Louise Unkrich: In 1943 I graduated from Olds High School, located in southeast Iowa. The summer after graduation, I read in the Des Moines Register about American Technical School in regards to drafting. I signed up for this four-week session and received a certificate in aircraft sheet metal training. During my training at ATS, our class restored an old German plane. My instructor commented, “Miss Tolander is quite mechanically-minded and has proved to be an extremely competent sheet metal worker. She will be an excellent addition to any organization.”
At the end of four weeks in Des Moines, several of my classmates and I traveled to the Glenn L. Martin airplane plant, south of Omaha, NB. I worked as a riveter and as a bucker on the B-29, which was called the Superfortress. The B-29s played an integral part in winning WWII and we were very proud to play a role in the Allied victory. We were so driven to succeed, that while working onb the B-29s, a team of four of us set a time record assembling the ailerons on the Superfortress. There was an article about us in a local Omaha newspaper with a picture of me on the assembly line.
There was a lot of fear and anxiety during those times of war, but we had a job to do and we worked hard to support our troops. Everybody was working somewhere during those times. It wasn;t all work, thought, as I played catcher on the plant softball team. We were called the “bomberettes!”
There was such a sense of community and American pride during those times, because all of us had the same mission and purpose, tp win the war and return our loved ones home safely. I worked from July, 1943 to October, 1944, then I returned home to Swedesburg, Iowa.