Series
Built Fast
Plants and products that went from an empty field to full output in months, and how they did it.
Synthetic rubber · the Alaska Highway · shipyards in cornfields
WW2 documentaries from the factory floor
How America built, moved and fixed the machines that won WW2
Long-form documentaries about the plants, the production lines and the crews who kept it all running. Real archive film, real factory drawings, and a source for every claim.
STATUSEpisode one in production
The series
Every episode asks how the work actually got done
Series
Converted
Car plants, typewriter makers and locomotive works that switched over to war work.
GM car plants building Navy fighters · locomotive works building tanks
Series
Kept It Running
The repair crews, spare parts and supply lines that kept the machines working after they shipped.
Raising the Pearl Harbor fleet · floating dry docks · rolling machine shops
Series
After the War
What happened to the plants, the machines and the workers when the orders stopped.
Surplus warplanes · the reserve fleet · back to building cars
In every episode
The Shop Floor
We take a real drawing from the Historic American Engineering Record or a wartime Army technical manual and redraw it on screen, line by line, to show how the part was made and how the work was laid out.
How we work
Facts first
- A source for every claim, listed in each video's description.
- Archive film and photos from U.S. government collections, mostly the National Archives and the Library of Congress.
- Machine drawings traced from real records: the Historic American Engineering Record and wartime technical manuals.
- No invented witnesses and no made-up quotes.
- If something made with AI looks real, it gets a label on screen.
Contact
Get in touch
Family photos and stories
Did someone in your family work in a war plant? Photos, letters, pay stubs and stories help us get the details right. Send them to the same address. We ask before using anything, and we credit you.