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The Journal of San Diego History
Consolidated workers leaving plant, ca. 1943. ©SDHC Folder 8, Convair collection, 1997/042.
In the summer of 1943, an English teacher and an art teacher sacrificed their
vacations to work the Consolidated swing shift. With no prior experience in
manufacturing, Constance Bowman and Clara Marie Allen found themselves
assigned to Minor Installations on the B-24. In his orientation speech, their first
supervisor emphasized, “
‘We’re war workers,’ he said, capitalizing the words with his voice,
‘and we’re proud of it. No matter what people on the outside say,
we’re on the inside and we’re proud of it.’ He said several times,
aggressively, that we were proud of it, for in wartime San Diego there
are only three kinds of people: the service people, the civilians, and
the aircraft workers.” 26
The two teachers were at first skeptical of the narrative and the ongoing
attempts to persuade the new hires of their importance to the cause, but were
soon converted.
The company’s shifts demonstrated the growing demands of the foreign
war. Before July 1940, the firm instituted a one-shift 40-hour week. Following
Pearl Harbor, the company altered its schedule to a two-shift, 53-hour week and,
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