 During the war, Brookley became Mobile's largest employer, with about 17,000 skilled civilians capable of performing delicate work with fragile instruments and machinery.In 1944, the Army decided to take advantage of Brookley's 
large, skilled workforce for its top-secret "Ivory Soap" project to hasten victory in the Pacific.The project required 24 large vessels to be re-modeled into Aircraft Repair and Maintenance Units that had to be able to accommodate B-29 bombers, P-51 Mustangs, R-4B Sikorsky helicopters, and amphibious vehicles.