A History of Eastern Aircraft
As almost everyone knows, many civilian manufacturers retooled their plants to turn out war material for the Allies during World War Two. General Motors was one of those that turned several of their automobile production lines into aircraft assembly lines. My mother and her parents lived in New Jersey at the outbreak of the war and both of my grandparents volunteered to help the war effort. My mother was too young at the time to find work in one of the plants, still being in High School, but my grandfather, Gus Reid, joined the Coast Guard and patrolled the coast of New Jersey. My Grandmother, Emily Reid, went to work for Eastern aircraft in Linden, New Jersey. The Linden plant produced the Grumman FM-1 Wildcat and then later the FM-2, an updated 'Wilder Wildcat'. My grandmother worked in the tool room and near the end of the war, Eastern gave all of the employees a copy of 'The History of Eastern Aircraft'. I present it here in six parts cause it's really big. It tells the story of how they went from producing cars to aircraft and also has a lot of really nice photographs of both the Wildcat and the TBM Avenger.
