South Bend, It's Time for Wartime Production

A few of the 197,678 Studebaker US6 military cargo trucks built in South Bend from June 1941 through August 1945.

During the Second World War, South Bend was a powerhouse of industrial production in service of the Allied Powers.

Bendix Corporation produced 75% of all avionics in US aircraft, South Bend Toy produced tent poles and aircraft parts, Wilson Brothers produced 3.5 million articles of military clothing, and Studebaker produced 63,789 Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress Bomber engines, 14,924 M29 Weasels, and 197,678 US6 trucks.

And beyond industrial production, South Bend residents worked to preserve the values of their community by creating social organizations like Hi-Spot, a youth club aimed at creating wholesome opportunities for teenagers to gather as worries mounted over a generation of young people coming of age while their fathers fought overseas.

Such social organizations proved to be no less important than the factories producing the tools used to fight overseas, for they protected the soul of a community that had taken generations to build. They saw that the war would not simply affect the present, but that immediate action was also needed to protect the future of their community from the ramifications of the war.

Seventy-four years later, the COVID-19 pandemic is upon us. It’s an international crisis—but it’s also a local one. 

Through efforts of all sizes, South Bend residents are already rising to this moment with a shared sense of service.

Myles Robertson is offering to go grocery shopping for immunocompromised persons, and La Casa de Amistad is mobilizing volunteers to pack food and resource boxes for families.

~100 South Bend restauranteurs are pivoting to social distance dining options including curbside pickup, delivery, and ready-to-freeze family meals, and a local manufacturing firm is using its production lines to produce large quantities of hydroalcoholic gels to be used in the city of South Bend.

Dustin, Maria, Helen, and I think we have the skills to help small businesses during this time, so we are concentrating our efforts on supporting them with every free minute we have outside essential duties for our respective companies, INVANTI and Tutt and Carroll.

Just as Americans in the Second World War discovered new technologies and a renewed spirit, because they had to, could this crisis advance the way we practice community in South Bend, because we have to?

I believe so.

And the fact is that Studebaker’s wartime production was not purely generous, because they would’ve struggled to sell vehicles to the average American family during wartime. By contributing to the war effort, the company preserved its own life while helping defeat the larger enemy. Could we imagine a new kind of wartime production that places us in service to each other?

I believe so.

We will spend the next month wholly in service of these goals, and invite you to join us. We’ll use #takeoutCOVID19.com, which is currently a database of local restaurants offering social distance dining options, as the online home of our projects. If you are unsure of where to begin, write to us, and we’ll do our best to match your skills to the moment.

The way through is together.

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