Kansas City in World War II (1941-1945)

Kansas City’s World War II era was defined by four federal production plants — 6,608 B-25 Mitchell bombers at the North American Aviation plant in the Fairfax district, 7,934 R-2800-C aircraft engines at Pratt & Whitney’s plant at 95th and Troost, nearly 6 billion small-arms rounds at Lake City in eastern Jackson County, and smokeless powder at Sunflower Ordnance Works in Kansas — and by Harry S. Truman’s ascent from the Senate to the vice presidency and, on April 12, 1945, the presidency.¹²³⁴

Industrial mobilization

The claim that federal siting decisions turned on mid-continental geography, rail position, and labor supply is; what one local account emphasizes is that the cities that landed these plants were themselves “primarily looking to their post-war futures.”¹

North American Aviation bomber plant, Fairfax Industrial District, Kansas City, Kansas. The Army Air Corps announced the plant on December 7, 1940.² The plant occupied 75 acres of the 2,000-acre district, was government-owned and operated by a North American Aviation subsidiary, and produced 6,608 B-25s — about 40 percent of all B-25s built for the war, out of 9,816 total — employing approximately 26,000 workers, 40 percent of them women by 1944.¹² The B-25 contract was cancelled August 18, 1945.² General Motors leased and later bought the site; the original plant was demolished and replaced by Fairfax II in 1986.¹ Corrects a figure previously on this page giving peak employment as about 25,000.

Pratt & Whitney engine plant, 95th Street at Troost, Kansas City, Missouri — about 300 acres on the site of the short-lived 1922 Kansas City Speedway. It built and tested the 3,400-horsepower R-2800-C engine, producing 7,934 engines in two and a half years for aircraft including the P-47 Thunderbolt, F4U Corsair, and F6F Hellcat, at a peak of about 22,000 workers in roughly 3 million square feet. Steel scarcity led the Army to hire industrial architect Albert Kahn, whose 40-foot concrete arches gave uninterrupted floor space and faster construction.¹

Lake City Army Ammunition Plant, in Independence, eastern Jackson County — established 1941 by Remington Arms on nearly 4,000 acres to make and test small-caliber ammunition. It produced nearly 6 billion rounds during the war (about 13 percent of total U.S. military production), sharing the work with twelve comparable plants, at a peak of about 21,000 employees — including a 640-member horseback perimeter detail and an 82-member fire department. It was the first of six new plants of its type and served as the prototype. It went on standby in 1945 and returned to production in December 1951.¹

Sunflower Ordnance Works, De Soto, Kansas — established 1941 on 10,747 acres as the world’s largest smokeless powder plant, government-owned and operated by the Hercules Powder Company under a contract signed May 11, 1942; at its peak across WWII, Korea, and Vietnam it employed nearly 15,000.³

Demographic transformation

Wartime in-migration to Kansas City — Black migration from the South, rural-to-urban migration, and the large-scale entry of women into industrial work — is ** on this page** except for the Fairfax figure that 40 percent of its workers were women by 1944.²

The metropolitan population figures given in earlier drafts (about 600,000 in 1940 rising to about 700,000 in 1945) are ****; no census or estimate series has been verified for them. Kansas City home-front newspaper files and war-plant photography are held offline in Missouri Valley Special Collections.⁵

The claim that Black war-industry workers were confined east of Troost by the Country Club District restrictive-covenant regime is here; the covenant history belongs on the jc-nichols and 18th-and-vine pages. The line of causation from wartime migration to the 1958 sit-ins and the 1968 riots is likewise.

Harry Truman’s ascent

Harry S. Truman — Pendergast-rooted Missouri politician, U.S. Senator since 1935:

Truman Committee — the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program was created by Senate Resolution 71, approved unanimously March 1, 1941. Truman chaired it 1941-1944, resigning when he became the vice-presidential candidate; the U.S. Senate’s own account credits it with “uncovering corruption, waste, and fraud, thereby saving American taxpayers billions of dollars” without naming a figure.⁴ The commonly cited $10-15 billion estimate appears in secondary accounts alongside a contemporaneous 1943 estimate of about $11 billion; it is not a Senate figure.⁶
1944 VP selection — selected as FDR’s running mate over incumbent Vice President Henry Wallace. The reasons usually given (Truman’s Senate relationships, border-state appeal) are.
April 12, 1945 — became President on FDR’s death, serving the remainder of the fourth term and winning election in his own right in 1948. on this page; the standard narrative treatments are McCullough’s Truman and Baime’s The Accidental President, and the primary records are at the Truman Library in Independence, which also holds the General Records of the Senate Special Committee (Record Group 46).⁷⁸⁹
Presidential decisions — August 1945 atomic-weapons use against Japan; Truman Doctrine (1947), Marshall Plan (1948), Berlin Airlift (1948-49), NATO (1949), Korean War (1950-53). on this page; these are national-history claims outside the Kansas City record.

The characterization of Kansas City and Independence as “the de facto home of the 33rd presidency” is editorial and is not asserted here. What is documented locally is that Truman kept an office in the Federal Reserve Bank building at 925 Grand from 1953 until his presidential library was completed in 1957.¹⁰

Background

Pre-war industrial position (1939–1941)

Kansas City’s pre-war industrial base — Stockyards and meatpacking, TWA operations, Hallmark, the Garment District, rail-junction infrastructure — is on this page. So is any coordination between the 1939 Pendergast collapse (see pendergast-era) and federal war-production siting; no source consulted here connects them.

Federal-industrial site continuity

95th and Troost / Bannister — Pratt & Whitney (WWII) → Westinghouse jet-engine production from 1949, subleasing to Bendix Aviation, which took Atomic Energy Commission contracts for the non-nuclear components of American nuclear weapons; Bendix merged into Allied Signal in 1983; the Bannister complex closed in 2014 and was demolished, with environmental remediation continuing.¹ The work did not stay on the site: in 2014 the operation moved to the new Kansas City National Security Campus on Botts Road, an NNSA facility managed by Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies, which makes about 80 percent of the non-nuclear components of the U.S. nuclear stockpile.¹¹ Corrects a statement previously on this page implying the National Security Campus occupies the Bannister site.
Lake City — continues in production; the only U.S. government-owned, contractor-operated small-arms ammunition plant, under a succession of operators: Remington Arms (1941-1985), Olin (1985-2001), Alliant Techsystems (2001-2015), Orbital Sciences (2015-2018), Northrop Grumman (2018-2021), then Olin Winchester.¹
Sunflower — decommissioned and largely redeveloped.³

Long-term significance

Federal-industrial persistence is the best-documented legacy: Lake City has run essentially continuously since 1941 apart from a 1945-1951 standby, and the Bannister nuclear-components work has continued under successive contractors since the late 1940s at Bannister and, since 2014, on Botts Road.¹¹¹
Demographic foundation for postwar KC — the causal chain from wartime Black migration to the 1958 sit-ins and 1968 riots is; see civil-rights-era-kc.
Truman presidential legacy — the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum in Independence was completed in 1957.¹⁰
Era-bridge framing (1939 Pendergast collapse → 1941-45 mobilization → 1945-48 transition → Civil Rights era) is an editorial structure, not a sourced claim.

Sites associated

North American Aviation bomber plant — Fairfax Industrial District, Kansas City, Kansas; site now Fairfax II (General Motors)¹
Pratt & Whitney engine plant / Bannister Federal Complex — 95th and Troost, south Kansas City, Missouri; closed 2014 and demolished¹
Kansas City National Security Campus — Botts Road, south Kansas City, Missouri; NNSA facility, Honeywell FM&T, occupied 2014¹¹
Lake City Army Ammunition Plant — Independence, eastern Jackson County; in production since 1941¹
Sunflower Ordnance Works — De Soto, Kansas³
Harry S. Truman National Historic Site (Independence)
Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum (Independence) — completed 1957¹⁰
Liberty Memorial — WWI memorial that hosted WWII commemorative programming
Union Station — wartime troop-transport and civic-gathering site

Sources

Books and archives (offline / catalog pointers)

KC Backstories — LaDene Morton, “KC in WWII: The Fairfax, Pratt and Whitney and Lake City Defense Plants” (2021-07-15) — asserts: the Fairfax Industrial District covers 2,000 acres created by the Union Pacific in 1923, of which 75 acres was the B-25 plant site; the government owned the plant and a North American Aviation subsidiary operated it, producing 6,608 planes, about 40 percent of all wartime B-25s, with approximately 26,000 workers; GM later leased then bought the site, demolished the original plant, and built Fairfax II in 1986. Pratt & Whitney’s plant sat on about 300 acres at 95th and Troost on the former 1922 Kansas City Speedway site, built and tested the 3,400-horsepower R-2800-C engine, produced 7,934 engines in two and a half years for the Thunderbolt, Corsair and Hellcat, peaked at about 22,000 workers in about 3 million square feet, and was designed by Albert Kahn using 40-foot concrete arches because of steel scarcity; Westinghouse moved in in 1949 for jet engines and subleased to Bendix Aviation, which held AEC contracts for non-nuclear nuclear-weapon components, merged with Allied Signal in 1983, and the complex closed in 2014 with demolition and remediation following. Lake City sits on almost 4,000 acres in Independence, was operated from 1941 by Remington Arms, produced nearly 6 billion rounds in WWII (13 percent of total military production) among twelve comparable plants, peaked at about 21,000 employees including a 640-member horseback perimeter detail and 82 firefighters, was the first of six new plants of its type and their prototype, went on standby in 1945 and returned to production December 1951; operators since: Remington Arms to 1985, Olin 1985-2001, Alliant Technologies 2001-2015, Orbital Sciences 2015-2018, Northrop Grumman 2018-2021, then Olin Winchester. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²
Kansas City Public Library / The Pendergast Years — “North American Aviation Plant,”; Clio — “North American Aviation, Kansas City (1941-1945),” theclio.com; Wikipedia — “Fairfax Field,” en.wikipedia.org — asserts: the U.S. Army Air Corps announced on December 7, 1940 that the Fairfax Industrial District would host a North American Aviation B-25 plant; the plant reached employment of 26,000 and produced 6,608 of the 9,816 B-25 Mitchell bombers built during the war; 40 percent of Fairfax workers were women in 1944; the B-25 contract was cancelled August 18, 1945, with about 5,700 employees notified of termination on August 20, 1945. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
Wikipedia — “Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant,”; City of De Soto, Kansas — “History – Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant,” desotoks.us — asserts: the plant, originally the Sunflower Ordnance Works, was established in 1941 on 10,747 acres as the world’s largest smokeless powder plant; it was government-owned but operated by the Hercules Powder Company under a contract signed May 11, 1942; at its height across World War II and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts it employed nearly 15,000 production and administrative workers; it was later decommissioned and largely redeveloped. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
United States Senate — “The Truman Committee,” Senate investigations page — asserts: the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program was created by Senate Resolution 71, approved unanimously on March 1, 1941; Truman chaired it 1941-1944, resigning when he became the vice-presidential candidate; the committee “deserves credit for uncovering corruption, waste, and fraud, thereby saving American taxpayers billions of dollars.” No dollar figure is given by the Senate. ↩ ↩²
Kansas City Public Library — Missouri Valley Special Collections, listed under Research > Local History — holds the Kansas City World War II home-front newspaper files and plant photography consulted on site in the Missouri Valley Room, Central Library, 14 W 10th St, Kansas City, MO. Note: MVSC’s old kchistory.org deep links no longer resolve to their targets and must not be cited. ↩
Wikipedia — “Truman Committee.” — asserts: the committee began with a $15,000 budget expanded over three years to $360,000 and is estimated to have saved $10-15 billion in military spending, with a contemporaneous 1943 estimate of about $11 billion; successive chairs after Truman were James Mead (1944-1946), Harley Kilgore (1946-1947), and Ralph Brewster (1947-1948). Recorded here as a secondary estimate, distinct from the Senate’s own unquantified statement. ↩
David McCullough — Truman. Simon & Schuster, published June 15, 1992; winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. ISBN 978-0-671-45654-2 (cloth) / 978-0-671-86920-5 (paper). Publisher page — the standard one-volume biography, covering the Jackson County years, the Truman Committee, the 1944 nomination, and the succession. Held in the Kansas City Public Library system. No specific figure on this page currently rests on it. ↩
A.J. Baime — The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months That Changed the World. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017. ISBN 978-0-544-61734-6. Full text for borrowing at the Internet Archive; Kansas City Public Library catalog record: kclibrary.bibliocommons.com — narrative account of the April-August 1945 succession. No specific claim on this page currently rests on it. ↩
Harry S. Truman Library and Museum (National Archives), Independence, Missouri — holds the General Records of the U.S. Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program (Record Group 46) among Truman-era collections; the finding aid is at trumanlibrary.gov ↩
Wikipedia — “Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.” — asserts: Harry S. Truman maintained an office in the Bank’s building at 925 Grand from 1953 until 1957, when his presidential library was completed. ↩ ↩² ↩³
Wikipedia — “Kansas City National Security Campus,”; Wikipedia — “Bannister Federal Complex,” en.wikipedia.org; official site, kcnsc.doe.gov — asserts: the Kansas City Plant moved in 2014 from the Bannister Federal Complex to a new Botts Road facility and was renamed the Kansas City National Security Campus; it is a National Nuclear Security Administration facility managed and operated by Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies; it manufactures about 80 percent of the non-nuclear components in the U.S. nuclear stockpile; the move was projected to save about $100 million a year and cut energy consumption by more than half. ↩ ↩² ↩³