The American Automobile Industry in World War Two
An American Auto Industry Heritage Tribute by David D Jackson

Overview      Lansing Michigan in World War Two   The U.S. Auto Industry at the Normandy Invasion, June 6, 1944    The U.S. Auto Industry and the B-29 Bomber   U.S. Auto Industry Army-Navy "E" Award Winners   The Complete listing of All Army-Navy "E" Award Winners   Sherman Tanks of the American Auto Industry   Tank Destroyers of the American Auto Industry    M26 Pershing Tanks of the American Auto Industry   M36 Tank Destroyers of the American Auto Industry   Serial Numbers for WWII Tanks built by the American Auto Industry   Surviving LCVP Landing Craft    WWII Landing Craft Hull Numbers   Airborne Extra-Light Jeep Photos  The American Auto Industry vs. the German V-1 in WWII   American Auto Industry-Built Anti-Aircraft Guns in WWII   VT Proximity Manufacturers of WWII   World War One Era Motor Vehicles   National Museum of Military Vehicles  
Revisions   Links

 Automobile and Body Manufacturers:  American Bantam Car Company   Briggs Manufacturing Company   Checker Car Company   Chrysler Corporation   Crosley Corporation   Ford Motor Car Company   General Motors Corporation   Graham-Paige Motors Corporation   Hudson
Motor Car Company   Murray Corporation of America   Nash-Kelvinator   Packard Motor Car Company      Studebaker    Willys-Overland Motors

General Motors Divisions:  AC Spark Plug   Aeroproducts   Allison   Brown-Lipe-Chapin   Buick   Cadillac   Chevrolet   Cleveland Diesel   Delco Appliance   Delco Products   Delco Radio   Delco-Remy   Detroit Diesel   Detroit Transmission   Electro-Motive   Fisher Body   Frigidaire   GM Proving Grounds   GM of Canada   GMC   GMI   Guide Lamp   Harrison Radiator   Hyatt Bearings   Inland   Moraine Products   New Departure   Oldsmobile   Packard Electric   Pontiac   Saginaw Malleable Iron   Saginaw Steering Gear   Southern California Division   Rochester Products   Ternstedt Manufacturing Division   United Motors Service   Vauxhall Motors

 Indiana Companies:  Bailey Products Corporation   Chrysler Kokomo Plant   Continental Steel Corporation  Converto Manufacturing    Cummins Engine Company   Diamond Chain and Manufacturing Company   Delta Electric Company   Durham Manufacturing Company   Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation   Haynes Stellite Company   Hercules Body Company   Horton Manufacturing Company   Howe Fire Apparatus   J.D. Adams Company   Kokomo Spring Company   Magnavox  
Muncie Gear Works   Pierce Governor Company   Portland Forge and Foundry   Reliance Manufacturing Company   Republic Aviation Corporation - Indiana Division   Ross Gear and Tool Company   S.F. Bowser & Co.   Sherrill Research Corporation   Tokheim Oil Tank and Pump Company   Warner Gear   Wayne Pump Company   Wayne Works

Commercial Truck and Fire Apparatus Manufacturers:  American LaFrance   Autocar  
Biederman Motors Corporation   Brockway Motor Company   Detroit General   Diamond T   Duplex Truck Company   Federal Motor Truck   Four Wheel Drive Auto Company(FWD)   International Harvester   John Bean   Mack Truck   Marmon-Herrington Company   Michigan Power Shovel Company   Oshkosh Motor Truck Corporation   Pacific Car and Foundry   "Quick-Way" Truck Shovel Company   Reo Motor Car Company  Seagrave Fire Apparatus   Sterling Motor Truck Company    Ward LaFrance Truck Corporation   White Motor Company

Aviation Companies:  Abrams Instrument Corporation   Hughes Aircraft Company   Kellett Aviation Corporation   Laister-Kauffman Aircraft Corporation   Naval Aircraft Factory   P-V Engineering Forum, Inc.    Rudolf Wurlitzer Company-DeKalb Division  Schweizer Aircraft Corporation   Sikorsky Division of United Aircraft Corporation   St. Louis Aircraft Corporation   Timm Aircraft Corporation

Other World War Two Manufacturers: 
Air King Products   Allis-Chalmers   American Car and Foundry   American Locomotive   American Stove Company   Annapolis Yacht Yard  
Andover Motors Company   B.F. Goodrich   Baker War Industries   Baldwin Locomotive Works   Blood Brothers Machine Company   Boyertown Auto Body Works   Briggs & Stratton   Caterpillar   Cheney Bigelow Wire Works   Centrifugal Fusing   Chris-Craft   Clark Equipment Company   Cleaver-Brooks Company   Cleveland Tractor Company   Continental Motors   Cushman Motor Works   Crocker-Wheeler   Dail Steel Products   Detroit Wax Paper Company   Detrola   Engineering & Research Corporation   Farrand Optical Company   Federal Telephone and Radio Corp.   Firestone Tire and Rubber Company   Fruehauf Trailer Company   Fuller Manufacturing   Galvin Manufacturing   Gemmer Manufacturing Company   General Railway Signal Company   Gibson Guitar   Gibson Refrigerator Company   Goodyear   Hall-Scott   Hanson Clutch and Machinery Company   Harley-Davidson   Harris-Seybold-Potter   Herreshoff Manufacturing Company   Higgins Industries    Highway Trailer   Hill Diesel Company   Holland Hitch Company   Homelite Company   Horace E. Dodge Boat and Plane Corporation   Huffman Manufacturing   Indian Motorcycle   Ingersoll Steel and Disk   John Deere   Johnson Automatics Manufacturing Company   Kimberly-Clark   Kohler Company   Kold-Hold Company   Landers, Frary & Clark  Lima Locomotive Works   Lundberg Screw Products   MacKenzie Muffler Company   Massey-Harris   Matthews Company   McCord Radiator & Mfg. Company   Metal Mouldings Corporation   Miller Printing Machinery Company   Morse Instrument Company   Motor Products Corporation   Motor Wheel Corporation   National Cash Resgister Company   Novo Engine Company   O'Keefe & Merritt Company   Olofsson Tool and Die Company   Oneida Ltd   Otis Elevator   Owens Yacht   Pressed Steel Car Company   Queen City Manufacturing Company   R.G. LeTourneau   R.L. Drake Company   St. Clair Rubber Company   Samson United Corporation   Shakespeare Company   Sight Feed Generator Company   Simplex Manufacturing Company   Steel Products Engineering Company   St. Louis Car Company   Twin Disc Company   Victor Adding Machine Company   Vilter Manufacturing Company   Wells-Gardner   W.L. Maxson Corporation   W.W. Boes Company   Westfield Manufacturing Company   York-Hoover Body Company   Youngstown Steel Door Company  
   

Horton Manufacturing Company in World War Two
1883-1952 Fort Wayne, IN

This page added 12-19-2022.


An impromptu visit to the Fort Wayne Historical Society on the day after Thanksgiving 2022 took me in an unexpected direction.  On display were four Horton Manufacturing Company washing machines.  These piqued my interest in that I had never heard of the Horton Manufacturing Company and wondered, what did a company that made washing machines do to help win World War Two?  Did the company furnish washing machines to the military or did it re-tool and produce military type products?  Those questions would need to wait until I returned home.  The information placard at the Fort Wayne Historical Society indicates this is a Horton Manufacturing Model 22 washing machine that was marketed in the early 1900s.  Note that it is largely of wood construction and everything on the washer was hand operated.  Author's photo.


This is a 1920s era Horton Manufacturing Model 32 washing machine.  The Model 32 was a hybrid model as both the agitator and wringer could be hand operated or run by an electric motor.  The electric motor was built by the General Electric plant a mile south of the Horton plant in Fort Wayne.  Author's photo.


The tub is still of wooden construction.  Author's photo.


There had been a quantum leap in the materials used in the Model 40 which came out in the 1920s.  The tub is now of steel construction which was painted on the exterior.  It is an all-electric unit.  Author's photo.


The interior of the tub has been plated to keep the steel from rusting.  Note the unusual type of agitator of the Model 40.  Author's photo.


By 1950 the company was no longer using numbered model numbers.  This is a Horton Laundeluxe automatic washing machine.  Author's photo.

When I returned home from my trip, I opened up the appropriate volume of the Alphabetical Listing of Major War Supply Contracts to determine if and what major contracts the Horton Manufacturing Company was awarded during World War Two.  Table 1 shows that the company was exclusively contracted by the United States Navy to produce $8,390,000 of 40mm Bofors anti-aircraft gun projectiles and tracer bodies. 

Table 1- Horton Manufacturing Company's Major World War Two Contracts
The information below comes from the "Alphabetical Listing of Major War Supply Contracts, June 1940 through September 1945."  This was published by the Civilian Production Administration, Industrial Statistics Division. 
Product - Customer Contract Amount Contract Awarded Date Completion Date
Projectiles - Navy $2,138,000 7-1941 1-1942
Projectiles - Navy $4,409,000 7-1942 9-1944
Projectiles - Navy $240,000 10-1942 5-1943
Bodies Tracer - Navy $328,000 3-1943 12-1943
Tracer Bodies - Navy $323,000 6-1943 7-1944
Tracer Bodies Mk 4 - Navy $245,000 3-1944 9-1945
Projectiles 40mm - Navy $1,158,000 8-1944 12-1944
Total $8,390,000    

The Horton Manufacturing Company is named after Dr. Theodore Horton.  Dr. Horton started business in Bluffton, IN with two other individuals in 1873 as the T. Horton and Co., which was producing corn planters.  Dr. Horton was a half owner of a patent that the T. Horton and Co. was marketing.  During this same period, the company purchased a patent for a washing machine and began producing it under the name of "Improved Western Washing-Machine."  In 1879 Dr. Horton sold his interest in the company to one of his partners, but kept his one-third interest in the washing machine patent.  Dr. Horton then moved to Fort Wayne and found a group of interested investors led by a Mr. John Peters.  With new financing, Dr. Horton and his investors began production of washing machines in a new factory at 731 Osage Street in Fort Wayne.  In the 1920's the company claimed to be supplying half of the world's washing machines.  The company survived the depression and won five Army-Navy "E" awards during World War Two, only to succumb to the highly competitive post-World War Two appliance market.  It went out of business in 1952.

Horton Manufacturing Company in World War Two:


The Horton Manufacturing Company won the Army-Navy "E" Award five times during World War Two.
The first award was given at a presentation on January 28, 1943.


Its final "E" flag had four stars like this one.   Photo courtesy of Mary Pamula.


This image shows two finished 40mm shells.  Author's photo.


The 40mm shell consisted of a brass shell casing, a projectile, and a fuze.  In this example, the projectile is painted black.  Different companies produced the three main components for the shell.  They were all sent to a Navy ordnance plant that assembled them into the final product as seen here.  Author's photo.


The shells were then assembled into four-piece clips for feeding into the Bofors gun.  Author's photo.


The black pieces show the black projectiles like Horton manufactured.  Author's photo.


Horton Manufacturing received $373,000 in both private and public funding to purchase equipment for the manufacture of 40mm projectiles and tracer bodies for the U.S. Navy.  Most likely, Horton obtained rough forgings from a nearby forge.  The company then machined and heat treated the forgings to their final dimensions.  Photo courtesy of the Fort Wayne Historical Society.  


 The funding program allowed Horton to tool up to produce 464,000 projectiles per month by January 1943 and 365,000 tracer bodies by December 1943.  This image shows the final inspection of the projectiles before they are boxed up and shipped out.  This appears to be a random inspection of the projectiles.  A 40mm projectile weighed 1.985 lbs.  There are 50 projectiles in each metal rack, resulting in each rack weighing 99.25 pounds.  Photo courtesy of the Fort Wayne Historical Society. 


As the World War Two progressed in the Pacific, the 40mm Bofors anti-aircraft with Horton Manufacturing-made projectiles and tracer bodies became more important with the beginning of the Japanese kamikaze attacks.  This 40mm gun mount is one of several that are on the destroyer USS Sullivans.  Author's photo.


The USS Massachusetts bristles with 16-inch, 5-inch and 40mm guns.  Battleships and cruisers provided anti-aircraft protection for American aircraft carriers during World War Two.  Author's photo.


There are two gun tubs of four 40mm Bofors guns each on the fantail of the USS Massachusetts with two dual 40mm Bofors mounts in each.  These are just eight of the many 40mm guns on the ship.  Author's photo.


Author's photo.


This photo of the Horton Manufacturing Company shows a product that the company produced under subcontract from the Stewart-Warner Company.  The products shown in this photo are aircraft engine heaters.  In the foreground the workers are assembling the heater sections of units.  In the background, fuel tanks are on an assembly line.  Behind the heaters in the left of the image are long tubes that transferred the heat to the aircraft engines.  Stewart-Warner had a plant in Indianapolis, IN, which had a contract for the heaters which subcontracted the work to Horton in Fort Wayne.  Photo courtesy of the Fort Wayne Historical Society. 

 
This image shows a typical heater.  These were very similar to today's "salamander" heaters. 


This image shows two heaters warming the engines and the B-24's cockpit area.

The Horton Manufacturing Company Factory:  The factory was located at 731 Osage Street in Fort Wayne. 


This image is looking northwest with the Osage Street running in front of the two story office building.  Image courtesy of the Fort Wayne Historical Society.


This image shows the factory layout in April 1945.  Photo courtesy of the Fort Wayne Historical Society.


Seventy years after the Horton Manufacturing Company went out of business, half of the 1945 plant is still in existence and has been re-purposed for other uses.  The office building along Osage Street has been torn down along with the manufacturing building on the west end of the complex.  Image courtesy of Google Maps.


This street view is from Osage Street and shows the parking lot where the two story office building used to be.  Image courtesy of Google Maps.

 

 

 

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