In this image, the newly constructed glass noses of several dozen A-20 ‘Havoc’ bombers shimmer under the factory lights at the Douglas Aircraft Company’s production plant in Long Beach, California.
The picture was taken in October 1942 by Alfred Palmer, a photographer for the United States Office of War Infor-mation (OWI), a propaganda agency that coordinated all the news the American public received about the war.
Palmer specialised in capturing the American war economy in full swing, and the Douglas Aircraft Company was truly one of the powerhouses of military manufacturing during the conflict, with its vast workforce of 160,000 men and women producing some 30,000 aircraft between 1942 and 1945.
