What did your city do in the war?

[Leslie]

I remember my Dad having a couple interesting stories about Mobile during and after the war.  All this is from my hazy memory.  He was at Brookley Field in 1943 employed by Raytheon to do Signal Corps work on radar in Mitchell bombers.  He told about a time when he went up with the crew for a Gulf of Mexico sub patrol in a B-25 to install and calibrate the radar.

Brookley was where many of the array radar antenna parts  were sent for refurbisment...to be stripped and re-painted.  He said after that work was done,  the antennas were scuttled.  Lots of make-work was going on.

After the war, my dad said he knew a fellow who bought a PT boat to convert into a yacht for the bay.  This one had three Rolls Royce engines.  Not sure if it worked out though for the intended purpose.  Boat was worn out probably.

I think it was a B-24 Liberator that crashed into the cathedral tower in downtown Mobile...either landing or taking off.  It knocked down the tower and crashed.  


I can't remember how long dad was at Brookley Field, it mighta been just '43 but at some point, he and an Army Major were called to drive a command car up in the countryside to investigate a ufo sighting.  It was a weather baloon but the farmer whose field it was in was almost in panic.  On the drive up, the Major was telling all these scary ufo stories to my dad.  By the time they got there even Dad was wondering about what they would find when they got there.




Les

[Roscoroo]

we made these


and these


Rumer has it there building these now ..


 

[Nilsen]

Porsgrunn is the city

Norsk Hydro produced magnesium and aluminium for the luftwaffe (when it wasnt bombed or sabotaged). Towards the end the germans gave up and closed that factory and it was restarted after the war. After the war it has kept on growing and has now 33-34000 emplyees in the energy sector alone and a revenue of 174 billion NOK last year. The factory in Porsgrunn (Yara International) spun off the Hydro company in 2004 and is now a world leading supplier of plant nutrients in the form of mineral fertilizers

Many fine young men that trickeled over to Britain to join some sort of service. Two reasonably effective resitance groups and many widows.

[Reynolds]

We got the shizz bombed out of us at 0700, on december 7th... well, you know the rest. Yeah, other than that, we gave the navy a home, but as far as i know, Oahu Hawaii wasnt a launch point, and we DEFINATELY didnt build anything. We DID repair ships though... after we let them get sunk.

[Blooz]

Olean, NY (city where I was born) produced the KA-BAR Marine Corps fighting knife.

[asilvia]

Quonset Point
North Kingston, Rhode Island

During WWII it was the North east largest naval base. The hangers were used to house PBY aircraft for maintenance and recon missions. Pretty cool history of the place from WWII until today where General Dynamics is station (and I once worked) building Subs

http://quonsetpoint.artinruins.com/quonset_main.htm

[Octavius]

Crucial to the war effort, Milwaukee produced lots of beer... and probably cheese.

[Masherbrum]

Originally posted by Toad
What happened then in your city?

Detroit, too much to list.

[Nifty]

Flight school for Navy and Marine pilots.  One number I heard was around 1,100 cadets a month during WWII.

[lazs2]

I was born a few miles from northrup and a few other ac factories in L.A.

they made some planes durring the war.

lazs

[Rolex]

My formative years were in a place that made lots of paper, policies and strategies - Washington D.C.

[Momus--]

I live in Manchester UK.

We had the main Avro Lancaster plant here. My favourite pub stands on the site of the depot from where the bombers were flown out by ferry pilots to the operational groups.

My family's hometown is Barrow-in-Furness, which was one of the big shipbuilding centres at the height of the British Empire. They still build most of the RNs nuclear subs there but that's about all.

Here's the (very empty) docks these days.



Too many notable ships built here to list them all. A good WW2 example is HMS Ajax, a cruiser which fought the Graf Spee at the River Plate and later served in the Med on the Malta Convoys and the evacuation of Crete.



The IJN Battleship Kongo was built here - it took part in a number of actions against the USN in the Pacific.


Another Barrow ship, HMS Jamaica, which took part in the Battle of the North Cape in which the german Battlecruiser Scharnhorst was finally sunk.



Good topic Toad.

[lukster]

Buncha these made in Dallas. Much other manufacturing done there also.

[Mustaine]

Originally posted by Octavius
Crucial to the war effort, Milwaukee produced lots of beer... and probably cheese.

you don't live here anymore so you can't talk about us

Milwaukee had a ton of tanneires too, so they probably made a lot of leather stuff for the military.


oh and i think there's some famous wire factory or something, the only place to make a certian wire or something in the US.

[Boroda]

Originally posted by Russian
My city was starving to death (St Petersburg)

The most amazing thing was that starving people worked.

Kirovskiy Zavod:



During the siege they stopped making KVs but kept repairing tanks.