Vintage work crew photos

[Jon]

The propaganda from all over the world (and I mean "propaganda" neutrally) in WWII was fascinating, but, yes, agreed, the pro-manufacturing propaganda was especially prevalent in the US. This holds true to the old saying about how WWII was won (with British intelligence, Soviet lives, and American manufacturing), and of course the strong GDP data we have. You can find many graphs about this on the net; they look mostly like this:



IMO, this is what cemented the reputation of America's "Greatest Generation" - when faced with tough times (Great Depression==>WWII), Americans won by working, inventing, building, and manufacturing.

[Jon]

Grant Porter Shipyard. Building hull. Oregon. 1918.

Fullsize image: https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/h...w_fullsize.jpg

[Jon]

Cleaning the noses of A-20 bombers. Douglas Aircraft production plant. Long Beach, California. 1942.

Fullsize image: https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/h...s_fullsize.jpg

[PJs]

Cleaning the noses of A-20 bombers. Douglas Aircraft production plant. Long Beach, California. 1942.

Wonder what those women were thinking about while cleaning the nose modules? Maybe about the guy or maybe a relative sitting in that precarious seat, seeing what they saw? Perhaps just; "I got to get this the best I can for the war effort?"

[Frank S]

There is one thing for sure if the wives girlfriends mothers sisters aunts and grandmothers filling the hundreds of thousands of jobs that otherwise would not have had anyone to fill the slots the Allied forces could not have won.
We have a tendency to always think of the American women their sacrifices and hardships during that war, but the ladies of GB had a far more dangerous task. Many of whom ran underground railway networks to spirit folks out of danger zones. Many went deep behind the enemy lines on intelligence gathering missions. Knowing that if outed or caught it was certain death through torture.
I hate to turn this into something negative but every time I see a young female "(you can't hardly call them ladies anymore and they barely even fit the description of a woman)" whose complaining or protesting about some frivolous otherwise made up issue in many cases I can't help but think yeah if your grandmother or great aunt were here today she would set you straight in a heartbeat. this is not only limited to the female gender either a huge percentage of males are as bad if not worse.
I have the greatest admiration and respect for the women who serve behind the seances during times of war enduring the hardships of their men being gone having to take care of the home life by themselves and at the same time working in factories producing anything and everything required to hopefully allow their men to come home alive.

[Frank S]

In all of these wartime posts where it is depicting women at work there is one thing you never see. I bet a few will know the one thing I am thinking of

[wizard69]

...

Do we still make enormous nuts and bolts like this? Or were these beauties completely replaced by multi-jackbolt tensioners, like these?

Large nuts like that are still common on industrial machinery. Think injection molding presses as one example. Having changed more than a few tie bars in my early years I really have little desire to work with such large nuts any more. It is amazing how old age impacts your desires and work interests.

[Jon]

Mix of loggers with their donkey engines. Washington. 1915-1921.

Largest size images available.

[Frank S]

One often wonders if the donkey engines were hauled up and down the slopes into position by winching them selves in place. The trucks at the time may have been able to haul them on the logging roads but where the engines had to be located there would have been no roads even and traction engine of the time would have had a difficult time trying to drag one of those engines up a steep slope. And here I complain about having to carry a 4x4 board more than a few dozen feet.

[marksbug]

I think I saw that one time on the history channel before it became the everything not true and staged channel. reality my ass. those guys with the donkey knew reality.