Canadian contribution to WWII: Ford of Canada aided the Empire in early 1941

In the spring of 1941, the United States was not yet embroiled in World War II, but the British Empire was. The war was conducted on the sea, in the air and on the battlefield, of course, but it also had to be won on the industrial front as well. In Britain, many workers had gone off to fight and many factories were damaged by bombing.

With a great ocean between the battlefields of Europe and the factories of North America, Ford Motor Company of Canada was able to contribute to the war effort. In fact, to meet wartime demand, the Canadian Ford plant underwent a rapid $700,000 expansion program so that it could produce military vehicles and civilian products for the home front.

A massive plant workforce of 11,000 Canadians helped keep the factory in Windsor, Ontario operating day and night in 1941. Due to world geography, the Dominion of Canada had become the main source of military equipment for the British Empire. Ford’s Windsor facility was Canada’s largest automobile plant and was essential in making the mechanized war machines necessary for the defense of British soil.

By early 1941, the Windsor factory had made a rapid switch to wartime production, which included the physical expansion of the facility itself. In the roughly 18 months since Great Britain entered the war on September 3, 1939, Ford of Canada manufactured more than 50,000 vehicles there for army use. They included staff cars, trucks and armored vehicles.

Thousands of Canadian-made trucks, gun tractors and other mechanized units were shipped to the armies of Canada, Great Britain, Australia and other British countries such as South Africa. In fact, the South African government standardized on Canadian-built Ford equipment for its army. Many units were sent to the Mediterranean area where they played a very large and important role in South Africa’s African military campaign.

Hour after hour, Canadian auto workers worked to assemble as many units as they could. Ford News reported that Windsor production was running at 450 units per day in March 1941. That was for both military vehicles and civilian models. Ford of Canada considered it important to keep the home front population on wheels, as well as soldiers.

Ford of Canada actually initiated its wartime plans in early 1938, knowing that the clouds of war were on the horizon. The company worked hand-in-hand with the Department of National Defence in Ottawa to map out what would happen if Great Britain went to war. After the conflict actually began, it took a very short time to get the Windsor plant tooled up to make the specialized types of vehicles the fighting men needed.

Many very large orders were placed, but small ones were also accommodated. In some cases, an order for a single type of unusual vehicle would be accepted. Ford of Canada said “No job offered has been two small, but none has been too large, either.” One Empire government request asked for the quick delivery of thousands of units. Three weeks after the order was cabled to Windsor, the factory started shipping out finished vehicles. They were built at the rate of 1,000 per month for several months to fulfill the order.

In addition to several types of specialized army vehicles and regular cars and trucks for military use, Ford of Canada was asked to make a small, speedy, tank-type fighting vehicle that was dubbed The Universal Carrier. Since this was an entirely new type of vehicle in the British Empire, the Windsor plant got the $700,00 expansion to build it there. This did not include the cost of a new machine shop that was also built by Ford.

Ground was broken for the expansion in July of 1941 and the addition was erected and in use by the end of the year. The Universal Carriers were assembled on a special line in the Windsor facility’s body making plant, with that plant’s foundry and machine shop supplying many of the parts and sub-assemblies that went into them. The vehicles were armored against small firearms and had caterpillar treads. Power came from a standard flathead Ford V-8 engine. They could do 40 mph and were easily maneuvered. Some 40,000 were made in England and about 29,000 were manufactured in Windsor.

In order to handle both war work and civilian output, the plant layout was redesigned. An additional complete assembly line was added and was used virtually 24 hours a day. Army units were painted olive green and Canadian Air Force units were done in a blue-gray color. The range of models produced included trucks; station wagons for the Air Force; gun tractors; six-wheel heavy-duty Army trucks and huge, powerful wreckers that could yank other military vehicles out of ditches and shell holes.

Not all parts of the Canadian plant operated around the clock; some were used only eight hours per day and some ran 16 hours per day. Because of this, the schedules had to be coordinated. Shipping also required careful scheduling and rail lines were used to carry many of the completed machines to the eastern seaboard for overseas shipping.

In addition to the types of vehicles listed above, Windsor made a variety of motorized units such as anti-tank gun carriers; water-tank carriers; four-wheel drive gun tractors that hauled artillery; light-duty trucks (both two-wheel and four-wheel drive variants and army station wagons. Outside the plant, rows of hundreds of trucks with different military body configurations, sat awaiting loading onto the railroad cars.

The Ford Motor Co. of Canada placed the full weight of its resources, facilities and manpower into the company’s early war efforts. About 1,300 machines in the Windsor plant were totally committed to war goods production. The work of strengthening Britain’s armed forces around the world had top priority over anything else in all of Ford Motor Company’s plants, not only in Great Britain and Canada, but also in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the Federation of Malaya.