Hi Joanie,   I'm not an authority on this, however the B24 was built (assembled) by Ford in Ypsilanti...  Henry Ford had the reputation of making things productive and also taking work to outlining communities rather than having employees drive to a far off location.  I remember folks in my home town talking about how they received a $2 bill in their pay envelope, this was to let the merchants in town know where the money was coming from...  Ford still holds the record for the production of the B24, one ever 58 minutes.  My wife and I was born and raised not far from Willow Run in Ypsilanti, where some of my wife's relatives worked on the B24...   My best guess your folks may have been making parts for the B24...   Good Luck with your search, Richard Mitchell Mitchell_Ancestry@att.net --- On Fri, 3/27/09, Joanie Rosema <benbemis@hotmail.com> wrote: From: Joanie Rosema <benbemis@hotmail.com> Subject: [MIKENT] GR Airplane construction during WWII To: "Kent county Michigan" <mikent-l@rootsweb.com> Date: Friday, March 27, 2009, 2:09 PM My mother worked in the Berkey & Gay Furniture factory during WWII when all of its manufacturing output was converted from furniture to airplane parts. At the time, all of Grand Rapids' considerable number of furniture factories (more than 16) did the same. The Gibson Refrigerator Factory made Gibson Gliders. Another factory made parachutes ... and the list goes on. She doesn't remember what plane she worked on. It was definitely not a glider (as so many well-meaning people have suggested) because her particular area of expertise was assembling and putting airplane wing de-icers on airplane wings. She was only a teenager at the time so was not very concerned with all the details but she vaguely remembers being told it was a bomber of some kind. She allows for the fact that they may have been purposely fed erroneous information because "loose lips sink ships". I have been trying to track down this information for a decade now. I have a copy of an article in the GR Herald that announces the war conversion going on at Berkey & Gay but exactly what plane they are working on is not cited. I have contacted airplane museums, several organizations in DC, including the Library of Congress, and get the same answer from everywhere -- no one knows for sure. My hope is that someone will read this who worked at Berkey & Gay during those years, or knew someone who did. Any suggestions or leads are most welcome, no matter how improbable or wild! Possibly there's some Berkey & Gay archival information stored somewhere -- if anyone has any clue as to where, I would love to know. Joanie Rosema benbemis@hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________ Internet Explorer 8 – Get your Hotmail Accelerated. Download free! http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/141323790/direct/01/ ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to MIKENT-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message