Packard expanded the plant to the north for the war effort, the "newer" portion of the plant along Concord was built for war production, fighting the forces that carried out the holocaust. Packard produced 55,000 Rolls-Royce Merlin Fighter plane engines, they took a typically British hand-made, hand-fitted kluge and made a precise, interchangeable precision engine that gave excellent service. They built almost as many PT boat engines, which were mostly aluminum. After the war Packard had a decent defense business, building custom-designed marine engines and J-47 Jet engines for the military. In 1953 the US Secretary of the Defense "Engine Charlie" Wilson steered all defense contracts away from all other vendors to his former employer, General Motors. That is the thank-you Packard received for being an asset to the war effort 8 years earlier. The loss of that defense work was horrible to Packard, and it forced them to survive on their car profits only.