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1/3/2017 Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest About Us Events Classroom Materials Pacific Northwest Resources Quarterly The Boeing Company and the Military­Metropolitan­Industrial Complex, 1945­1953 Richard S. Kirkendall Pacific Northwest Quarterly 85:4 (Oct. 1994), p. 137­149 This Boeing bomber embodies the transition to jet aircraft and the dependence on military that characterized company operations during the years following World War II. (Special Collections, University of Washington Libraries, Negative #10703. Photo by Boeing Company) The years of Harry Truman's presidency were crucial to the success of the Boeing Airplane Company. The president himself did not have close ties with the firm or great confidence in air power, but one part of the American state­­ the air force­­recognized Boeing's ability to serve air force interests and was in a stronger position than ever before to pursue those interests. Furthermore, the company now had another ally willing to enter the political arena on its behalf. This was Seattle. The people there had a new commitment to Boeing. Taking advantage of cold war fears, air force leaders lobbied for funds to be spent on bombers, and Seattle people worked to draw that money to their city by way of Boeing. As a consequence of the successes of these two groups in the Truman years, the company acquired the resources it needed to become the world leader in building commercial jets. In battling for Boeing, Seattle participated in what President Dwight D. Eisenhower later called the "military­ industrial complex." A historian, Roger Lotchin, recently proposed "metropolitan­military complex" as a substitute for Eisenhower's term. According to Lotchin, cities use military spending to promote their development. The metropolitan­military complex unites urban groups despite class and other differences, includes congressional representatives, and reaches out beyond the city. Seeing cities as the great driving force in the complex, Lotchin suggests that we cannot fully understand urban history without understanding the military, nor can we understand military history without understanding cities and their ambitions. Although he uses California communities for illustrations, he could also have employed Seattle.1 Before World War II, however, Seattle did not view military contracts with the Boeing Company as a means of urban growth. In fact, in 1934, one of Washington's U.S. senators, Homer Bone of Tacoma, a progressive Democrat hostile toward big business, the military, and imperialism, had denounced William Boeing, the founder of the company, arguing that the firm made excessive profits from government contracts. Furthermore, Marion Zioncheck and Warren Magnuson, Seattle's congressional representatives during much of the 1930s, served on the Naval Affairs Committee, and if Seattle was associated with the military in that period, it was as a "navy town."2 During the second half of the decade, Boeing's chief customer was the Army Air Corps, a precursor of today's air force. Earlier, the company had found markets in the new airline industry and the navy as well as the army, but now its main product was a four­engine bomber, the B­17, capable of carrying heavy loads to distant targets and doing so at what was then a high rate of speed. Competing for scarce funds with champions of naval and ground forces and hoping to obtain independence from the army, the air corps saw its interests linked with the company's. The Boeing bomber seemed capable of proving the importance of air power. Staging spectacular public relations stunts with the B­17, including long­range flights to Latin America and the interception of an Italian passenger ship approaching the Atlantic Coast, the airmen built support for government purchases of the big bombers. http://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/PNQ/Articles/Kirkendall.html 1/14 1/3/2017 Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest The deteriorating international situation may have been the basic factor at work, but though it generated pressure for a military buildup, it did not dictate that money be spent on bombers. It only created opportunities for advocates of competing ways of defending the United States and fighting wars. There was, in other words, room for political influence, and the key players on Boeing's behalf at this time were the leaders of the air corps.3 Boeing was not yet a major employer in Seattle when this photo of Plant 1 was taken on August 24, 1935, but by 1945 locals knew that the company was essential to urban growth and prosperity. (Special Collections, University of Washington Libraries; Original Negative, Washington State Historical Society, Photo by Asahel Curtis, Negative #61461) By mid­1945, however, another group of players had joined the game: people who identified with Seattle and championed its development. The war had increased Boeing's work force there from 4,000 in 1940 to about 50,000 in 1944. Seattle now hosted the biggest manufacturer in a state in which manufacturing was considerably more important than it had been before the war. Boeing depended heavily on government spending, and soon after the war ended, the negative side of that dependence became obvious to the company and the city as well. On September 5, 1945, the Army Air Forces, as the air corps was now designated, slashed orders for the B­29, a Boeing­built bomber that had played a large role in the last year of the Pacific war. This move by its chief customer forced Boeing to dismiss over 20,000 workers, nearly half of the firm's work force in the city. It was a much greater cut than the air forces had projected only a few weeks before.4 Cancellation of contracts for the B­29, the bomber that had insured victory in the Pacific war, roused Seattle citizens to defend Boeing. (Special Collections, UW Libraries, Negative #15275. Photo by Boeing Company) The civilian response demonstrated how important Boeing had become in the region. Even before September 5, one of the state's senators, Hugh B. Mitchell of Seattle, had warned of the collapse of the aircraft industry, and he held hearings in San Francisco, Spokane, and Seattle on the problems of reconversion for the industry and the closely linked aluminum industry. Then, beginning on September 5, the other Washington senator, Warren Magnuson, a Seattle Democrat who had replaced Bone in 1944, went into action on Boeing's behalf in meetings with army officials.5 Seattle leaders did not depend only on their representatives in Washington to make their case. The mayor, the president of the chamber of commerce, and a union officer, among others, made appeals of their own, and the chamber staged a mass protest meeting in downtown Seattle. Many people now considered Boeing's economic health essential to Seattle's welfare. Support for the company ran across class lines. Although Boeing's champions argued that its bombers could safeguard America's future, they did not define a threat to national security or advocate a new military buildup. Instead, they emphasized how much Boeing had contributed to victory and how the army's insistence on maintaining production of B­29s to the very end of the war had hurt the company. They proposed reinstating the canceled orders so that the company and its employees could move smoothly into peacetime production by gradually substituting airliners for bombers. To Seattle participants in this episode, world conditions seemed not to offer a rationale for further large­scale military spending.6 In 1946 when this photo was taken, Boeing employment had dropped below 9,000; Senator Warren Magnuson, here addressing General Warren Carter and Stuart Symington, concentrated on securing future military contracts for the company, while Senator Hugh Mitchell, left, explored commercial possibilities. (Warren G. Magnuson Papers, Photo box 2/6. Manuscripts and University Archives, University of Washington Libraries. Photo by US Air Force, Lowry A.F.B., Denver, CO) The campaign failed. By year's end, Boeing employment in Seattle had dropped below 9,000, and the company closed the plant it used in nearby Renton, hurting that community. During 1946, Boeing operated at a loss, as did Douglas Aircraft, even though the California firm had quickly http://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/Website/PNQ/Articles/Kirkendall.html 2/14 1/3/2017 Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest returned to production of its commercial line in 1945. The war, however, had generated widespread confidence in air power and enlarged interest in air travel. While Senator Magnuson was trying to position Boeing to benefit whenever the air forces again increased purchases of bombers, Senator Mitchell, who was interested in commercial aviation and convinced that Boeing had exciting commercial prospects, proposed the establishment of an air policy board that would recommend government policies to develop aviation and the aircraft industry. Boeing meantime had introduced a new airliner, the Stratocruiser, and a freighter, both similar to the B­29, and had begun to receive orders for them.7 The company, however, could not escape its dependence on the military. Busily working to strengthen itself politically, the Army Air Forces had developed a postwar plan that posited the need for a strong military force and presented bombers as the most important form of military power. The plan called for a large air force of 70 groups, backed up by a healthy, technologically advanced aircraft industry and controlled by a new branch of the armed forces, independent of the army and navy.8 In the summer of 1947, the airmen achieved one of their ambitions: what had been the United States Army Air Forces became the United States Air Force.

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