Yankee Air Museum
January 2015 Willow Run airport
This week I happened to be in the Detroit area and decided to finally drop by the historic Willow Run airport near Ypsilanti. It was a late Wednesday afternoon so the museum was empty but for a few very friendly volunteers who staff the museum. Willy was one of the volunteers who graciously offered to give me a whirlwind tour since I couldn't stay for long. The museum has some nice aircraft both inside and out and of course, a fair bit of historical information about the B-24 Liberator (prints if you want to build your own) which were built at the Willow Run plant on the other side of the airfield. The photo below is located in front of a partial Liberator fuselage (sadly, the museum has yet to acquire a B-24 example for display but are actively looking) and depicts two parallel assembly lines of the B-24 final assembly line. You can see that the planes on the left had to make a right turn to exit the plant.The reason they didn't exit to the left was because of the enormous size of the plant which sat on the boundary of two townships-if the planes had exited on the left side they would have been subject to taxes from the other township so they only exited on one side to save thousands of dollars in municipal taxes!
This week I happened to be in the Detroit area and decided to finally drop by the historic Willow Run airport near Ypsilanti. It was a late Wednesday afternoon so the museum was empty but for a few very friendly volunteers who staff the museum. Willy was one of the volunteers who graciously offered to give me a whirlwind tour since I couldn't stay for long. The museum has some nice aircraft both inside and out and of course, a fair bit of historical information about the B-24 Liberator (prints if you want to build your own) which were built at the Willow Run plant on the other side of the airfield. The photo below is located in front of a partial Liberator fuselage (sadly, the museum has yet to acquire a B-24 example for display but are actively looking) and depicts two parallel assembly lines of the B-24 final assembly line. You can see that the planes on the left had to make a right turn to exit the plant.The reason they didn't exit to the left was because of the enormous size of the plant which sat on the boundary of two townships-if the planes had exited on the left side they would have been subject to taxes from the other township so they only exited on one side to save thousands of dollars in municipal taxes!
Same plane from the front. The white building in the background was moved from the other side of the airport and was where crews for the B-24's were briefed. There are now plans to move it back again to the other side of the airport once again. Charles Lindbergh once spent the night in this building but would never have looked out the window to see a Voodoo parked in front.