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I just watched this the other day!
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Eighteen shipyards spread between the east and west coast pumping out 3 vessels every two days……..phenomenal.
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Think of all the planning, logistics, and suppliers of all the various components to get everything to the shipyards to assemble & build those and other ships. There is a tremendous amount of work that goes on before the first piece of steel gets cut.
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Also a new crew of 50-100 to man up every 3 days to prepare & sail their unproven ship into a war zone where so many ships before theirs were damaged or sunk. What in heck kind of people did we have back in 1940’s to do all of this?
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Ninety-day wonders!
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60 day wonders when the old man went to U.S. Maritime Service Training Station in St Petersburg FL. then on to a Liberty ship and eventually a Victory ship which were faster and in theory less likely to be sunk by U boats. I asked if the Victory ships could outrun the subs and he said it was a matter of being a slow duck instead of a sitting duck as at times the slow Liberty ships made near 0 knots in the N. Atlantic
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Speaking of Victory ships…
All these movies really are wonderful. I’m glad they’re available — I could watch them all day.
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Also worth a watch, this two-part series detailing a voyage aboard the SS Hannibal Victory in early 1945. It touches upon the contribution the town of Hannibal made towards the war effort and the vessel’s run to deliver the fruits of their hard labor to the Pacific war front.
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Decades later the asbestos used in those ships would take a deadly toll on the workers and the resulting lawsuits make on Baltimore attorney rich enough to buy the Orioles.
This doesn’t surprise me a bit. Just waiting for the other anti-American chorus members to chime in to say how the US & our Greatest Generation actually sucked.
Sigh…
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Nothing to do with the Liberty & Victory ship programs but below are a recent quote & a news article about the bravery, ingenuity & dedication from the people of that era.
She survived the attack on Pearl Harbour, the battles of The Coral Sea, Midway & The Eastern Solomons. But during the Battle of Tassafaronga the USS New Orleans was struck by a Japanese torpedo & 1/3rd of the ship was destroyed & sunk. 180 sailors died & another 3 while saving the rest of the ship. She survived, sailed backwards to the nearest naval base in Australia without her bow, was patched up with coconut tree logs then made the voyage back, again stern first, across the Pacific to Puget Sound to be repaired & put back into service to help win the war. 83 years later the bow has been found at 2,200 feet. Were everyone a Superman sailor back then or just a high percentage?
From the article:
“By all rights, this ship should have sunk, but due to the heroic damage control efforts of her crew, USS New Orleans became the most grievously damaged US cruiser in WWII to actually survive,” Naval History and Heritage Command Director Samuel J. Cox, a retired Navy Rear Admiral, said in a statement."
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I spent some time on The Jeremiah Obrien after they took it out from the ready reserve fleet in Suisun bay to San Francisco.
It is now totally restored even the guns work. we used the sunday newspaper as the shell it was quiet fun. the ship even made a trip to Normandy to celebrate as I recall D day.
Richmond California was a kaiser steel yard as well as Sausalito and they worked 24 7
The Rosey the riveter Muesum is now located there, and though longer in use as graving docks the docks still exist.
if you ever get the opportunity to go to San Francisco and are interested in WW2 I would recommend it. They take it out once a year for fleet week and you can go aboard for the trip, they bless the fleet from her. the triple expansion engine is quite impressive and was used in the filming of the titanic.
They also have a WW2 Sub Marine along side the dock.
careful stepping over the homeless and don’t leave anything in the rental car
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Wow. I well remember the engineroom scenes.
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Interesting side note. The hatch covers from liberty ships are a prized acquisition. Many beautiful coffee tables have been made from hatch covers.
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They used to be a fairly common find at the Saturday flea market down by the French Market in New Orleans.
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A while back I was doing cruises up the Napa river, and remember seeing an old industrial site about halfway up on the east side with smaller (250’?) graving docks built back into the beach. I figure this had to be part of the greater war effort but haven’t been able to find any information on this particular yard. Any ideas?
I wouldn’t say they sucked, but it is worth recognizing being “safe” at home wasn’t necessarily, we were running all our industry flat-out and took a surprising number of causalities on the home front, never mind the merchant mariners who sailed into danger and died without the recognition and benefits they deserved.
I had several over the years. stacks of them were abandon at the Kaiser steel shipyard in richmond and free for the taking. sand blasted and refinished they were nice
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that was a kaiser steel yard. the graving docks were in use in the 70’s and 80. if your referring to the ones in Napa. I worked on a project for Jones Dredging up there we converted a deck barge into a bottom door dump scow.. The docks were filled in in the 2000’s