Liberty Ships
Liberty Ships
It’s remarkable what a nation can do when it puts its mind to something.
The story of the 2,710 “Liberty Ships” built by American shipyards during World War II is one of the most remarkable examples of industrial production in the history of awesome. Widely criticized, ugly, and using obsolete technology, they are an excellent example of why the allies won a war as big and challenging as WWII as quickly as they did.
The program which produced the vessels that came to be known as “Liberty Ships” began in 1935 as part of the Merchant Marine Act which sought to stimulate the U.S. economy while increasing its military preparadness with the construction of 50 commercially operated transport ships to be used as Naval auxiliaries. Few were actually built. However when Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the order increased to 100, and then 200 in 1940.
This was not nearly enough. German U-boats were sinking dozens of British merchant and naval ships transporting American supplies provided by the Lend-Lease act, and again in 1940, Britain ordered 60 steamships from American shipyards to replace those sunk by the Kreigsmarine.
American engineers initially found the British specifications to be strangely backward. The vessel plans were based on a model used by the Silver Line mostly unchanged since 1879. They also specified a large but outdated coal-burning steam turbine. No engineer likes to build old and inefficient designs. This was akin to asking an Italian sports car manufacturer to produce a Corvair. However, Britain’s reasoning was sound. The design was highly reliable, reasonably fast, easy to build, and the power plant made sense as Britain had no way to domestically replenish its oil supply, but had great reserves of coal.
An early American Liberty Ship design, using the older steam power plant
Working the problem, the engineers of America’s Maritime Commission tweaked the design, making it conform to existing American manufacturing practices to reduce time lost in retooling, and made other changes, such as replacing all riveted joints with welds, reducing labor time by 30%. Another change allowed for the sections of the ships small enough to be transported by truck and rail to be constructed off-site, then transported and assembled on the shipyard, providing another dramatic increase to speed of production.
However, they ultimately insisted on an oil power plant. Not only more efficient, this made both the engine and its fuel smaller and lighter while providing the same amount of thrust. This enabled the ships to carry more supplies, move faster, and require a slightly smaller crew. “Never mind about the oil” the British were told, “we’ve got plenty.” A final and distinctly American addition was a larger deck gun.
America, f*ck yeah!
As the ships began to sail out of drydock 1941, they were derided as ugly, outdated, and weak in spite of their improvements. Franklin Roosevelt himself confessed, upon seeing an early Liberty Ship, that it was “a dreadful looking object,” and Time Magazine tagged them with the name “Ugly Duckling.” The first fourteen vessels were launched on September 27, 1941 with much fanfare from the Maratime Commission, Dpt of the Navy, and President Roosevelt, who formally launched the first vessel, SS Patrick Henry, with a speech in which he quoted the vessel’s namesake with a rousing “Give me liberty, or give me death!” With this, the “Ugly Ducklings” finally became known as “Liberty Ships.” The Maratime Commission also helped improve the reputation of the ships by allowing any organization which raised $2 million or more in War Bonds to name a ship.
She ain’t pretty, but she gets ya there.
The SS Patrick Henry had taken 244 days to construct. The average time for the 14 was 230 days. Soon, the average construction time dropped to 42 days. The best record was set by the final assembly of the SS Robert E. Perry, which was completed in 4 days and 15 ½ hours. In 1943, total production reached three ships per day.
However, with speed came problems. The cheaper, lower-grade steel used in construction became brittle in frigid North-Atlantic waters, and the weld design allowed cracks to run great distances unimpeded. Three of the 2710 liberty ships actually broke in half without warning. The exigency of the war led to gross overloading of the ships, which were designed to carry 10,685 tons of cargo, which lead to damage and in some cases sinking in rough seas. Many more were lost to U-boats. By the end of the war, almost 300 Liberty Ships had been lost.
A merchant ship sunk by a U-boat in the Atlantic
But America was producing ships far faster than Germany could sink them, and it was in fact a merchant ship, the SS Stephen Hopkins, which scored the first American surface-to-surface victory against the Kriegsmarine. The Hopkins came under attack by the German crusier Steir, which boasted six 150mm guns and two torpedo tubes to the Hopkins’ single four-inch (101.5mm) gun. Overwhelmed by the Steir’s fire, the Hopkins attempted to run, its gun crew firing as rapidly as possible, scoring several hits. But then the Hopkins’ single gun fell silent. Cadet Midshipman Edwin O’Hara ran to the gun platform to find its crew killed by an enemy shell, but remarkably gun and its ammunition remained undamaged. His ship burning around him, O’Hara loaded, aimed, and fired the gun, a job normally done by three men, and scored five direct hits in as many shots, until a return salvo from the Stier killed him. The Steir, now burning out of control was abandoned and an hour later exploded when the fires reached the magazine. The Hopkins sank too, with only 15 of its crew of 42 surviving. O’Hara was posthumously awarded the Merchant Marine Distinguished Service Medal.
artist’s depiction of O’Hara’s heroic final moments
After the war, shipping magnates such as Aristotle Onassis bought up the majority of the Liberty Ships. Some of those which remained with America’s fleet remained in service until 1970. By comparison, the average lifespan of a modern cargo ship is ten years. Two Liberty Ships, the SS John Brown and Jerimiah O’Brien, remain at sea today. In 1994, The O’Brien sailed from San Francisco to London to participate in the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of D-Day and was the only large ship from the original Overlord fleet to participate in the anniversary. Pieces of decommissioned liberty ships continue to serve maritime functions, their steel hull sections repurposed as docks and floating platforms.
The SS Jerimiah O’Brien
The SS Hellas Liberty, following much refit and face-lifting, now serves as a museum in Greece
The philosophy behind the design and production of Liberty Ships was in stark contrast to German war industry. Nearly every piece of German war materiel was sturdier, more technologically advanced, and more soundly engineered than that used by the Allies, but this meant that production levels were much lower. Even to the end of the war, Hitler was obsessed with finding some new technological innovation that would miraculously turn the tide of war back in his favor. But while Germany kept trying to build a better mousetrap, the Allies, America and the Soviet Union in particular, churned out mountains of easy to manufacture ships, tanks, and planes, rendering Germany’s technological edge useless.
It’s remarkable what a nation can do when it puts its mind to something.
The story of the 2,710 “Liberty Ships” built by American shipyards during World War II is one of the most remarkable examples of industrial production in the history of awesome. Widely criticized, ugly, and using obsolete technology, they are an excellent example of why the allies won a war as big and challenging as WWII as quickly as they did.
The program which produced the vessels that came to be known as “Liberty Ships” began in 1935 as part of the Merchant Marine Act which sought to stimulate the U.S. economy while increasing its military preparadness with the construction of 50 commercially operated transport ships to be used as Naval auxiliaries. Few were actually built. However when Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the order increased to 100, and then 200 in 1940.
This was not nearly enough. German U-boats were sinking dozens of British merchant and naval ships transporting American supplies provided by the Lend-Lease act, and again in 1940, Britain ordered 60 steamships from American shipyards to replace those sunk by the Kreigsmarine.
American engineers initially found the British specifications to be strangely backward. The vessel plans were based on a model used by the Silver Line mostly unchanged since 1879. They also specified a large but outdated coal-burning steam turbine. No engineer likes to build old and inefficient designs. This was akin to asking an Italian sports car manufacturer to produce a Corvair. However, Britain’s reasoning was sound. The design was highly reliable, reasonably fast, easy to build, and the power plant made sense as Britain had no way to domestically replenish its oil supply, but had great reserves of coal.
An early American Liberty Ship design, using the older steam power plant
Working the problem, the engineers of America’s Maritime Commission tweaked the design, making it conform to existing American manufacturing practices to reduce time lost in retooling, and made other changes, such as replacing all riveted joints with welds, reducing labor time by 30%. Another change allowed for the sections of the ships small enough to be transported by truck and rail to be constructed off-site, then transported and assembled on the shipyard, providing another dramatic increase to speed of production.
However, they ultimately insisted on an oil power plant. Not only more efficient, this made both the engine and its fuel smaller and lighter while providing the same amount of thrust. This enabled the ships to carry more supplies, move faster, and require a slightly smaller crew. “Never mind about the oil” the British were told, “we’ve got plenty.” A final and distinctly American addition was a larger deck gun.
America, f*ck yeah!
As the ships began to sail out of drydock 1941, they were derided as ugly, outdated, and weak in spite of their improvements. Franklin Roosevelt himself confessed, upon seeing an early Liberty Ship, that it was “a dreadful looking object,” and Time Magazine tagged them with the name “Ugly Duckling.” The first fourteen vessels were launched on September 27, 1941 with much fanfare from the Maratime Commission, Dpt of the Navy, and President Roosevelt, who formally launched the first vessel, SS Patrick Henry, with a speech in which he quoted the vessel’s namesake with a rousing “Give me liberty, or give me death!” With this, the “Ugly Ducklings” finally became known as “Liberty Ships.” The Maratime Commission also helped improve the reputation of the ships by allowing any organization which raised $2 million or more in War Bonds to name a ship.
She ain’t pretty, but she gets ya there.
The SS Patrick Henry had taken 244 days to construct. The average time for the 14 was 230 days. Soon, the average construction time dropped to 42 days. The best record was set by the final assembly of the SS Robert E. Perry, which was completed in 4 days and 15 ½ hours. In 1943, total production reached three ships per day.
However, with speed came problems. The cheaper, lower-grade steel used in construction became brittle in frigid North-Atlantic waters, and the weld design allowed cracks to run great distances unimpeded. Three of the 2710 liberty ships actually broke in half without warning. The exigency of the war led to gross overloading of the ships, which were designed to carry 10,685 tons of cargo, which lead to damage and in some cases sinking in rough seas. Many more were lost to U-boats. By the end of the war, almost 300 Liberty Ships had been lost.
A merchant ship sunk by a U-boat in the Atlantic
But America was producing ships far faster than Germany could sink them, and it was in fact a merchant ship, the SS Stephen Hopkins, which scored the first American surface-to-surface victory against the Kriegsmarine. The Hopkins came under attack by the German crusier Steir, which boasted six 150mm guns and two torpedo tubes to the Hopkins’ single four-inch (101.5mm) gun. Overwhelmed by the Steir’s fire, the Hopkins attempted to run, its gun crew firing as rapidly as possible, scoring several hits. But then the Hopkins’ single gun fell silent. Cadet Midshipman Edwin O’Hara ran to the gun platform to find its crew killed by an enemy shell, but remarkably gun and its ammunition remained undamaged. His ship burning around him, O’Hara loaded, aimed, and fired the gun, a job normally done by three men, and scored five direct hits in as many shots, until a return salvo from the Stier killed him. The Steir, now burning out of control was abandoned and an hour later exploded when the fires reached the magazine. The Hopkins sank too, with only 15 of its crew of 42 surviving. O’Hara was posthumously awarded the Merchant Marine Distinguished Service Medal.
artist’s depiction of O’Hara’s heroic final moments
After the war, shipping magnates such as Aristotle Onassis bought up the majority of the Liberty Ships. Some of those which remained with America’s fleet remained in service until 1970. By comparison, the average lifespan of a modern cargo ship is ten years. Two Liberty Ships, the SS John Brown and Jerimiah O’Brien, remain at sea today. In 1994, The O’Brien sailed from San Francisco to London to participate in the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of D-Day and was the only large ship from the original Overlord fleet to participate in the anniversary. Pieces of decommissioned liberty ships continue to serve maritime functions, their steel hull sections repurposed as docks and floating platforms.
The SS Jerimiah O’Brien
The SS Hellas Liberty, following much refit and face-lifting, now serves as a museum in Greece
The philosophy behind the design and production of Liberty Ships was in stark contrast to German war industry. Nearly every piece of German war materiel was sturdier, more technologically advanced, and more soundly engineered than that used by the Allies, but this meant that production levels were much lower. Even to the end of the war, Hitler was obsessed with finding some new technological innovation that would miraculously turn the tide of war back in his favor. But while Germany kept trying to build a better mousetrap, the Allies, America and the Soviet Union in particular, churned out mountains of easy to manufacture ships, tanks, and planes, rendering Germany’s technological edge useless.