On the Home Front: Women Workers of Douglas Aircraft Factory During World War II

“You came out to California, put on your pants, and took your lunch pail to a man’s job. This was the beginning of women’s feeling that they could be something more.”  – Sybil Lewis, Riveter for Lockheed

While women have always worked outside the home, World War II provides unprecedented opportunities for American women to enter into jobs traditionally reserved for men. With men fighting in the Atlantic and the Pacific theaters, women take their place on the assembly line. Nowhere is this more evident than at aerospace manufacturing giant, Douglas Aircraft Company.

Founded in 1921 by Donald W. Douglas Sr., Douglas Aircraft is headquartered in Santa Monica until 1975, with satellite plants in El Segundo, Long Beach, Chicago, Tulsa, and Oklahoma City. The war effort leads to an astonishing expansion at Douglas, where peak wartime employment is recorded at 160,000 workers. The growth results in new trailer homes for employees sprouting up in Santa Monica. Douglas also builds the Aero Theater on Montana Ave. keeping it open 24 hours to accommodate its graveyard shift employees. Many families count multiple members as Douglas workers.

In 1942, a few months after the Pearl Harbor attack, some people greet the call of a “female brigade” in the Douglas shops with skepticism, thinking that women aren’t suitable for many of the necessary tasks. Skeptics are soon proven wrong.

Women continue to hold more “traditional” positions, such as clerks, typists and secretaries but they also join the ranks of engineers, machinists, inspectors and tool designers.

At the height of production, about 40 percent of the workforce is female. Between 1942 and 1945, thousands of women professionals at Douglas Aircraft work with their male colleagues to build 29,385 airplanes including B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers, SBD Dauntless dive bombers, and C-47 Skytrain transport aircraft — about 16 percent of all U.S. wartime airplane production.

In Douglas: the Santa Monica Years (Marquand Books, 2009), Jean Castro describes the jubilant moment when she and other workers find out the Allies have won the war:

“I was a Mechanic ‘A’ working on the factory line. [It] was a hot August afternoon in 1945, and we all stopped work when we heard Mr. Douglas’ voice come over the loud speaker. When he told us the war was over, we all just put down our tools and streamed out onto Ocean Park Boulevard, laughing and singing and hugging each other. I went home to the little house I shared with my parents on Second Street … and we got dressed up in our very best and walked down Main Street to the pier and celebrated all night.”

When their country needed them in the time of war, American women seized the moment. The women workers of Douglas Aircraft are the backbone of America’s enormous war effort in the defense industry. They are pioneers.