Baltia Air Lines Inc. (fka BLTA)

[speckulater]

Willow Run, Henry Ford, 8,600 B-24 "Liberator" Bombers

Baltia Airlines on Google Earth

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.2342971,-83.5464285,3a,75y,42.53h,78.82t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sIZb5y_p6BU4oogoJtKf9hA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1

Several summers ago I visited BLTA Offices in Willow Run. I can confirm the above google earth is indeed BLTA in Ypsilanti, MI.

Willow Run Airport has a rich history, dating back to 1941 when Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh built the world's largest bomber facility at the airport. Henry Ford donated the land and oversaw the construction of the Ford Motor Company’s Willow Run plant, which used Henry Ford’s mass-production technology to build B-24 bomber planes for World War II. Willow Run at some 3.5 million square feet was called the world’s largest factory under a single roof.

Willow Run eventually employed over 42,000 people including "Rosie the Riveter" and by 1944, the plant was producing one plane every hour. By the end of the war in 1945, more than 8,600 B-24 "Liberator" bombers had been built at Willow Run and the plant’s mass-production techniques were hailed as a symbol of American ingenuity.

Willow Run produced more aircraft every month on its mile-long assembly line than Imperial Japan did in a year, earning it, and the area surrounding southeast Michigan, worldwide fame as the center of America’s “Arsenal of Democracy.” The nationwide American “Production Miracle,” of which Willow Run was the finest and most ambitious example, was a critical factor in ending the deadliest conflict in history.

After World War 2 Willow Run became Detroit's principal airport, until 1960's when all commercial traffic moved to Detroit Metropolitan Airport.







http://willowrunairport.com/About.aspx

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/land-cleared-for-fords-willow-run-plant

http://www.savethebomberplant.org/



















BLTA