The Mighty Eighth Air Force WWII,
The First Double Overpass in the United States at Willow Run.

Once the plans for a production line were complete, it took a large architectural company to design the building around this production line.  This job was done by Albert Kahn, a long time Architect who has done contract work for Henry Ford on previous projects.  It wasn't just building the worlds largest structure that Albert Kahn had to do, he had to design the entire Willow Run Airport, the sewage system, the water drainage system, the schools, administration buildings, parking lots, housing developments and road systems so all of the 40,000 plus workers could get to work. 

The picture of the first double overpass in the United States (above) is one of the examples of what was necessary to move the traffic in and out of the 15,000 car parking lot.  The double overpass was built by the Michigan Highway Department and was dedicated on September 12th, 1942, by Donald S. Patterson.  

Other considerations in building the B-24 Liberator Factory was moving all of the people off of the land, which meant bulldozing and burning almost every home on the new Willow Run Airport property.  Some people, like Ben Kidders father were lucky enough to move their homes to new locations, but most people were not. 

As the webmaster reading this book, I was wondering about this huge destruction and all of the fires that happened a couple of years before the United States entered the war.  In my mind, it must have looked like a war zone in itself with huge fires and columns of smoke emanating from the area. 

While the bulldozers were leveling the airport land to government specifications, they were desecrating the graves and bodies of the Potawatomi Indians buried on that land.  The Potawatomi Trail went right through the heart of what became the Willow Run Airport and Factory.   Albert Khan described the Willow Run Factory as the most enormous room in the history of mankind.