Flora Tye couldn’t begin to count all the rivets she riveted during her three years with Douglas Aircraft during World War II.

She just knew she was fast.

“I could shoot them so fast, my partner would holler and say, ‘slow down,’” she recalled.

Tye, then Flora Hilton, was 18 when she left her farm in Porum to help assemble B-24 Liberator planes from 1942 to 1945.

The B-29/B-24 Squadron of the Commemorative Air Force will honor Tye’s war work today during a visit to the McAlester Regional Airport.

The squadron will fly a B-24 Liberator into the airport between 8:30 and 9 a.m. today and will have a ceremony honoring pilots and crews who served on the airplanes, as well as those who built them.

Among the others to be honored is McAlester resident Duane Jordan, who flew the B-24 on a bombing mission to take out part of the Japanese Burma Railroad during World War II, according to a story in the McAlester News-Capital.

The story said Tye worked with Douglas Aircraft in Tulsa during the war, where her duties included riveting wing sections of the B-24.

The Liberator gained a distinguished war record with missions in the Pacific, Middle East, Africa and Europe. The Aviation-History.com Web site said Liberators are recorded as having dropped more than 630,000 tons of bombs and gunning several thousand enemy aircraft. It had six 50-caliber guns.

Toni Stevenson, tour director for the B-24 Liberator, said she feels especially glad to honor Tye.

“Every time we have the opportunity to met a veteran flier or a person who built the aircraft, someone from that generation, it’s an honor,” Stevenson said. “The aircraft wouldn’t be flying if it weren’t for the people who built them.”

Stevenson said the aircraft workers, or riveters, are an especially hard group to find or reach out to. She said veterans could be found through their squadron groups, but the plants didn’t keep such records.

Tye, 85, said she doesn’t know if anyone she worked with at Douglas Aircraft is still around.

“I don’t even remember the name of the man I worked with,” she said.

Tye recalled moving up to Tulsa shortly after graduating from Porum High School in 1946. She went to live with her aunt, a beauty operator.

“I was in need of a job and heard that Douglas Aircraft was the place to get work,” she said. “Back then, my check was, like $35 a week.”

That was five, eight-hour days of assembly line work.

“When the plane was moved to our station, holes were already in it. My partner held a bar and I shot rivets in it,” she said, describing her riveter as being as big as a hand drill.

She recalled her rivets were about an inch apart on a wing that was six to eight feet wide.

“When we finished each plane, the inspector came, inspected it, and we moved it on down the line,” she said. “I was told the plant was a mile long, but there were no windows in it. They did not want the enemy flying by and seeing what we were doing.”

She said she enjoyed her work, especially the riveting.

“We were very faithful to go to work,” she said. “It made me feel good that we were doing a good job.”

She said she lived in a hotel in downtown Tulsa.

“Buildings had a room upstairs they made a motel out of,” she said. “Someone in a car would pick us up and take us to the plant.”

She recalled going to movies downtown in her spare time.

In spring of 1945, months before the war ended, the plant changed from B-24s to a smaller aircraft. Tye said she left because she didn’t like the work as much.

She went to work for the Muskogee County Assessor’s office.

“I was working for the county assessor when a tornado hit Muskogee,” she said. “It was the same day President Roosevelt died.”

Tye has two grown daughters.

She said it feels good that the B-24 Squadron still remembers her work.



Reach Cathy Spaulding at 918-684-2928 or Click Here to Send Email