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As the clouds of war gathered over Europe in the late 1930s, it became obvious to the US Army that its Army Air Corps (later, Army Air Forces) would need vastly more airplanes than industry was then capable of producing.  And so, the Army persuaded the Congress to appropriate funds not only for the purchase of airplanes, but just as importantly, vast sums of money to build a multitude of new factories in which to build those planes.

Furthermore, it became ever more clear that traditional aircraft manufacturing techniques were never going to provide the planes needed as fast as they would be required. Mass production techniques would be needed, and no one in America was more acquainted with mass production than Henry Ford.

And so, the stupendous Willow Run plant was commissioned to build the Consolidated B-24 bomber. Willow Run was hardly the only B-24 plant, but it was, in the end, the most prolific. Mind you, however, it took a considerable length of time before production really hit its stride. The learning curve shifting from building cars to vastly more complicated airplanes was very steep. And simply training the workforce was quite the daunting task.

After the war, Ford wanted to turn that hard earned expertise into either an entry in to the aeronautical industry, or at a minimum, build goodwill with the public, and use that to sell cars the the millions of GIs returning home from the war.