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Mom worked on the B 26 at Martins during the war, she was a Rosie the riveter. What the greatest generation did could never be duplicated. This was a film from 1941 so it did not show all the women that worked building the planes. We owe them so much. Now her grandson is in the reserves stationed at Martins, Middle River MD.

I don’t believe that this is in Marietta, GA but actually Middle River, MD. I currently work at an old Glenn L. Martin plant in Middle River where B-26’s were assembled in “C” building of the plant. The building in this video looks exactly like “C” building in Middle River. Also the old “H” building, “H” for hammer, housed the old drop hammers and the foundry the building structure is identical to the building in the video. Some of the smaller hammers were in use up to ten years ago until we ceased sheet metal operations and are now using composite materials for our thrust reversers and nacelle programs.

The shortage of Curtis Electric Propellers caused a back up of production as can be seen. A shortage of many components was cured as soon as 1942 got going. Many of these aircraft went to the Pacific to do great service until the type was sent to Europe. B-26 to Great Britain and B-25 to Pacific. Ironically a "Secret Bomb Sight" was captured in 1942 by the German Military as a result of a lost bomber crew who crash landed their B-26 on the Dutch Coast very carefully so it could be recovered and used. And it was....by the Luftwaffe. BUT...they were never able to acquire enough propeller blades to test fly the ship. It was scrapped after the war with all the other B-26's by German POW personnel. Few types survived the post war era. The Martin B-26 was not among them as it was a short range, gas hog with a bad reputation among pilots who were just kids .

Its amazing the lack of safety equipment back then!!!!

Back in 1973 I hired into a firm called Nordco Products out of Van Nuys CA. We made aircraft ground support equipment but the parent company (Nordskog Group) made aircraft galleys (and were very good at it). The galley fabrication side was always trying to introduce some technique using a jig or some other way to go into "high production". Went by the old plants a year or so ago. Everything was sold off just a few years after Bob Nordskog passed away. Great company to work for. We never needed a union. First Arab oil embargo really hurt us. Being 1973 the plant was half full of WWII vets. Out of 100 or so men on my side 5-10 were Vietnam vets, not very many.

Interesting video from days gone by and a pretty good restoration job too. The B-26 was a fine aircraft.........

They grabbed the metal foils with bare hands

"Fatigue factor," yeah, especially critical working around those punch presses and metal cutting machines.

Fantastic film

3:37

I thought corsairs and b-26's used spot welding on the fuselages!

Not one of these workmen wears a single piece of protective equipment. A different era indeed compared to what's suggested nowadays when using a quarter-inch drill to put a hole in a piece of balsa!

Back when America actually had industry and the millions of good paying jobs that went with it. Now we send our raw materials overseas to be processed and it's still cheaper than if it had been produced domestically.

The "Widow Maker" was quite an airplane. Don't think any are left flying today.

Not one of these workmen wears a single piece of protective equipment. A different era indeed compared to what's suggested nowadays when using a quarter-inch drill to put a hole in piece of balsa!

It looks like the production date on this film is 1941.

Very interesting to see how it was done before the mighty computer arrived

Filming a WW2 production on a WW1 camera.

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