the Enemy, especially after the attack on Pearl Harbor....

Sometime after the 1st of the year in 1942, the C&O Railroad was very short handed on Railroad Engine Crews. I met and old engineer that worked 50 years to the day, to get his 50 year pin...He was playing basketball on the outdoor court in down town Pikeville, Ky. The C&O Yard Superintendent came to the play ground where my friend and his Buddies were shooting baskets. he grabbed the ball, stopped their game, and started questioning each kid there. He ask my friend how old he was, and he said he was 14 years old but nearly 6 foot, tall for his age. He made a line of the boys that were of what was then I guess a close age, then he got 4 young boys from that group, and told them to get their Butts over to the C&O Depot. He said to my old friend are you Lon Venters son, he said yes sir, they call me "Junior", he said this **** War is taking all of my railroaders, and all of you boys have been drafted to now work for the C&O Railroad.....Junior said he told him to go home , and get on his old cloths, and something to eat, and tell his mother that he would be back home about Midnight if they didn't have any problems switching at the Mines....Juniors Dad was already and Engineer, and was running from Russel Kentucky to Elkhorn City, which in later years Junior fired on 2700's for his Dad, before he got his Engineers rights....

This story of young boys going to work on the railroads in America during the war, was a common occurrence, in that era...

Junior told me the very 1st thing that he bought with his 1st Pay Check from the C&O was a "Boy Scout Uniform", as in those days there was no extra money for such items....

I didn't mean to take away from the women part of this Post.....But I've probably told this story now, more than Junior did, as he became my most Favorite Engineer, and being a qualified steam locomotive engineer at the ripe age of 17 years old, all I can say is Man that is some history.....!

  

Wow!!The power of grown folks back then!!

Wonderful photos, thank you for sharing.

During the War Dad ran Inspection in the Extrusion Department at the Alcoa plant in Phoenix. He was deferred because "needed for the War effort". All of his crews were women. There were no men by mid-'42 when the plant was ready and he and a small group of other experienced Engineering types were sent to Phoenix and told to get the Thing going. The Extrusion Department made nearly all aircraft stuff such as [tapered] wing spars (first for the B17 and later the B29) and hydraulic tubing. Many of those women had Loved Ones serving and they were deadly serious about their work. They quadrupled the work output of the all-male crews Dad had back in New Kensington.

Mum and Dad got to know a female pilot who ferried Warplanes across the Country. IIRC they were fighters. She was so short she carried a thick phone book with here to sit on so she could see out. 

While not involving "production" of locomotives, etc., at its peak, The Pennsy alone had 23,000 women filling in for the men who departed to serve in WWII. Jobs included machinists, trainmen, and switch tenders (as in the photo below) to name a few.  This was my cover article for the Pennsylvania Railroad Technical & Historical Society's quarterly magazine, The Keystone, back in Winter 2015.

Tom 

PS-If you love railroad history (like me) and any of you are looking for a birthday present to yourself or from a significant other, I would highly recommend joining the PRRT&HS. I've belonged to several railroad historical societies over the years and I would say theirs is the beefiest and most interesting magazine (in my opinion). 

"The Greatest Generation"  also included women"  It's somewhat disheartening  that there is not more mention of the great contributions they contributed to the war effort.  There was no mention of this that I recall in 'American History' classes in HS.  I don't recall my children and grand kids mentioning this either.  I would imagine there is little interest in today's curricular of what women were doing 79 years ago in the USA.  It is fascinating history'..    

Both Mother and Dad were "migratory war workers" and ended up at the Glenn L. Martin plant outside of Baltimore. Mother was a Rosie-the-riveter on Martin B-26 Marauders and Dad worked in one of the tool cribs. Later Mother transferred to an office position that was more in-line with her skills. They both stayed with Martin until the war ended and ended up staying permanently in Baltimore.

Quarter Gauger 48 posted:

"The Greatest Generation"  also included women"  It's somewhat disheartening  that there is not more mention of the great contributions they contributed to the war effort.  There was no mention of this that I recall in 'American History' classes in HS.  I don't recall my children and grand kids mentioning this either.  I would imagine there is little interest in today's curricular of what women were doing 79 years ago in the USA.  It is fascinating history'..    

It certainly did, given the amount of men under arms in WWII, there is no way we could have produced the kind of things we did without women pitching in like that. I wouldn't blame kids for not knowing, there in many cases was a deliberate effort to erase what women did in WWII,  while they mention Rosie the Riveter, most of the things you see with WWII are the men who fought it, movies, history books, tend to focus on that, outside obscure academic histories.  You don't see a lot, for example, about the nurses who volunteered to serve, many of whom served in field hospitals and more than a few ended up injured or killed doing so, not to mention the courage and bravery to be able to do their jobs under horrible conditions and seeing the horrific sights that come with war, my dad said that the Army nurses were some of the bravest, tough people in the war he had seen. 

Not surprising they didn't really talk about the role of women in the war, how much they did, some of it simply was in the bias of the times, that of course the guys fighting were the ones responsible (the same way that it took a lot of years to acknowledge the role of black soldiers in WWII or sadly the way they were treated), the other part was after WWII the expectation was that Rosie the Riveter was supposed to return to what women did before the war, whether at home or in 'women's jobs', and promoting the idea that women could do the work as well as men wouldn't exactly support that narrative IMO. 

The amazing thing to me is what they were able to produce during the war, and how quickly they ramped up. While they had been already in the process of building ships, planes, tanks and so forth before Pearl Harbor (when the Pacific fleet was sunk at Pearl Harbor, for example, there already were a number of battleships and aircraft carriers being built, thanks to the efforts of people like Congressman Vinson  who early on pushed for expanding the size of our defense forces), the reality was the US was coming out of a massive depression where half our manufacturing capability had been lost,isolationist sentiment and slowness to recognize the threat to the US in what was going on in the outside world had precluded preparation through much of the 1930's,  so the US had to ramp up production on a scale not seen before using people who in many cases had never been anywhere near that kind of work. At the time of Pearl Harbor we had I believe 9 aircraft carriers, several of which were lost in the following battles, but within less than 2 years America had well over 100 aircraft carriers of all sorts, and that doubled within a year or so. To do this, they had to develop different ways to produce that amount of output that fast and also had to engineer in tolerances to allow for the fact that relatively unskilled laborers were doing the work, especially at the beginning. I remember reading the memoir of Lester Del Ray, the science fiction writer, who went to work at the Douglas plant in St. Louis (I think he was 4F), and after his first day because he had the same drill bit he had had at the start of the day, he was made supervisor (or so he claims, whether meant to be a tall tale or it actually happened that way, kind of shows how desperate they were. 

Judging by the other posts, you guys might find this interesting, the woman who discusses her time on the PRR in this video is also the very same woman shown on my cover article seen above, Ruth Hilger Hoffman. Ruth was the person that the Molly Pitcher, 1944 ad campaign was based on.  Luckily, several advertising agency photos of her surfaced a few years ago and I was able to track her down.  

Tom 

bigkid posted:

Quarter Gauger 48 posted:

"The Greatest Generation"  also included women"  It's somewhat disheartening  that there is not more mention of the great contributions they contributed to the war effort.  There was no mention of this that I recall in 'American History' classes in HS.  I don't recall my children and grand kids mentioning this either.  I would imagine there is little interest in today's curricular of what women were doing 79 years ago in the USA.  It is fascinating history'..    

It certainly did, given the amount of men under arms in WWII, there is no way we could have produced the kind of things we did without women pitching in like that. I wouldn't blame kids for not knowing, there in many cases was a deliberate effort to erase what women did in WWII,  while they mention Rosie the Riveter, most of the things you see with WWII are the men who fought it, movies, history books, tend to focus on that, outside obscure academic histories.  You don't see a lot, for example, about the nurses who volunteered to serve, many of whom served in field hospitals and more than a few ended up injured or killed doing so, not to mention the courage and bravery to be able to do their jobs under horrible conditions and seeing the horrific sights that come with war, my dad said that the Army nurses were some of the bravest, tough people in the war he had seen. 

Not surprising they didn't really talk about the role of women in the war, how much they did, some of it simply was in the bias of the times, that of course the guys fighting were the ones responsible (the same way that it took a lot of years to acknowledge the role of black soldiers in WWII or sadly the way they were treated), the other part was after WWII the expectation was that Rosie the Riveter was supposed to return to what women did before the war, whether at home or in 'women's jobs', and promoting the idea that women could do the work as well as men wouldn't exactly support that narrative IMO. 

The amazing thing to me is what they were able to produce during the war, and how quickly they ramped up. While they had been already in the process of building ships, planes, tanks and so forth before Pearl Harbor (when the Pacific fleet was sunk at Pearl Harbor, for example, there already were a number of battleships and aircraft carriers being built, thanks to the efforts of people like Congressman Vinson  who early on pushed for expanding the size of our defense forces), the reality was the US was coming out of a massive depression where half our manufacturing capability had been lost,isolationist sentiment and slowness to recognize the threat to the US in what was going on in the outside world had precluded preparation through much of the 1930's,  so the US had to ramp up production on a scale not seen before using people who in many cases had never been anywhere near that kind of work. At the time of Pearl Harbor we had I believe 9 aircraft carriers, several of which were lost in the following battles, but within less than 2 years America had well over 100 aircraft carriers of all sorts, and that doubled within a year or so. To do this, they had to develop different ways to produce that amount of output that fast and also had to engineer in tolerances to allow for the fact that relatively unskilled laborers were doing the work, especially at the beginning. I remember reading the memoir of Lester Del Ray, the science fiction writer, who went to work at the Douglas plant in St. Louis (I think he was 4F), and after his first day because he had the same drill bit he had had at the start of the day, he was made supervisor (or so he claims, whether meant to be a tall tale or it actually happened that way, kind of shows how desperate they were. 

 

 

Bill', Very astute follow up and excellent points' noted.  Good luck with the future musician 

As "Geysergazer" notes, women ferried warplanes, but did any of them act as enginehouse hostlers, especially on steamers, or even in road runs, as engineers?...l could picture them on diesels and stoker steamers in the fire man's role.