Part of the airport complex operated at various times as a research facility affiliated with the University of Michigan, and as a secondary United States Air Force Installation.

Willow Run takes its name from a small tributary of the Huron River that meandered through pastureland fields and woodland along the Wayne–Washtenaw county line until the late 1930s.

[6] Ford, a keen exponent of the virtues of country living, used it as farmland for a "social engineering" experiment that brought inner-city boys to the Willow Run Camp to learn about farming, nature, and the rural way of life.

The residents of the Willow Run Camp planted, tended, and harvested field crops and collected maple syrup, selling their products at the farm market on the property.

[9] The Willow Run chapel of Martha and Mary now stands a few miles from where it was originally constructed, on property that used to be owned by Henry Ford's Quirk Farms.

[13] Architect Albert Kahn designed the main structure of the Willow Run bomber plant, which had 3,500,000 square feet (330,000 m2) of factory space, and an aircraft assembly line over a mile (1600 m) long.

[14] Even with people driving 100 miles or renting every spare room between Ann Arbor and Grosse Pointe, the sheer size of Willow Run led inevitably to a housing shortage.

Willow Run Lodge[15] was a series of dormitories for single people and was built on the land north of Michigan Avenue and south of Geddes Road.

Sociologist and professor Lowell Juilliard Carr and James Edson Stermer of the University of Michigan studied the sociological conditions at Willow Run arising from the wartime surge in the worker population in their book of 1952.

Despite intensive design efforts led by Ford production executive Charles E. Sorensen,[26] the opening of the plant still saw some mismanagement and bungling, and quality was uneven for some time.

However, in October 1941, Ford received permission from Consolidated and the Army to assemble complete Liberators on its own at its new Willow Run facility.

According to Max Wallace, Air Corps Chief, General "Hap" Arnold told Charles Lindbergh, then a consultant at the plant, that "combat squadrons greatly preferred the B-17 bomber to the B-24 because 'when we send the 17's out on a mission, most of them return.

However, he finally relented and did employ "Rosie the Riveters" on his assembly lines, probably more because so many of his potential male workers had been drafted into the military than due to any sudden change of principle on his part.

For this reason, a series of Air Technical Service Command modification centers were established for the incorporation of these required theater changes into new Liberators following their manufacture and assignments.

Due to the many structural changes required the first B-24Hs were delivered slightly behind schedule, with the first machines rolling off the production lines at Ford in late June 1943.

[3][37] During June 1944, the Army determined that the San Diego and Willow Run plants would be capable of meeting all future requirements for Liberator production.

[3][38] Although Ford had an option to purchase the plant once it was no longer needed for war production, the company declined to exercise it, and ended its association with Willow Run.

After Ford declined to purchase the plant, it was sold to the Kaiser-Frazer Corporation, a partnership of construction and shipbuilding magnate Henry J. Kaiser and Graham-Paige executive Joseph W. Frazer.

The plant produced both Kaiser and Frazer automobile models, including the compact Henry J, which with minor differences was also sold through Sears-Roebuck as the Allstate.

As the US Air Force struggled to expand its airlift capacity during the Korean War, Kaiser-Frazer built C-119 Flying Boxcar cargo planes at Willow Run under license from Fairchild Aircraft, producing an estimated 88 C-119s between 1951 and 1953.

C-123 contracts were cancelled by the USAAF and the only airframes built were scrapped[39] Later in 1953, after a fire on August 12 destroyed General Motors' Detroit Transmission factory in Livonia, Michigan, the Willow Run complex was first leased and then later sold to GM.

In 1972, the university spun off WRL into the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan, which eventually left Willow Run for offices in Ann Arbor.

In November 2016, RACER Trust sold Willow Run to an entity created by the State of Michigan, which leases the property to the American Center for Mobility (AMC).

[42] For a period of time before the eventual demolition of Willow Run Assembly, portions were used as a warehouse, about a quarter of which was leased by GM as a facility for parts distribution.

Yankee was originally granted until August 2013 (deadline was later extended) to raise the funds needed to purchase and separate a portion of the approximately 5,000,000 sq.

[48] Building owner RACER Trust extended the original fundraising deadline (August 1, 2013) a total of three times since the Yankee Air Museum launched its SaveTheBomberPlant.org campaign.

[51] Meanwhile, the remaining portion of the Willow Run property, which includes over 95% of the historic original bomber plant building, was optioned to Walbridge, Inc., for redevelopment as a connected car research and test facility.

[52] Michigan Live reporter Amy Biolchini toured the empty Willow Run facility in early 2013, observing:[53] Every fluorescent light bulb in the plant must be taken out before the building can be torn down.

The plant was originally designed to be able to continue to operate if parts of it were ever bombed—which resulted in dedicated water, compressed air and gas lines to different areas of the building.

"Part of the tour led them to a hidden room within the facility: Named "Lily's Pad",[54] the break spot was equipped with posters that catered to the male fantasy, an air conditioning unit, rope lights, a TV and a list of restaurant takeout phone numbers.