Willow Run
Ford's former B-24 bomber plant in Michigan, now a vehicle-testing site and airport
Willow Run took two years from Ford's start of construction in 1940 to its first B-24 in September 1942; the Ulm GEREON line took 12 weeks from first production to its first Ukrainian handover on 29 September 2026.
Last refreshed: 7 October 2026
Timeline for Willow Run
Mentioned in: ARX delivers first GEREONs to Ukraine
Autonomous Systems: Land & SeaBackground
Willow Run took two years from the start of construction to its first B-24. By comparison, the GEREON robot line at Ulm needed just 12 weeks between starting series production and handing its first units to Ukraine, which it did on 29 September 2026.
Ford began building the plant, between Ypsilanti Township and Belleville in Michigan, in 1940. Production started in summer 1942 and the first Ford-built B-24 Liberator rolled out in September 1942. By 1944 a bomber left the line every 63 minutes, with a peak of 428 in April 1944. Ford built 6,972 of the 18,482 B-24s, plus kits for 1,893 more. Anduril's Arsenal-1 drone factory in Columbus follows the same purpose-built, single-product model.
After the war Kaiser-Frazer built cars there, and General Motors ran it as a transmission and assembly plant from 1953. The site now hosts the American Center for Mobility, Willow Run Airport and the Yankee Air Museum.