HISTORY

Aircraft Instead of Cars

Shortly after the outbreak of war with Japan,

General Motors halted production at its five

automobile factories on the East Coast. The

company’s management was prepared to put

them to use for wartime production, especially

to produce aircraft components. As early as

1942, the Navy organized a meeting between

General Motors representatives and people from

Grumman, a key supplier to the Navy’s aviation.

Grumman’s factory in Bethpage, New York, was

operating at full capacity, so a solution was

sought to shift the production of Wildcats and

Avengers. GM representatives were somewhat

surprised when they were asked to take over

the entire production of aircraft instead of just

Comparison of F4F-4 and FM-2 Performance

Parameter

F4F-4

FM-2

Maximum Speed

318 mph

332 mph

Initial Climb Rate

2,190 ft/min

3,650 ft/min

Service Ceiling

33,700 ft

34,700 ft

Range

1,275 mi

1,310 mi

Combat Radius

830 mi

900 mi

proximity of all the factories. Trenton was about

160 km from Bethpage, and Linden was roughly

halfway along this route. In the vast country’s

terms, these plants were nearly neighbors ...

By June 1942, all five GM factories had been

fully converted and ready to start aircraft

While the Grumman F6F Hellcat is widely regarded

as one of the most successful and effective fighter

aircraft of World War II, with an impressive victory-toloss ratio of 19:1, the FM-2 Wildcat actually surpassed

it with an even higher ratio of 33:1!

manufacturing parts and subassemblies for

Grumman. To their credit, they accepted the

challenge. Numerous delegations and work

teams followed. Grumman’s teams prepared

the automotive factories for aircraft production,

while GM personnel learned about aircraft

production in Bethpage. The advantage was the

production as an independent division called

Eastern Aircraft Division. The Trenton factory

in New Jersey was responsible for producing

Avengers. Unlike Grumman’s production,

designated TBF, the Avengers from Trenton

were labeled as TBM. The second factory in New

Jersey, located in Linden, was to manufacture

A Wildcat FM-2 landing on the deck of the escort aircraft carrier USS Anzio (CVE-57).

F4F-4 Wildcats under the designation FM-1

(F for Fighter, M for General Motors, and 1 as the

manufacturer’s first type). The remaining three

Eastern Aircraft Division factories in Bloomfield

and Baltimore supplied both final manufacturers

with the necessary parts.

The Eastern Aircraft Division received

a contract to produce 1800 Wildcats on April

18, 1942, and Grumman subsequently delivered

prototype subassemblies and parts for

assembling the first ten F4F-4s. At the same time,

the factory received training examples marked

as PK, where the joints were not riveted but

rather connected with Parker-Kalon fasteners

for repeated assembly and disassembly. These

examples were used to train the workers.

Before the war, the modern factory in Linden

had produced cars for Buick, Oldsmobile, and

Pontiac and it was capable of a takt time one

car per minute. After the transition to Wildcat

production, during the period when the parallel

production was ongoing at Grumman, the factory

had to maintain strict technological discipline to

Photo: NHHC

leading to the decision to entrust the production

of the first two mentioned types to another

manufacturer.