Martin Bomber Plant near Bellevue helped end World War II and now faces its own demise

[Omaha Steve]

My mom worked there. She didn't know at the time that she was building both Enola Gay and Bockscar.



Workers celebrate as the last of 1,585 B-26C Marauder aircraft built at the Martin Bomber Plant rolls out April 4, 1944. Two days later, the plant near Bellevue started making B-29 bombers instead, and production demands were higher than ever. The plant made both of the B-29s that dropped atomic bombs on Japan.

http://www.omaha.com/news/military/martin-bomber-plant-near-bellevue-helped-end-world-war-ii/article_605b3b77-341d-5330-b496-f9ee48b2462f.html

POSTED: THURSDAY, AUGUST 6, 2015 12:30 AM | UPDATED: 12:54 AM, THU AUG 6, 2015.
By Steve Liewer / World-Herald staff writer

That day in 1942 she reported for work at Glenn L. Martin Bomber Plant near Bellevue, 19-year-old Kathryn Narmi gazed wide-eyed around the 12-acre factory floor and wondered what she’d gotten herself into.

“It was the length of three football fields,” she recalled last week. “I was absolutely scared to death.”

The Council Bluffs teen had just joined a workforce at the bomber plant that would top 14,000 and build more than 2,000 B-26 and B-29 bombers in three years. These Nebraskans and Iowans — many of them women, many still in their teens — played a key role in bringing about the end of World War II.

They assembled Enola Gay and Bockscar, the modified B-29s that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 70 years ago this week. Japan surrendered within days.

FULL story at link.



In December 1944, women from the small parts department at the Martin Bomber Plant spent their 10-minute rest periods singing Christmas Carols for their fellow employees in. The plant recruited female workers with ads that said if they could sew, they could learn to rivet.