ghostarmy: the inflatables were designed by Fred Patten at the U.S. Rubber Company in Woonsocket Rhode Island. (Patten also designed the inflatable one-man liferafts carried by fighter pilots in the Pacific.) The tanks were manufactured by a consortium of companies that included U.S. Rubber, Goodyear, and the Scranton Lace Curtain Manufacturing Company, in Scranton PA.

 

Theresa Blais (nee Ricard)  was one of the workers who put together tanks at the U.S. Rubber's Alice Mill in Woonsocket. She was 16, and every day after school she was paid 49 cents an hour to work the 3-7 shift. She needed her ID badge (above) to get in to the building. Terry and her fellow workers referred to the tanks as "targets." "We were painting, they called it cementing, these big tubes. We'd cement them and fold them different ways to make sure it fit."  

Blais says she didn't know exactly what the dummies would be used for.  "When you're 16 you don't pay too much attention," she said.(Quotes from an interview in the Valley Breeze by Louise Tetreault.)

As far as is known, none of the rubber tanks made during the war survive today.