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Posted inPortfolio

See the Real Rosie the Riveters at Work

Compelling images from aircraft factories in World War II underscore the impact women had assembling the arsenal of democracy.
by Tom Huntington3/8/20233/19/2023
• At the Vultee-Nashville plant in Nashville, Tennessee, a worker makes adjustments in the wheel well of Vultee Vengeance dive bomber. (Library of Congress)
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The Summer 2023 issue of Aviation History magazine will feature some classic photography by Alfred Palmer, who shot scores of images while working for the Office of War Information during World War II. There wasn’t enough room in the print magazine to include all the images we wanted to feature, so here’s another selection, just in time for Women’s History Month.

At the Douglas Aircraft Company plant at Long Beach, California, a real-life Rosie rivets an A-20 Havoc bomber. (Library of Congress)

During the war, 6.5 million American women entered the workforce, filling jobs that opened up when men joined the military. Women workers were necessary at a time when American was ramping up to become the arsenal of democracy, cranking out munitions, ships, tanks, landing craft—and airplanes. As FDR said in a speech on Columbus Day in 1942, “In some communities employers dislike to hire women. In others they are reluctant to hire Negroes. We can no longer afford to indulge such prejudice.”

“The men were all being drafted,” said a Chicago woman named Lois Wolfe. “They were taking them right and left, and even those that had been exempt in the beginning were being called, and they desperately need people to fill their jobs. That what we girls did, we filled men’s jobs.” Wolf went to work making parts for the Consolidated B-24 Liberator at a plant in Melrose, Illinois.

A household iron proved useful to smooth the surface of self-sealing fuel tanks at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., in Akron, Ohio. (Library of Congress)

Some women started working out of patriotism. Others did it for economic reasons. Some did it out of a combination of both. “Suddenly, the standard idea of seeing women as fragile creatures, ill-suited for work outside the home, much less for hard labor, seemed like a peacetime luxury,” wrote Emily Yellin in her 2004 book Our Mother’s War: American Women at Home and at the Front During World War II. “Like never before America asked women to take up the slack—to join in producing the vital machinery of war.” The aircraft industry was among the biggest employers of women, who made up around 40 percent of its workforce. Douglas Aircraft alone employed around 22,000 women.

Also at the Goodyear plant, a woman works in the electronics shop. (Library of Congress)

The enduring symbol of women in the workforce is Rosie the Riveter, a character that emerged in a song by the singing group the Four Vagabonds and later made indelible as the subject of a Saturday Evening Post cover by Norman Rockwell and in a government-issue “We Can Do It!” poster. One worker who became even more famous than the fictional Rosie was the very real Norma Jean Dougherty, who packed parachutes at a factory in Burbank, California. After the war she dyed her hair, changed her name, and became the film icon Marilyn Monroe.

When men began returning from the war, women began leaving work. Some left voluntarily; others were forced out. But something had changed. In her book, Yellin quotes a woman named Katherine O’Grady, who said, “After the war, things changed, because women found out they could go out and they could survive. They could really do it on their own.”

A new hire gets trained as an engine mechanic at the Douglas Aircraft Company plant in Long Beach, California. (Library of Congress)
Two employees of North American Aviation work on the wing section of a P-51 Mustang. (Library of Congress)
According to the original captioning, “The careful hands of women are trained in precise aircraft engine installation duties at Douglas Aircraft Company, Long Beach, Calif.” (Library of Congress)
Douglas employee Annette del Sur publicizes a salvage campaign at the company’s plant in Long Beach. She is looking over lathe turnings in the metal salvage pile, while sporting a tiara and necklace made out of the scrap. (Library of Congress)
At the North American factory, employees prepare to punch rivet holes in a frame for a B-25 Mitchell bomber. (Library of Congress)
Sheet metal parts get numbered with a pneumatic numbering machine in North American’s sheet metal department in Inglewood, California. (Library of Congress)
A North American B-25 Mitchell bomber is prepared for painting on the outside assembly line in Inglewood. (Library of Congress)
A woman assembles switch boxes on the firewall of a North American B-25 bomber in Inglewood. (Library of Congress)

this article first appeared in AVIATION HISTORY magazine

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by Tom Huntington

Tom Huntington is the editor of Aviation History and World War II magazines. He is also the author of Maine Roads to Gettysburg, Searching for George Gordon Meade: The Forgotten Victor of Gettysburg, and other books.

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Citation information

Tom Huntington (3/20/2023) See the Real Rosie the Riveters at Work. HistoryNet Retrieved from https://www.historynet.com/women-at-work/.
"See the Real Rosie the Riveters at Work."Tom Huntington - 3/20/2023, https://www.historynet.com/women-at-work/
Tom Huntington 3/8/2023 See the Real Rosie the Riveters at Work., viewed 3/20/2023,<https://www.historynet.com/women-at-work/>
Tom Huntington - See the Real Rosie the Riveters at Work. [Internet]. [Accessed 3/20/2023]. Available from: https://www.historynet.com/women-at-work/
Tom Huntington. "See the Real Rosie the Riveters at Work." Tom Huntington - Accessed 3/20/2023. https://www.historynet.com/women-at-work/
"See the Real Rosie the Riveters at Work." Tom Huntington [Online]. Available: https://www.historynet.com/women-at-work/. [Accessed: 3/20/2023]

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