Published by The Evansville Courier

This gave Mayor William H. Dress' steering committee a chance to tell federal officials that one way to keep Evansville working was to locate defense work here.

Some war contracts trickled in before America entered the war, but much more was needed to avoid massive layoffs and plant closings.

Walter Koch, vice president of sales at International Steel, had tapped his contacts in the Navy to bring a huge shipyard to Evansville. It became the world's largest inland producer of ocean-going ships, building 167 LSTs (landing ships tank), four similarly sized amphibious barracks ships and other smaller craft. At its peak it employed 19,500 people.

C. Nelson Smith of Hoosier Lamp and Stamping had promoted Evansville with Ralph Damon before Damon became president of Republic Aviation Corp. Damon later met with Smith, Louis Ruthenburg of Servel, Rufus Carnes of International Steel and A.J. Hoffman of Hoffman Construction and came away convinced that Evansville was the place to build an airplane factory.

The Republic plant, now the Whirlpool factory on U.S. 41 North, produced more than 6,200 P-47 Thunderbolt fighters.

Chrysler, with support from Sunbeam Electric Manufacturing, turned out 96 percent of the .45-caliber ammunition used by the military and received other defense contracts.

In all, 48 Evansville companies landed military contracts for a broad range of products, including aviation parts, cargo bodies for Army trucks, uniforms, tents, stoves, cots, portable bridges, rifle stocks, medicine and a variety of munitions.

Manufacturing employment reached 64,000 locally and the population swelled to about 150,000.

The influx of new residents caused severe housing shortages, overcome through improvised solutions followed by construction of nearly a dozen housing projects.

Men going off to war were replaced in factories by women and the job market created opportunities for blacks. Times also were changing in The Evansville Courier newsroom. Women were receiving assignments previously reserved for men - sports writing, photography, crime reporting.