An independent labor voice, Tom Buffenbarger, joined the America’s Workforce Union Podcast to talk about the B-29 Bomber and the work the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers did to get the plane from the blueprints to operating in World War II.
During Buffenbarger’s time as a rep for the Machinists in the Aerospace Industry, he got to know many members who were workers at the Boeing facility in Wichita, Kansas. These workers built smaller planes for the government, including spy planes used in covert operations, he said. After the events of Pearl Harbor, these same members became part of the workforce that created the B-29 Bombers used in World War II.
To find a workforce capable of producing the planes and meeting the needs of the government, workers were brought to Wichita from surrounding states and educated on the processes involved. Buffenbarger discussed the plant's efforts to supply the military with the planes needed for the war.
The historical importance of the B-29 is most related to the bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, the planes barely made it off the sketches due to engineering questions in the blueprints. Buffenbarger discussed the ability of the Machinists members at the facility to take the blueprints and turn them into a functional plane that eventually ended the war in the Eastern Theater and saved about a million soldiers' lives.
To hear more from Buffenbarger and the B-29 Bomber, listen to the show above.