Elinor Otto, longest-serving ‘Rosie the Riveter’ who built aeroplanes until she was 95 – obituary

Elinor Otto, who has died aged 104, was one of the last surviving “Rosie the Riveters”, who answered America’s call for women factory workers in the Second World War; she had the added distinction of being the longest-serving “Rosie”, working on aviation production lines until she was 95, when Boeing laid her off.

As the other “Rosies” died away, the irrepressible, flame-haired, 5ft 2in Elinor Otto crystallised in America’s imagination as the living embodiment of the famous “We Can Do It!” poster. She was happy to open memorials, give interviews and even have a handbag named after her, but she turned down film auditions, saying: “I don’t act in movies. I build planes.”

Elinor Otto was born on October 28 1919 in Los Angeles, then moved with her parents and three sisters to San Diego. When America joined the war, in December 1941, she was 22, newly divorced, with a son to feed. She and a sister took a riveting job – at 65 cents an hour – at the Rohr Aircraft Corp, while another sister got a welding job in the Bay Area.

The Rohr Aircraft Corp had been founded in 1940 by Frederick H Rohr, creator of the fuel tanks for Spirit of St Louis, in which Charles Lindbergh made the first solo non-stop transatlantic flight in 1927. In 1940, even before America joined the war, Roosevelt had called for the production of 60,000 military planes a year, despite fewer than 7,000 aircraft having been built in 1939. 

In 1941, the brand-new Rohr Aircraft Corp won the contract to make power plant assemblies (the cowling that encases the engines) for Consolidated’s PB2Y-3 Coronado (the Flying Boat); the B-24 bomber; and Lockheed’s Hudson bomber. By 1944, Rohr Aircraft was the world’s largest producer of aircraft power plant assemblies.

Elinor Otto had never used a rivet gun before, but soon achieved a comically whirlwind pace that reduced the other riveters to helpless laughter. “We worked hard because we wanted to win the war,” she said. She didn’t know how many military planes she riveted, because “if you were too busy counting, you wouldn’t have got the job done.”

She was also conspicuous on the shop floor for her beauty. Bosses tried in vain to stop the men loitering near her, and suitors left notes for her in the phone booth, where she called her mother every day.

At first, the men resented the women workers, partly because with them came well-behaved new rules (shirts on, no smoking). But they learnt not to underestimate Elinor Otto: “We worked better than them, faster, because they were so sure of themselves,” she said. She and the girls would play Rosie the Riveter by the Four Vagabonds on the phonograph to razz themselves up before going to work.

After the war, Elinor Otto – along with thousands of other women – was laid off. She tried other jobs, but couldn’t abide office work (she hated sitting still), and was briefly a drive-in waitress until the manager demanded she do it on rollerskates. In 1951, she got a job as a riveter for Ryan Aeronautical Corp in San Diego, then moved in 1964 to Douglas Aircraft, which became McDonnell Douglas, then Boeing, where she had a hand in making every single one of the 279 Boeing C-17 cargo planes until production ceased in 2014.

Her secret to a long life was “just keep moving”: every day, she got up at 4am, and parked as far as possible from the factory to get exercise. Every Thursday, she brought cookies to the Boeing shop floor, then had her nails and hair done after work.

Her favourites planes to build were the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, the B-17 bomber and the C-17, but she had never actually flown in any of them until 2017, when she was given a ride in a C-17. “It was a real thrill,” she said.

That year, she became the only civilian to receive the Air Force Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

She married a second time, and divorced again; her son predeceased her.

Elinor Otto, born October 28 1919, died November 12 2023