Budd Manufacturing Company worker Florence McMillan, with 20-pound fragmentation bombs, Philadelphia, PA, October 18, 1941.


Florence McMillan, a worker at the Budd Mfg. Co., surrounded by 20-pound fragmentation bombs manufactured for the U.S. Army.
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"Beauty and the Bombs" was the title that Philadelphia's The Evening Bulletin placed over this photograph to celebrate the Budd Manufacturing Company's production of its one-millionth bomb the day before. During the war, 3,500 Philadelphia businesses would manufacture a broad range of military supplies. Budd would produce metal parts for rifles, ordnance materials, and the RB-1 Conestoga cargo aircraft, the first mass-produced aircraft constructed primarily of stainless steel.

Courtesy of Temple University, Urban Archives, Philadelphia, Pa.