These images come from a rare 1945 promotional booklet published by Dodge when its Chicago assembly plant was made over for the licensed production of Wright Cyclone radial aircraft engines during World War II. At the time, one of the plant’s managers was Joe Lencki, a longtime race rat from Chicago who fielded cars at Indianapolis, designed a six-cylinder DOHC race engine and later became a self-taught creator of fuels and lubricants.
Among many other things, the Chicago plant included these foundries for producing magnesium and aluminum castings on a gigantic scale, very new practices at the time. The Wright engines ended up powering B-29 Superfortress bombers until the end of the war, and beyond. This particular image shows molten magnesium being poured into molds to make supercharger casings.
The Dodge plant encompassed 82 acres and according to the pamphlet, had enough workers on site to keep 14 employee cafeterias cooking round the clock. The booklet came from Lencki’s personal collection, now part of a Henderson, Nevada, museum founded by another pioneering Chicago race guy with an aviation background, Ed Rachanski. The museum’s profiled in the December issue of Hemmings Motor News.
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