For Women’s History Month, we are sharing photographs of women who worked at Bell Aircraft Corporation’s ordnance division in Burlington. To encourage women to join the industrial workforce during World War II, the War Department created a publicity campaign featuring a WOW, a woman ordnance worker. Newspapers from 1943 mention some Vermont women who traveled to work in ordnance plants in other parts of the country, but later that year, a munitions plant opened in Burlington and provided many women a chance to serve as WOWs near home.
In 1943, the Bell Aircraft Corporation of Buffalo, New York began negotiations to use Burlington’s old Queen City Cotton Mill on Lakeside Avenue as a new facility for their ordnance division. The Burlington Free Press reported in a May 3, 1943 article that it was one of the few factories of an appropriate size with a sufficient labor supply and that Bell anticipated hiring many women and planned to provide training for metal working.
Members of the local Chamber of Commerce, and especially William Loeb, the publisher of the Burlington Daily News, actively campaigned to bring Bell’s ordinance division to Burlington. On July 16, 1943, the Daily News proclaimed, “This will give many of us an opportunity to make with our own hands and brains the weapons which we are defeating the Axis. The machinery which Burlington mothers and fathers will make here at Bell in many cases will be used by their Vermont sons in the smoke-filled turret of some Flying Fortress in mortal combat.”
Bell published this advertisement in newspapers around the state. Barre Daily Times, June 14, 1944.
Bell’s ordnance division started producing gun mounts at the Burlington facility quickly. The company finished installing equipment by the end of September 1943 and placed ads in newspapers around the state to solicit workers. By June 1944, they employed 2,400 men and women from 25 surrounding towns. Bell’s photograph division documented work at the Burlington plant. The photographs in our Bell Aircraft Ordnance Division Photographs collection demonstrate that women performed a range of jobs in offices and on the factory floor. We selected the photos below to create a mini album of Burlington’s women ordnance workers. Except in one case, we used the descriptive labels recorded on the back of the photos.
In the Office
Florence Roscoe at the key punch machine, 1944.
Sue King working at the alphabetical accounting machine, 1944.
An unidentified woman is ready to cut copies of design plans.
In the Assembly Department
Soldering on the electrical assembly bench, 1944.
Men and women workers prepare gun mounts in the assembly department, 1944.
Women preparing power mounts for shipment in the assembly department, 1944.
Men and women in the assembly department putting finishing touches on the gun mounts before shipping, 1944.
If you would like to see the Bell Aircraft Ordnance Division Photograph Collection, contact Special Collections by email at uvmsc@uvm.edu or call 802-656-2138 to make an appointment.
Submitted by Prudence Doherty, Public Services Librarian