Manufacturing is hard. How did Germany use tool & die making to transform aerospace forever during WW2, and why did the US ultimately establish the Heavy Press Program? Reports of downed German aircraft near the end of the war contained extremely large and complex major structural elements made from magnesium and aluminum alloys at a time when the US was still riveting and machining the same components from steel. How? After Germany surrendered, Allied intelligence teams confirmed that the Germans had produced these components with unprecedented forging and extrusion presses, far in excess size and capability of our own industrial complex. Germany had been relegated to magnesium when they forfeit 50% of their iron deposits after WWI in the Treaty of Versailles. This forced them to engineer new ways of working these metals, especially for mass producing aircraft. After the war, the reports of the machines were confirmed, and these mega-presses were taken by the US (15k ton) and the USSR (30k ton). The US Air Force immediately established the Heavy Press Program, in an effort to build a network of our own machines that would eclipse the production capacity of every country on Earth. 10 machines were built and launched in 1955. 8 are still in operation today manufacturing structural parts for military and commercial aircraft. The two below, (1) "The Fifty" built by Mesta in PA, a 50k ton - now operating in Cleveland at Howmet Aerospace, and (2) another 50k ton built by Loewy in PA - now operating in Grafton MA at Wyman-Gordon, came online in 1955 and remain the largest in North America.