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Elinor Florence (Company name) Elinor Florence

Bestselling Historical Fiction Author

Bombshells and Bomb Girls

Bomb girls in Canada were represented by Ronnie, the Bren Gun Girl. She was just one of one million Canadian women who worked in factories during the Second World War.

Veronica Foster, one of the bomb girls, wearing overalls and blue kerchief, cigarette in one hand, blows smoke from her nostrils while leaning over a machine gun propped on a work bench.

Bomb Girls Around the World

When World War Two began, British women trooped into factories in full force. They were desperately needed there, as Britain was fighting for its very survival.

Wartime poster has red and brown illustration of woman raising her arms high into the air while a flock of aircraft fly overhead, with the caption: WOMEN OF BRITAIN, COME INTO THE FACTORIES.

Canada soon followed suit. By war’s end, nearly ONE MILLION Canadian women were working in factories. (That’s a staggering figure when you realize that our total population in 1939 was just over eleven million.)

Veronica Foster, shown in the top photo, was discovered by the National Film Board in May 1941. This 21-year-old came to represent Canadian women factory workers, because she was efficient at her job, but still ultrafeminine.

(Incidentally, her daughter later said that Veronica didn’t smoke, but the photographer asked her to smoke because it made her look cool and sexy!)

Veronica was one of 14,000 bomb girls who toiled at the John Inglis Co. Ltd. In Toronto, producing Bren light machine guns on a production line. And she became known as “Ronnie, the Bren Gun Girl.”

Ronnie was soon catapulted into the public eye. This article in the June 28, 1941 issue of my favourite Star Weekly magazine shows Ronnie at work. (See my collection of covers here: Star Weekly at War.

Star Weekly wartime magazine interior page carries four photographs of bomb girls at a Bren gun factory, one working at a machine, one stacking gun barrels, one tying a kerchief on her hair, and one bidding the security guard good night as she leaves the yard.

And here’s a photo of Ronnie going out for a night on the town, looking glamorous after her day spent building machine guns.

Wartime publicity photo shows Veronica Foster, one of the bomb girls who made machine guns, dressed in a coat with a large fur collar and a stylish hat admiring herself in the mirror.

Ronnie was featured on the front page of the New York Times in an article dated October 4, 1941 — two months before the U.S. entered the war — as part of a story on how Canadian bomb girls were working for the war effort.

Speculation is that she served as the model for a similar popular figure that later became known as Rosie the Riveter.

That term first appeared as a song title in 1942. Here’s a cute video (two minutes, twenty seconds) featuring the song “Rosie (brrrrr) the Riveter” by the Four Vagabonds, with old footage of bomb girls and wartime work.

Watch it here: Rosie the Riveter.

Cover of wartime music sheet has red, white and blue illustration of young woman with red hair and red lips riveting an aircraft, with the title ROSIE THE RIVETER.

Also in 1942, Pittsburgh artist J. Howard Miller was hired to create a series of morale-boosting posters. He based his “We Can Do It!” poster on a photograph of Michigan factory worker Geraldine Doyle. At the time of this poster’s release, the name “Rosie” wasn’t associated with this image.

Iconic wartime illustration of Rosie the Riveter, a young woman wearing a blue shirt, a red and white spotted kerchief on her head, flexing her bicep with the caption overhead We Can Do It! on a yellow background.

Illustrator Norman Rockwell then created his version of Rosie for the May 29, 1943 cover of Saturday Evening Post. It was the first time the name “Rosie” became associated with wartime factory workers, also known as bomb girls.

I love Rockwell’s version of this tough cookie carrying a tin lunch bucket with her name on it.

Saturday Evening Post magazine wartime cover has Norman Rockwell illustration of large, muscular redheaded woman sitting on a block of wood eating a sandwich, a rivet gun across her lap, a lunchbox with the name Rosie under her elbow, against a backdrop of the American flag.

These Canadian bomb girls seated at a long table are soldering together shipping tins containing filled fuses, at a secret munitions plant called GECO, located outside city limits near Scarborough, Ontario. The plant covered 346 acres and had 172 buildings.

Barbara Dickson has written a book about this factory, and you can see more here: Bomb Girls: Trading Aprons for Ammo.

An assembly line of two long rows of women facing each other across a table, wearing white uniforms and kerchiefs, each wielding an instrument attached to a long thin hose.

Dozens of photographs were taken of bomb girls looking glamorous on the assembly line, so everyone could be assured that they weren’t losing their essential femininity. Although these photos were clearly staged, they were real American factory workers.

Here Mrs. Mary Betchner inspects one of the 25 cutters for burrs before inserting it in the inside of a 105mm howitzer at the Milwaukee, Wisconsin plant of the Chain Belt Co. in February 1943. Her son was in the army; her husband was in war work.

Colored wartime photo of young woman in blue overalls and blue kerchief standing amidst a row of long green tubes, appearing to measure the circumference of one with an instrument.

This woman inspects an aircraft engine for North American Aviation in June 1942. (Alfred Palmer, Office of War Information)

Colored wartime photo of young dark-haired woman in red plaid shirt and red kerchief and red lipstick adjusting something on a large and complicated engine.

A 1942 aircraft worker at the Vega Aircraft Corporation in Burbank, California. (David Bransby, Office of War Information)

Dark-haired woman wearing a cream print blouse with an orange armband and leather gloves, bends over a complicated tangle of wires.

A welder at a boat building yard adjusts her goggles, October, 1943. (Bernard Hoffma, Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images).

Young girl in pigtails and helmet, plaid shirt and jeans, holds a flaming blow torch in one hand while pushing her goggles back on her forehead with the other.

Engine installers at Douglas Aircraft factory in California, October 1942, working on a bomber. (Alfred Palmer, Office of War Information)

Colored wartime photo shows massive aircraft propeller being worked on by three women wearing civilian clothes, dark pants and short-sleeved shirts.

Women from Australia and New Zealand were urged to take factory jobs, too. Here’s an Australian poster showing one of the Aussie bomb girls in overalls and the ubiquitous kerchief, designed to keep flowing locks out of the machinery.

Wartime poster has illustration in red, white and blue showing young scowling woman in overalls and kerchief with her fist clenched, an Australian flag in the background, and the caption "Change over to a VICTORY JOB."

The red kerchief became a well-known icon of bomb girls everywhere, as shown in this 1943 illustration.

Colorful cartoon sketch of two women working on an aircraft, one of them with blonde hair, wearing blue overalls and a red kerchief.

Russian women were also pressed into action as bomb girls, which is no surprise. Since the Revolution, they were supposedly treated as equals to men. It would be considered an insult to emphasize their femininity. In fact, they were more likely to be using machine guns than building them.

Wartime poster in shades of brown and red has illustration of fierce-looking woman wearing overalls and a kerchief, scowling straight ahead with one hand on a large shell bearing a red star, the caption written in the Russian language.

But thousands of Soviet women and even children did manufacture armaments. This photo was taken at a factory in Moscow in 1942. Translated, the sign reads: “Defenders of Moscow, the whole Soviet nation is with you!”

Wartime black and white photo of four women in kerchiefs standing in a row behind a table filled with pointed shells, each of them with one hand on a shell, and a sign in the background written in the Russian language.

Japan didn’t even wait until attacking Pearl Harbour in December 1941. Their bomb girls were counting bullets in this photograph taken six months earlier.

Wartime black and white photo of five Japanese women wearing short-sleeved uniforms and matching caps, bending over a table and sorting bullets from one box into another.

Hitler initially promised that German women would be protected from the horrors of war. Their sphere of influence was Kinder, Küche, Kirche, meaning “Children, kitchen, church.”

But that lasted only until 1943, when Germany simply ran out of foreign workers drafted from the nations it had occupied. (Besides, would YOU trust a conquered people to manufacture weapons being used against the Allies?)

The future was looking pretty black for Germany, so they did the same as everyone else: declared “total conscription.” The government told women to join the armed forces and work in factories.

Wartime poster has illustration in shades of red, white and blue showing young laughing blonde woman in a white shirt and blue jumper, with a red flag flying behind her head bearing a swastika, and a caption written in the German language.

But finally, after six long years, the men came home and the women returned to the kitchen and the nursery, as shown by the number of babies born in every country. Even Germany has a huge population of baby boomers.

But the taste of money and freedom that women experienced led to the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s, when once again, Rosie the Riveter became a popular image. Thank you, Bomb Girls everywhere, for your blood, sweat and tears!

* * * * *

STAR WEEKLY AT WAR

The Star Weekly was a Canadian newsmagazine published by the Toronto Star. During the Second World War, a colour illustration with a wartime theme appeared on the cover each week. This September 18, 1943 image shows two bomb girls, one carrying a lunchbox with her name Rosie on it. To see my entire collection of Star Weekly covers, click: Star Weekly At War.

Star Weekly magazine cover dated September 18, 1943 has illustration of two women in overalls and kerchiefs, one tall and blonde, and the other short and stout with curlers peeking from under her kerchief, carrying a green lunchbox bearing the word Rosie.

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