As America's involvement in World War II intensified, Mike Roberts documented the final stages of the Vultee Aircraft assembly line in Downey, Calif. for the 1941 special aviation issue of Fortune. Vultee produced U.S. and Canadian air force planes at Downey.
Of the climate at the time, Fortune's editors summarized, "The tactics of the battlefield reach back and dictate the tactics on the factory floor... This is the industrial war the American can see for himself every day.... This is the war of the machines, of manpower, of the managers ... the resources of a great industrial power."
NEXT: H.B. Cornelius, 1941