FORMER B-29 ENGINE FACTORY TOUR NOW AVAILABLE

ARSENALB-29[1]Your group can now visit the one-time world’s largest war factory located near Chicago’s Midway Airport. There is nothing like it anywhere. Five engines for every one of the over 18,000 B-29s that ever flew were made from scratch in this war plant. Exclusive access to the re-purposed multi-million square foot original building, now Ford City. Visible and available for viewing inside and out will be the mammoth assembly building,  numerous out-buildings, connecting underground tunnels, original artifacts, even the re-purposed but fully intact B-29 engine test stacks. See the same wartime housing built for many of the 35,000 employees. Chicago-area organizations can include a pre-lecture by Mr. O’Connor, featuring rare original wartime images from inside the plant.  Learn how Chicago and America’s manufacturing abilities made possible the World War 2 victory. For more information use the contact form. Please furnish full details including date, group size and type, contact information, and transportation needs.


About Jerome O'Connor

Jerome M. O’Connor, a Chicago area author, journalist, historian and college educator, produces and lectures with original programs describing the little-known, overlooked, or under-reported people, places and great events of modern history. To qualify, all locations must exist and and be accessible. Deeply researched and dynamically presented multi-media programs result in numerous return invitations. Currently available are personally conducted tours to view and enter facilities depicted in his Chicago Tribune features, ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY and MOTOR ROW MEMORIES. Updated is the photographic result of a return visit to Bletchley Park in England, where 12,000 code-breakers revealed the 'secret of the century,' the breaking of the Nazi Enigma cypher machine. O'Connor was the first journalist to reveal its existence in a widely viewed 1997 cover feature in Naval History magazine and in British Heritage magazine in 1998. The "Author of the Year" award from the U.S. Naval Institute was given to O'Connor in a U.S.Naval Academy banquet. His critically praised first book, THE HIDDEN PLACES OF WORLD WAR II, enters the existing locales that were essential to victory in WW II but overlooked by generations of historians. Published by Lyons Press, an imprint of the Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group, it honors the sacrifice of 16 million men and women who saved civilization in its darkest hour. Portions of the book are on this site. A quality paperback released in February 2022 is on Amazon and at selected booksellers, for a total of 3 versions now available.