My Great Uncle was a helmsman on Liberty Ship from '43 to '45. He had some good stories about how these ships handled and rode underway. One of them that has stuck with me is thus, Liberty Ships rode like a bathtub. They wallowed, they corked about. They rode like a ship shouldn't. If the sea was glass smooth was the only time that the ships rode in any peaceable manner. If there was even the slightest swell they loved to roll. Which brings us to the following; as they were passing Iceland towards the UK, the galley had served something completely awful for breakfast and this REALLY pissed off the Captain, who my uncle described as a likeable man as long as it didn't involve anything that didn't involve his ship, the ocean, or anything wet..., so as he stalked onto the bridge that morning my uncle was at the wheel. The Captain picked up his glass, looked out to sea for a bit, set the glasses down, called to my uncle to, "put the ship sideways to the next swell." He did as he was ordered and the ship rolled into the turn and then was tossed about by the swell. From the bridge was heard the shattering of crockery and the clanging of pots and pans and the loud and violent swearing of the mess crew. The Captain then turned to my uncle, "that'll teach those bastards to serve that kind of swill to us."
its kind of bonkers to think about but the US went from semi-isolationist to being responsible for over 75% of the worlds international shipping in a matter of a few years. The main American strategy was to simply out build their enemies in every sector, with even the Sherman being designed with the idea of protecting the crew so they could jail out and hop in a new tank and drive right back to the front line.
Check out the "Red Ball Express", the USA brought in 6000 cargo trucks to run supplies between the Mulberry Harbours and the front-line. By the end of WW2, the USA was manufacturing 4 times as much supplies as all of the Axis powers combined.
@Current Batches This has me thinking about the current world. I've often reasoned that the USA has the capability of holding if not advancing in a hot war with the combined forces of the entire globe; the key being our near isolation in the North Western hemisphere, as well as our Naval and Aerial dominance, we would control most of the oceans or at least the Pacific and Atlantic that buffer us. But, we would not win in this conflict if sustained. A war of attrition would grind the resources and economic output of the USA to a halt as the rest of the world spun up it's production to crush us like an insect in the end. Similar to WWII Germany and Japan, we have the mobility to strike swiftly and conquer vast tracts, but once our stocks dwindle, our forces spread thin occupying, and our enemies mobilize, we would crumble. Curious on your thoughts. I don't believe that a "World War" is possible in the current world, the global economy has become too intertwined. Countries would collapse with restricted trade, their economies too specialized to adapt to their shifting supply chains.
My grandma was a RN at the start of the war. When women were needed to take the place of men, she was chosen to be a welder in a factory. She became so good that she eventually reached the rank of master welder. Funniest thing ever was her response when I said so you were a Rosey the Riveter? She looked at me with such a stern face and said, "I was a master welder, not a riveter."
My mother were frist class welding in Liberty Ship yard, My older brother had welder and wanted my mother to weld a bead, it have been 30 years she had welding, it were one of petty welding bead I'm seen, she still had it after 30 years.
My dad served aboard the USS Oxford AGTR-1 which was originally the SS Samuel R. Aitken Liberty ship. Recommissioned as a "technical research ship" or "spy ship" and served aboard her from the Cuban Missle Crisis through Viet Nam. I still have the photos of him aboard the Ox as she was known and other pictures of the ship at sail. Great video, thank you
Id use a different word than lit, but I'm an old man and speak 90's talk. But yeah logistics is wicked sick, super dope, radical, awesome, cowabunga! Dumb👉(me) 😂😂😂😂😂
Just a few things. 1) My late grandmother worked on Liberty Ships as a welder. Quite a common occupation for women stuck at home during WWII. 2) SS John Burke was lost with all hands after a kamikaze attack in one of the largest non-nuclear explosions of the war. 3) A good cargo ship to do a video on would be the Seawise Giant. Worth asking the owner to go do a show on it in person because they seem to be open to it. 4) A megaproject topic that I would love to see would be about the road system of the United States.
Not associated to any channel but a fan of the subject. Check out the channel extra credit "lend lease" if you wanted a strategic view of how the crews were both brave and critical to the war. This is a great short doco :)
My father was a freshly minted ensign 90 day wonder. His first duty was gunnery officer on a the Jonathan worth (built in 30 days)a liberty ship in the North Atlantic in the dead of winter. U boats followed the convoy striking at will . In one his letters to my mother he was visibly shaken by the sudden disappearance of the ship forward of his position in a quick explosion . That became almost a daily event. I recently had the chance to tour a partially restored liberty ship and I couldn’t wait to get off about as soon as I boarded . Cramped, low ceilings, asbestos , dark , dank narrow companionways. All that and people you can’t see trying to kill you. I came off of that ship with a different view of my father
Not to put too fine a point on it but it was a German that was getting those ships built. Henry Kaiser not only built those ships but he started Kaiser Plan.
just to point that the The Liberty ships which one most important design of war was from a British ship design but the speed the American ship builders constructed them was amazing
@@daniellastuart3145 It was not the American Ship builders. It was Henry Kaiser. At the time the American shipbuilders hated him like the car manufacturers hate Elon Musk today.
While they were arguing with Henry Kaiser about the feasibility of the Liberty Ships, he built a scale model of one in 20 minutes; End of argument, and he got the contract for his design.
Interesting Fact: The S.S. Jeremiah O'Brien was used in the filming of the movie Titanic. They used footage of her engine since she has one of the few large triple expansion steam engines still in operation anywhere in the world.
Another interesting fact, a number of these vessels were equipped with a weapon known as a Holman Projector. A literal steam-powered anti-aircraft cannon, with one vessel shooting down two German aircraft with them. So not only were they delightfully anachronistic, they had actual steampunk weaponry.
The US Merchant Marine Academy sent many of it's students out on these vessels during their Sophmore and Junior year sea periods. 142 of them never came home. A total of 210 students and graduates were lost in the supply effort to keep the Allies going. I was thrilled to be able to tour the Jeremiah O'Brien when she came by the Academy after participating in the D-Day anniversary celebrations. Truly astounding what the men had to work with at the time. Really makes you appreciate what we have today.
Thank you for doing Liberty Ships. It has an emotional appeal to me. My father sailed on Liberty ships during the war. People don't realize that the merchant seamen had a higher percentage of deaths than any of our armed services. Yes, the ship was very boring, until you realize that they are sailing at 9 knots and people are trying to kill you. My father told me of sitting in the Philadelphia union hall. A man took a ship, and a few hours later he was back. What happened? Sunk just outside the harbor. That man had to board three ships that day because the first two were sunk.
I got the chance to sail on the O'Brien. We did a 4 hour Tour of San Francisco Bay and back to Pier 45. I might as well been transported back in time above and below decks. I mingled with, and talked to, several WWII Vets who had travelled on a Liberty ship to England and then to Normandy for D Day. They talked about playing cards and killing time writing letters home. They could hear the BOOM of ships being torpedoed at night while in Convoy. Then awoke the next day to see that the ship next to them had been sunk. One even got below deck and correctly pointed out which way the engine room was and the Mess Deck where he had eaten many a meal on the way to England. Truly a ship that belongs alongside the members of that Greatest Generation.
I'd like to hear about the Great Green Wall. (It's a forest strip that is being planted through Africa from east to west in order to stop the spread of the Sahara).
There was a famous Hitler quote from I think 1944 when he got a report that the Kaiser ship works were producing 3 fully loaded ships a day... ... it was said his reply was: "My god, we don't have that many torpedoes".
By that time the U-boat's job was also a lot harder due to vast improvements in Allied anti-submarine warfare tactics and equipment, particularly through proliferation of another remarkably unremarkable ship: the Flower class corvette.
@@nerd1000ify No the Flowers had done their very important role as a stop gap. Better designed escorts were coming on, improved strategy, tactics, sensors, weapons, aircraft, breaking of codes, on shore logistics etc. No one single thing won the Battle of the Atlantic it was the concerted effort of 100,000's of people, resources a brains that gave the Allies the victory.
They were civilians who got paid twice as much as much as USN sailors including hazardous duty and clothing allowance. They could quit if they wanted to, but would have been immediately drafted into the USN.
@@nickdanger3802 they were only paid while sailing which meant if they were in port or bobbing up and down in the Atlantic a waiting rescue they didn't earn a dime. They were on the frontlines doing one of the most dangerous jobs of the war. I think they earned the right to be called veterans.
People. The debate on this topic is over. The Merchant Sailors received veteran status in 1988. You can debate all the other topics - including who had it harder, who got paid the best, whatever. I would even suggest a debate on whether that should have been done fifty some years earlier. But it was done so now its a fact - they were veterans! It means they got benefits (if still alive) and their families got benefits (late - but better late than never). Respect and thanks to all Veterans, then and now.
Nick Danger no, they didn’t have to do those things. And yet with over 30,000 of them dying, they tended to have worse survival odds in combat than actual soldiers did. So no, they didn’t have to guard prisoners or stack bodies... but the people who guarded prisoners and stacked bodies actually had a higher survival rate than the merchant navy, keep your lips zipped when you wanna say some dumb shit
It was much the same for the British merchant sailors , they only got any kind of recognition after a very long time and a lot of campaining . Aprox 32,248 lost thier lives during ww2 and still get little recognition for what they did
I had to do a project on the Liberty ships when I was at college studying engineering. The deck hatches where all squares which caused fracture points in the corners. They solved the problem by making the corners round to disperse the stress over a larger area.
You should do a story on the guy who built the Liberty ships, Kaiser, a guy who new nothing about ships or ship building and was asked by the government to take a look at how these ships were being built and went on to revolutionize ship building and created one of the biggest corporations in the world! During WW2 everybody new who he was. The way ships are built today all goes back to him! During WW2 one of Kaisers shipyards built an entire liberty ship, launched it in a record 24 hours!
Been living on a sailboat for 12 years. I wouldn't want to cross the Atlantic on one,and I live on a sailboat. Been through 4 hurricanes, 1 at sea,3 at anchor, but still, N. Atlantic? Subs ? Loaded with bombs? No thanks !
The first Liberty ship took 270 days to build, by the end, they were taking 40-60 days to build. The record was 4 1/2 days but that was a special project.
Some who never returned? How about: 3.1 million tons of merchant ships were lost in World War II. Mariners died at a rate of 1 in 26, which was the highest rate of casualties of any service. All told, 733 American cargo ships were lost and 8,651 of the 215,000 who served perished in troubled waters and off enemy shores.
Correction: The German U-Boat service in World War Two suffered 75 percent casualties. Comparing a 4% casualty rate to a one in four survival rate … I rest my case.
What about the Esso Atlantic class super tankers as a large ship option to do a Megaprojects video on? They sort of had a troubled past that might make an interesting video.
The cargos of that day were "loose cargo", they were individually loaded or on pallets. Today's cargo is in intermodal containers. They are stacked on ships and in the holds. They are unloaded, placed on rail cars, taken to distribution hubs, and then taken by truck to the final destination. It speeds up the loading/unloading time and reduces cargo damage and loss. Considering all the drawbacks of that time, they did a remarkable job.
There is one more Liberty ship the "Hellas Liberty" (former Arthur M. Huddell) that has being restored and is currently a museum ship at the port of Piraeus, Greece.
@@raymondleggs5508 There used to be one in Dutch Harbor too, Royal Aleutian Seafoods. Though actually I can't remember now if i was told Liberty Ship or Victory Ship. Got bought out by Unisea 10-15 years ago and "accidentally" sank while being towed somewhere else. Allegedly.
FYI: The 1943, Humphrey Bogart film, "Action In The North Atlantic," depicts the lives, strategies, and tactics of the Merchant Marine Core during WWII. The film was considered so accurate in it's overall telling of the experience of the Merchant Marine Core, that the actual core, still in the midst of WWII, adopted the film into the core's library of cadet training films.
A more recent movie, "The Finest Hours," tells the story of what remains the most daring small-boat rescue in the history of the U.S. Coast Guard. During a hellish Nor'easter off the coast of Cape Cod in 1950, a former Liberty Ship split in half in heavy seas, and most of the Chatham station's resources went out to rescue the crew. While this was going on, a SECOND former Liberty Ship split in half, and there were only a few Guardsmen left in the station and a small boat with a rated capacity of about 12 passengers. They went out anyway, and came back with something like 30 crewmen from the second ship, plus the 4 who crewed the small boat. If you search for "Bernie Webber" you can find the real story. -- It's a real balls-of-steel story. With a lot of odd twists. Sort of a cross between "The Perfect Storm" and "The Guardian," more uplifting than the former, but unlike the latter, a true freaking story. (If you're a "Perfect Storm" fan, the book by Sebastian Junger is HUGELY better than the movie.)
My maternal grandfather built them, my paternal grandfather commanded several of them, my father and 2 uncles served on them in varying capacities. They were the merchant marine equivalent of the Ford F150.
Haha, the only time I’ve been “on” a Liberty ship was while diving. Many of them eventually ended up as intentional reefs. Due to their simple construction, it was relatively easy to remove all the parts and fluids you don’t want to sink.
The Pioneering Spirit is not a cargo ship! It is a specialized offshore installation/removal vessel. However, for simplicity sake I understand why you would call it a cargo ship...
I remember in 4th grade my teacher had a poster on the wall. It showed the ship and what it's "mission" was. How it would my mine the ocean floor for rare elements. To me that's a pretty deep cover story. Going so far as fooling 4th graders.
@@9HighFlyer9 Heh, this is one of those "actually" moments .. it was an incrediable cover story .. that became reality, it went so far as to mine the ocean floor and discovered at it was actually profitable ..
@@9HighFlyer9 After the partial recovery of the soviet sub, they went to the west coast of africa and discovered rare earth elements, they returned after 6 months with proof of concept and turned a profit on what they found. The ships "cover" story had turned out to be possible and true, new ships were built and this kind of mining is now fairly common, since resources can be easily mined in that form today .. there are few ships out there now doing exactly that.
@@arakheno4051 yes. I just watched a Mighty Ships episode about a deBeers mining ship working the western coastline of Africa vacuuming up silt and gravel to extract diamonds.
@@johnilarde8440 I would say have a long video covering all, the real USS Enterprises, there are nine listed on Wikipedia (although the newest is under construction so not sure how much would be available about it), The Space shuttle and the various Star Trek spacecraft, that would be legendary
I toured the SS Jeremiah O'Brien years ago. Crude but effective, as Kaiser intended. (There are also many other museum ships in San Francisco including the U.S.S. Pampanito with a recorded narration by Edward Beach. If you're a ship geek they are all worth checking out.) And thank you for this episode, Mr. Whistler.
Captain Edward L. Beach, who was the commissioning CO of the USS Triton (SSN 586) retraced the voyage of Magellan, by remaining submerged. When a crewman had to be medivaced the ship broached (not a surfacing) and he was sent off by helicopter. He captained a WWII diesel boat and wrote the first submarine novel I ever read while still in school (which became a movie with Bert Lancaster and Clark Gable), Run Silent Run Deep. During my 11 weeks of Navy boot camp I was asked if I had considered being a crew member aboard a Navy sub. I did and served aboard 5 during my career.
I think something being 'work' makes a huge difference in our mindset. I used to read textbooks out of interest, but then as soon as I started studying the exact same thing (sometimes even the same textbook) just that fact of 'having' to do something made my motivation go down. Weird, but anyway.
An interesting story I learned from a man who participated with me in our daughters reading class. Dad's and children participated in reading and discussion on the book we shared. One Dad was named 'Liberty'. His story was that after the war, his family came to America from Europe. His mother was over 8 months pregnant as they fled Italy, and she gave birth to a son on the way over on a Liberty ship pressed into service to ferry refugee's. They named him Liberty to always remember the ship that brought them to America. I met him over 25 years ago, and I still remember his story, though I have only met him once since. In a used book store.
Liberty ships taught us something fundamental about metallurgy that we didnt know until then. Liberty ships sent to the north atlantic were being lost without any known cause and they were breaking in half. It was learned that the carbon steel's properties changed when the temperature got below about 32°F. It became very brittle, particularly in the heat affected zone of the welds. The result was the cold rough seas caused the ships to break in half at the midships weld. The fix was to weld a reinforcing band all around the ship to help prevent flexing at the welds. Until that fix was developed they were redeployed to more southern ports. A major metallurgical test (the Charpy test) was developed in order to investigate this effect. Metallurgy was more of a black art than a science up until WWII. The war brought metallurgy out of the dark ages.
Many Liberty ships still had riveted hulls, including the SS John W. Brown. As you said, welded hulls allowed cracks to propagate. By having riveted hull plates, a crack would stop at the end of the plate. Also, the ships internal structure had many sharp corners. This made them easier to manufacture, but introduced stress concentrations where cracks could start. These spots were often reinforced later to try to minimize cracking. The SS John W. Brown has some buckling in the lower 3 Hold where many Liberties broke in two, but she's still doing great! If COVID ever relents, they'll be doing living history cruises and classes again.
MSC was my thing for years in the service. Anything, anywhere, anytime. When I was a kid, we had a hired hand. he was was a Merchant Marine sailor in the war. One day I asked him how many ships he had shot out of under him, He said 5, five! Like nothing to it. He was a cool guy. Long gone. The Victory ships. The follow on boats. I got to sail on one after helping fix it up (for years) .
The cracking was addressed with a patchwork type remedy. They welded additional bands of steel along the hull. You can see them in one of the photos in this video.
And, as Simon points out, it wasn't limited to Liberty ships. The SS Schenectady, a T-2 tanker (the tanker equivalent of the Libertys) actually broke in half while moored to the pier in the Willamette River. Steel embrittlement may have been a factor in the loss of RMS Titanic, as well. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Schenectady
One of my uncles came back from New Guinea at the end of WWII on a transport he called a liberty ship. There were assembled on an island in preparation to come home, and he was offered the chance to go to the US in the transport which brought him to the island, or wait for an aircraft carrier which was coming 'soon'. He said he could see the 'old rustbucket' in the harbor, and despite scanning the horizon he couldn't see the carrier, and he was done taking the Army's word for things, so he got back on the liberty ship. On the way back they went through a typhoon locked in the hold, but when they got to San Francisco the captain told everyone to get off, since he had no water or food left. The promised carrier was in the harbor - it beat them back by days - but the men on it were stuck for some time, waiting to be discharged, and he felt the tossing around was worth it to get out of the Army a week or two early.
well, since we are talking about "quantity over quality for the war efforts" here, how about a video about T-34 tank? Those things were built in the same fashion.
@@adamlewellen5081 tens of thousands of both were made, but the T-34 was specifically made with the idea that it was going to be short lived, so take every shortcut you can find in its construction. Substandard parts, rough welds were left in place, generally good enough was considered a finished product. Also they were built in American designed factories.
I was taught that in virtually every project there three main factors that influenced every decision: Time, Money, and Quality. These factors were perpetually linked. How much time and money was available and what was the quality desired. If you want to do it in less time, it will cost more money and or reduced quality of the output. You can favor one of these factors but must keep the balance by reducing one or both of the other factors.
When you got to the part about the ships developing cracks it reminded me of my father who was in the British royal navy . He was on a ship that was sent out to meet a convoy and several of the crew on his ship were transfered to liberty ships to help out , he spent a good amount of his time with a canvas sheet trying to shield welders as they tried to repair the cracks. Your point about quantity ober quality is true for those times , the soviet T-34 is a prime example of that with very rough castings and welding but they turned out huge numbers of them
My father was a shipyard electrician during WWll. He work on the building of the SS Robert E. Peary. He told that there were so many people working on it that it resembled an anthill.
I was stationed on the USS Skywatcher AGR3 1964-1965. It was a converted Liberty ship, formerly the Rafael S. Rivera. It was used during the cold war as a radar picket ship. Top heavy with radar. Would rock at the pier. One voyage so rough the hull cracked amidship. These ships were originally made for 1 voyage, US to GB. Decommissioned April of 1965 in Bayonne, NJ.
Simon: "Do you want me to make a video about..." Us: "Yes!' Simon: "I was going to say, "the color, white."" Us: "Did we stutter?" Me: "If you mispronounce "white", I'm going to get angry."
Casablanca-class escort carrier, the liberty ship of carriers, the US had more of this one class of carrier than any other country has or has had carriers total.
Simon thanks for this history. My Grandfather moved from Kansas to Southern California to join the war effort and was a welder on Liberty Ships in Long Beach California it great to know more about the product of his work.
My Dad was a Fireman and Water tender in these ships engine room at seventeen years old. My dad 's Libertyship was in a river in Marsailles and the ship was anchored on the right bank of the shore when a V2 rocket came down and exploded in the baseball park across the river. The Captain ordered Let's GTFOH , they fired the ship up and got... When the war ended the longshoremen went on strike, and as an engineer, he and his ship were stuck there, so he went and joined the Air Force as A&P Mechanic and then flight engineer and eventually Sac air refueling missions all over the Arctic, I was in third grade in school in Fairbanks, Alaska. SAC was in the air 24/7 with, bombers, re-fuelers, recon, chow halls. schools, you name it. And it was cold.
This story which I read from the book "The Liberty Ships" by Leonard Arthur Sawyer and William Harry Mitchell, illustrated the interchangeability of the parts of a Liberty ship. It involved a British-flagged Liberty, the Sambrian, operated by Clan Line for the Ministry of War Transport. On the morning of August 31, 1946, Sambrian sailed from Port Said in Egypt to Naples to pick up military cargo. A few minutes into the voyage, she was shaking so bad from stem to stern, which culminated by a fearsome noise at around midday. The bridge crew thought that engine suffered catastrophic damage, but the engine room reported something else. "The propeller's gone." In fact, the propeller and tail end shaft were sheared off and gone! Fortunately, the the stern post and rudder were not damaged in that incident. After anchoring overnight, another MoWT Liberty, the Saminver, which was operated by Blue Star Line, came to Sambrian's aid and towed her to Alexandria. In the harbor were two Liberty wrecks, the Samsylarna and the Thomas G. Masaryk. The Samsylarna's stern was severely damaged, but the Masaryk's stern was fairly intact, with the tail end shaft and prop in good condition. With the aid of a floating crane, the tail end shaft and prop were removed, and, by flooding Sambrian's No. 1 and No. 2 holds, the "new" prop and tail end shaft was fitted without the need for drydocking. The entire operation lasted less than ten days, after which Sambrian went on her way to Naples.
My Dad served on a Liberty that in the Pacific. It was converted to a Fleet Maintenance ship that served the Pacific Fleet. If a ship was damaged they would send crew to that ship to make repairs. Along with damage repair these 2 ship had desalination units on them providing fresh water to ships that did not have that capability.
Simon, ships are the biggest, heaviest vehicles that people have ever made. the fact that there are ships bigger than skyscrapers that can move over 20 miles an hour is astounding to me. You bet I'd love hearing about more of them.
My Dad was aide to Vice Admiral Howard Vickery, who was in Charge of the Liberty/Victory Ship Program. The beauty of the thing was that Kaiser and Bechtel had to create whole new types of shipyards to allow for the component storage and assemblage of these vessels. California had the first of these new yards and they were created for the British, whose yards were traditional. Using a lot of unskilled labor, they also built housing, schools, and shops for the workers. Kaiser Permante is part of that legacy.
My father had TB before WW 2 he worked at Keiser shipyards in Portland Oregon during the war he used too talk about building liberty ships and baby carriers . That ship that was build so quickly, it would float after five days but that was about it.
I listened to this mix whilst I slept. I love the dreams that these type of informative videos give me. Simon, keep up the great work over all your channels.
It’s alleged that the famous “Kilroy was here” graffiti came from Liberty Ship inspector James Kilroy, who scribbled the symbol after giving a passing inspection. Since Liberty Ships generally lacked interior paint, soldiers ferried oversees may have seen the graffiti and adopted it.
My Dad served with the USMM during ww2 sailed in both Atlantic and Pacific. He served on a C-4 class. He said the C class out preformed in speed the liberty class. He did enjoyed his service and had alot of interesting stories.
My father (now 94 years old) served on the John C. Breckenridge, during WW2. He was a gunner on the 20MM, and the 3"-50. The John W. Brown is a twin to his ship.
Thanks so much for posting this video. My father served on liberty ships in WWII. He was in the first graduating class from the US Merchant Marine Academy and was sent immediately out to sea as a navigator. He served the Atlantic theater and Mediterranean. He had many a harrowing tale. My son who is 19 is same age as my father when he went off to war as a naval officer. Hard to believe how much was ask from so many young people.
Back in 2013 I went on a cruise in Baltimore Bay on the John W. Brown. I tell you it was an amazing experience. Not only did they do an outstanding job in creating a top notch reenactment atmosphere and an awesome dog fight, but the ship itself was a sight to behold. We were able to tour through (yes, through) the engine as well as the cargo bays. I would highly recommend getting a ticket to experience this historical ship!
We could afford to pay. Just. Germany? Not so much. Hard to repay debt when your living in a crater. Plus they had to go easy on Germany. They had just helped to smash their country to pieces. If they had demanded crushing reparations, and not helped Germany out, there was a good chance of it going communist and joining the U.S.S.R. Before the Second World War, the communist party (socialism) was the largest party second only to the Nazis (socialism). Germany was a very, pro-Socialist country.
Going through my dad's papers long after his death, I found his in-cruise flyers from the SS Mexico Victory. He was one of the men landed in NYC on 12/6/1945. He was discharged finally on December 12th, his mother's wedding anniversary (dad died when he was 5), and got home that day.
Well done. One fact you may have missed. Because of the cracking problem. most of the later Liberty ships had a reinforcing band welded around the the ship at the about deck height to keep the cracks from starting and spreading.
3:05 The pier in the photo is still there in South Portland Maine, extended to take modern oil tankers. Next to it is a park with a memorial to the shipyards on the site that employed ~10,000 workers churning out Liberty ships. I worked right next door in a factory (Portland Valve) that was one of the shipyard's shops in WW2.
More cargo ships would be great. But, have you considered the lend lease program (tanks, aircraft, etc) that the allies leased to each other to defeat the axis during WW2? The Arctic convoys are exceptional in lending aid to the soviets during WW2. Anything would be appreciated and I'm sure, once more people learn of these endeavors, would be fascinating to all!
A good, and informative, video about a great lot of ships produced fast, and remarkably well. I learned a lot from it. Thank You. I am however, disappointed that you left out a whole, very important, section of them! These ships not only were 'Liberty Ships' that survived the Second World War, but were again called into service during Vietnam! I speak, of course, about the LST's and their associated small craft like LCVP's. Having spent the better part of my 3 year, 11 months, and 13 days in Vietnam operating on, and from, a few of them, as a Gunner's Mate 3rd Class, I was looking for them in your video. I saw them in the background of one shot, on a beach. Being what back then was reverentially known as a proud 'T' Sailor, I was saddened. Most folks don't even know that a lot of the 'T's we used there eventually were again sold/transferred to other Southeast Asia, and Pacific, countries for use in their own 'Navies'. LST 515, the USS Caddo Parish was transferred to the Navy of Guam when the 'Brown Water Navy' of the US was being reduced. Granted she was a bit 'long in the tooth' and a bit worse for wear when given to Guam, but she still was a war ready fighting ship! She mainly served as a Mobile Riverine Force Supply ship in the Rivers of the Mekong Delta, along with many others that were used for barracks ships, repair, and re-supply depots for the small boats in the Delta. Check out the USS Benowah, and the USS Iredell County as two more examples of what we did with 'Liberty Ships' during the second of two Wars they were called into service for. I'd say that IMHO, having been designed and built for only ONE TRIP (it was noted that "if these ships survived the crossing, and never leave the shores of Normandy, they will have done their duty") across the Atlantic, and the English Channel, that those 'Liberty Ships' have served this country very well!
My father worked on Liberty Ships at the Long Beach, CA shipyards during the later years of the war. He was a surveyor charged with leveling the gun mounts. He said all the ships he worked on were destroyed during the Hydrogen Bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. I noticed you did not mention that in your "What happened to them..." segment. He also worked on the fuel oil storage tanks under Red Hill in Honolulu. These provide a gravity fed fuel supply to Pearl Harbor to this day. In June 1995, the Facility was designated a Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers and referred as the eighth great wonder of the world. There was a celebration honoring the (few) surviving workers; and, my father being one, my mother and I accompanied him on a tour of the facility. It might make a good subject for Megaprojects.
I imagine the logic for using the TESE was similar to the use of steam locomotives during the war. Steam locomotives were already being replaced rather expeditiously by much more economical diesels. But, in both cases, the tooling, factories, and maintenance shops existed. The work force to build, maintain and operate them was already in existence, and consisted of men who were often too old for military service, and after coming through the Great Depression, (which had only just begun to ease) were more than willing to go to work. Many I imagine were recruited out of retirement.
I've toured the "SS John W. Brown" as a museum ship, twice. It's docked not far from where I grew up in Baltimore. They now do cruises around The Chesapeake Bay, (All cruises on hold due to Pandemic, 2020), I may look into going on one when they start back up.
As a Brit, is Simon aware of the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery? In 1944 this Liberty ship ran aground and sank in shallow water near Sheerness, England, in the Thames Estuary. Among its cargo was a massive supply of bombs intended to be dropped on Germany--approximately 1400 metric tons (1500 short tons). Despite reassurances to the public that the wreck is stable, salt water is corrosive and every year the chances of a detonation increase. Various studies have predicted a tsunami of between one meter and five meters in height roaring up the Thames towards London. The masts of the ship are above the water and the constant tides and current shifts put strain on them and thus the underwater hull, so last year plans were made to remove the masts without detonating the cargo. Wikipedia does not say whether this has been done. I read somewhere else that the wreck is near at least one of the proposed locations for a new London airport, and there are concerns that the constant sound vibrations of jet engines would make an explosion more likely.
The Liberty ship building program is one of the best examples of needing an engineering challenge met Throwing a bunch of quality engineers and draftsmen at a project with deadlines, unlimited coffee, amphetamines, they grinded through a development process that turns Years into months by way of throwing EVERYTHING, and the kitchen sink at the board and seeing what sticks, what works. Ironing out the design only After its built the first 3 and incorporating the best version afterwards. This also shows how engineering is also an artwork because only artists can be thrown into a crunch project and by way of stress compaction come up with ingenious solutions. The b29 was a similar program and suffered more setbacks than the freaking Atom bomb Manhattan project did! If you don't believe me look at the cost, the super fortress program cost more THAN the a- bomb project did!
I had an uncle, now deceased, who was a merchant seaman during WWII. During the war he had two merchant ships blown out from under him and survived. Whether these were Liberty ships I do not known, but both sinkings were in the Atlantic. These seaman were a tough bunch of men who did their part in the war, as civilians, but never received their due, even from the U.S. who never gave them VA benefits/pensions or access to the healthcare system, as I understand. Thank you for the great segment.
My dad served in the USN as a member of the "armed guard" on a WWII liberty ship, at times, on the Murmansk run. He was a 20mm anti-aircraft gunner. He came home safely but never talked much about the war - like most others. He did say that some later liberty ships had a design change - a steel "belt" running around the ship to prevent cracks and break ups at sea.
My grandfather was on one of these merchant marines vessels. What a great piece of history of the everyday man that was absolutely essential to win this war.
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My Great Uncle was a helmsman on Liberty Ship from '43 to '45. He had some good stories about how these ships handled and rode underway. One of them that has stuck with me is thus, Liberty Ships rode like a bathtub. They wallowed, they corked about. They rode like a ship shouldn't. If the sea was glass smooth was the only time that the ships rode in any peaceable manner. If there was even the slightest swell they loved to roll. Which brings us to the following; as they were passing Iceland towards the UK, the galley had served something completely awful for breakfast and this REALLY pissed off the Captain, who my uncle described as a likeable man as long as it didn't involve anything that didn't involve his ship, the ocean, or anything wet..., so as he stalked onto the bridge that morning my uncle was at the wheel. The Captain picked up his glass, looked out to sea for a bit, set the glasses down, called to my uncle to, "put the ship sideways to the next swell." He did as he was ordered and the ship rolled into the turn and then was tossed about by the swell. From the bridge was heard the shattering of crockery and the clanging of pots and pans and the loud and violent swearing of the mess crew. The Captain then turned to my uncle, "that'll teach those bastards to serve that kind of swill to us."
🤣🤣🤣 the last part
There is an old adage, "Soldiers win battles, logistics win wars." The Liberty ships were an integral component of the Ally logistics.
its kind of bonkers to think about but the US went from semi-isolationist to being responsible for over 75% of the worlds international shipping in a matter of a few years. The main American strategy was to simply out build their enemies in every sector, with even the Sherman being designed with the idea of protecting the crew so they could jail out and hop in a new tank and drive right back to the front line.
Check out the "Red Ball Express", the USA brought in 6000 cargo trucks to run supplies between the Mulberry Harbours and the front-line.
By the end of WW2, the USA was manufacturing 4 times as much supplies as all of the Axis powers combined.
It's depressing that such a feat can no longer be replicated by the modern US.
China, on the other hand... 😳
@Current Batches This has me thinking about the current world. I've often reasoned that the USA has the capability of holding if not advancing in a hot war with the combined forces of the entire globe; the key being our near isolation in the North Western hemisphere, as well as our Naval and Aerial dominance, we would control most of the oceans or at least the Pacific and Atlantic that buffer us.
But, we would not win in this conflict if sustained. A war of attrition would grind the resources and economic output of the USA to a halt as the rest of the world spun up it's production to crush us like an insect in the end.
Similar to WWII Germany and Japan, we have the mobility to strike swiftly and conquer vast tracts, but once our stocks dwindle, our forces spread thin occupying, and our enemies mobilize, we would crumble.
Curious on your thoughts.
I don't believe that a "World War" is possible in the current world, the global economy has become too intertwined. Countries would collapse with restricted trade, their economies too specialized to adapt to their shifting supply chains.
Similar adage says "laymen study tactics, amateurs study strategy and professionals study logistics".
simon. anything about cargo ships would be fantastic. then again i would probably listen to you describe a beige painted wall.
Ha true
I don’t know about Simon talking about a beige wall. Blue, maybe but not beige. That would be like watching paint dry
What's this about a wall? Tell me more
I don't know... I get my required level of beige from another channel already :p
Beige is a great color
My grandma was a RN at the start of the war. When women were needed to take the place of men, she was chosen to be a welder in a factory. She became so good that she eventually reached the rank of master welder. Funniest thing ever was her response when I said so you were a Rosey the Riveter? She looked at me with such a stern face and said, "I was a master welder, not a riveter."
You almost caught a left hook from gram gram
I'll bet she could weld anything from the crack of your ass to broken dreams
My mother were frist class welding in Liberty Ship yard, My older brother had welder and wanted my mother to weld a bead, it have been 30 years she had welding, it were one of petty welding bead I'm seen, she still had it after 30 years.
LMAO Go Grandma ! Get your Info Correct before you talk to me! Lol 😅
Just beautiful! The pride in her eyes wouldve been a sight to see. Congrats grandma, and to your family. Great example
My dad served aboard the USS Oxford AGTR-1 which was originally the SS Samuel R. Aitken Liberty ship. Recommissioned as a "technical research ship" or "spy ship" and served aboard her from the Cuban Missle Crisis through Viet Nam. I still have the photos of him aboard the Ox as she was known and other pictures of the ship at sail. Great video, thank you
Cargo ships would be interesting, yes. Modern logistics in general is pretty lit.
Id use a different word than lit, but I'm an old man and speak 90's talk. But yeah logistics is wicked sick, super dope, radical, awesome, cowabunga!
Dumb👉(me)
😂😂😂😂😂
@@McFlyOrPie 😂😂👌🏽 rad bro
Dont say lit plz
@@McFlyOrPie respect
@horatio huffnagel lit lit lit lit lit lit lit lit lit lit lit
@@horatiohuffnagel7978 lit lit lit this shit is lit
You should do a Megaprojects on the Cheyenne Mountain complex
including the star gate?
Omg yes!
Yes. It houses NORAD. And nothing else...
Definitely on board with that. I know it qualifies as a mega project but not much about the actual logistics. Also; Stargate 😍
@@TigerXGame As of 2008 its only used for flight crew training and a backup command.
Just a few things.
1) My late grandmother worked on Liberty Ships as a welder. Quite a common occupation for women stuck at home during WWII.
2) SS John Burke was lost with all hands after a kamikaze attack in one of the largest non-nuclear explosions of the war.
3) A good cargo ship to do a video on would be the Seawise Giant. Worth asking the owner to go do a show on it in person because they seem to be open to it.
4) A megaproject topic that I would love to see would be about the road system of the United States.
Not a joke- thanks to your Grandmother & her contribution to WW2
Not associated to any channel but a fan of the subject. Check out the channel extra credit "lend lease" if you wanted a strategic view of how the crews were both brave and critical to the war. This is a great short doco :)
A look into the United States Highway system would be really interesting, I agree.
My father was a freshly minted ensign 90 day wonder. His first duty was gunnery officer on a the Jonathan worth (built in 30 days)a liberty ship in the North Atlantic in the dead of winter. U boats followed the convoy striking at will . In one his letters to my mother he was visibly shaken by the sudden disappearance of the ship forward of his position in a quick explosion . That became almost a daily event. I recently had the chance to tour a partially restored liberty ship and I couldn’t wait to get off about as soon as I boarded . Cramped, low ceilings, asbestos , dark , dank narrow companionways. All that and people you can’t see trying to kill you. I came off of that ship with a different view of my father
Germans: No way anyone can build ships faster than we can sink them.
Americans: Actually, it's super easy, barely an inconvenience.
Not to put too fine a point on it but it was a German that was getting those ships built. Henry Kaiser not only built those ships but he started Kaiser Plan.
Building ships this quickly is TIGHT
A VERY rapid ship building process, wow wow wow, wow 🙂
just to point that the The Liberty ships which one most important design of war was from a British ship design but the speed the American ship builders constructed them was amazing
@@daniellastuart3145 It was not the American Ship builders. It was Henry Kaiser. At the time the American shipbuilders hated him like the car manufacturers hate Elon Musk today.
While they were arguing with Henry Kaiser about the feasibility of the Liberty Ships, he built a scale model of one in 20 minutes; End of argument, and he got the contract for his design.
Kaiser was a brilliant engineer, his cars are very underrated
Interesting Fact: The S.S. Jeremiah O'Brien was used in the filming of the movie Titanic. They used footage of her engine since she has one of the few large triple expansion steam engines still in operation anywhere in the world.
Another interesting fact, a number of these vessels were equipped with a weapon known as a Holman Projector. A literal steam-powered anti-aircraft cannon, with one vessel shooting down two German aircraft with them. So not only were they delightfully anachronistic, they had actual steampunk weaponry.
Also she was used in the movie 'Sphere' and 'Birth of the Dragon" and numerous other films meant for TV.
The US Merchant Marine Academy sent many of it's students out on these vessels during their Sophmore and Junior year sea periods. 142 of them never came home. A total of 210 students and graduates were lost in the supply effort to keep the Allies going.
I was thrilled to be able to tour the Jeremiah O'Brien when she came by the Academy after participating in the D-Day anniversary celebrations. Truly astounding what the men had to work with at the time. Really makes you appreciate what we have today.
Thank you for doing Liberty Ships. It has an emotional appeal to me. My father sailed on Liberty ships during the war. People don't realize that the merchant seamen had a higher percentage of deaths than any of our armed services. Yes, the ship was very boring, until you realize that they are sailing at 9 knots and people are trying to kill you. My father told me of sitting in the Philadelphia union hall. A man took a ship, and a few hours later he was back. What happened? Sunk just outside the harbor. That man had to board three ships that day because the first two were sunk.
I got the chance to sail on the O'Brien. We did a 4 hour Tour of San Francisco Bay and back to Pier 45. I might as well been transported back in time above and below decks. I mingled with, and talked to, several WWII Vets who had travelled on a Liberty ship to England and then to Normandy for D Day. They talked about playing cards and killing time writing letters home. They could hear the BOOM of ships being torpedoed at night while in Convoy. Then awoke the next day to see that the ship next to them had been sunk. One even got below deck and correctly pointed out which way the engine room was and the Mess Deck where he had eaten many a meal on the way to England. Truly a ship that belongs alongside the members of that Greatest Generation.
I'd like to hear about the Great Green Wall.
(It's a forest strip that is being planted through Africa from east to west in order to stop the spread of the Sahara).
What a great idea. I'd love to hear more of this one Simon.
There was a famous Hitler quote from I think 1944 when he got a report that the Kaiser ship works were producing 3 fully loaded ships a day...
... it was said his reply was: "My god, we don't have that many torpedoes".
By that time the U-boat's job was also a lot harder due to vast improvements in Allied anti-submarine warfare tactics and equipment, particularly through proliferation of another remarkably unremarkable ship: the Flower class corvette.
I was waiting for this to make the video, I love his despair at not being able to sink them as fast as they could make them.
@@nerd1000ify No the Flowers had done their very important role as a stop gap. Better designed escorts were coming on, improved strategy, tactics, sensors, weapons, aircraft, breaking of codes, on shore logistics etc. No one single thing won the Battle of the Atlantic it was the concerted effort of 100,000's of people, resources a brains that gave the Allies the victory.
Should have mentioned that American Merchant Sailors did not receive veteran status until 1988!
They were civilians who got paid twice as much as much as USN sailors including hazardous duty and clothing allowance. They could quit if they wanted to, but would have been immediately drafted into the USN.
@@nickdanger3802 they were only paid while sailing which meant if they were in port or bobbing up and down in the Atlantic a waiting rescue they didn't earn a dime.
They were on the frontlines doing one of the most dangerous jobs of the war. I think they earned the right to be called veterans.
People.
The debate on this topic is over. The Merchant Sailors received veteran status in 1988. You can debate all the other topics - including who had it harder, who got paid the best, whatever. I would even suggest a debate on whether that should have been done fifty some years earlier. But it was done so now its a fact - they were veterans! It means they got benefits (if still alive) and their families got benefits (late - but better late than never).
Respect and thanks to all Veterans, then and now.
Nick Danger no, they didn’t have to do those things. And yet with over 30,000 of them dying, they tended to have worse survival odds in combat than actual soldiers did.
So no, they didn’t have to guard prisoners or stack bodies... but the people who guarded prisoners and stacked bodies actually had a higher survival rate than the merchant navy, keep your lips zipped when you wanna say some dumb shit
It was much the same for the British merchant sailors , they only got any kind of recognition after a very long time and a lot of campaining . Aprox 32,248 lost thier lives during ww2 and still get little recognition for what they did
I had to do a project on the Liberty ships when I was at college studying engineering. The deck hatches where all squares which caused fracture points in the corners. They solved the problem by making the corners round to disperse the stress over a larger area.
Square windows doomed the DeHaviland Comet!
You should do a story on the guy who built the Liberty ships, Kaiser, a guy who new nothing about ships or ship building and was asked by the government to take a look at how these ships were being built and went on to revolutionize ship building and created one of the biggest corporations in the world! During WW2 everybody new who he was. The way ships are built today all goes back to him! During WW2 one of Kaisers shipyards built an entire liberty ship, launched it in a record 24 hours!
My personal hero.
Came within a Truman- eyelash of being Roosevelt's VP.
Is three a day a lot?
Depends. Steps, no. Ships, yes.
Coffees: under quota
Beers: a little high for an average, fine for an evening with friends.
Been living on a sailboat for 12 years. I wouldn't want to cross the Atlantic on one,and I live on a sailboat. Been through 4 hurricanes, 1 at sea,3 at anchor, but still, N. Atlantic? Subs ? Loaded with bombs? No thanks !
Someone likes doctor who lol
Dam the topedos full steam ahead well get there may not where we want to go but we'll get there
The first Liberty ship took 270 days to build, by the end, they were taking 40-60 days to build. The record was 4 1/2 days but that was a special project.
Some who never returned?
How about:
3.1 million tons of merchant ships were lost in World War II. Mariners died at a rate of 1 in 26, which was the highest rate of casualties of any service. All told, 733 American cargo ships were lost and 8,651 of the 215,000 who served perished in troubled waters and off enemy shores.
Correction: The German U-Boat service in World War Two suffered 75 percent casualties. Comparing a 4% casualty rate to a one in four survival rate … I rest my case.
American bomber pilots had similar survival rates to the u boat crews
@@cabbievonbump I think they are referring to US personal with their comment.
@Dillon Brunschon I understood "service" to refer to branch of service, i.e. Army, Navy, etc...
What about the Esso Atlantic class super tankers as a large ship option to do a Megaprojects video on? They sort of had a troubled past that might make an interesting video.
th-cam.com/video/-d3XHQVMHDM/w-d-xo.html roll Northumbria!
Mint idea for next video, I'd love to see those metal giants get the Megaprojects treatment
The cargos of that day were "loose cargo", they were individually loaded or on pallets. Today's cargo is in intermodal containers. They are stacked on ships and in the holds. They are unloaded, placed on rail cars, taken to distribution hubs, and then taken by truck to the final destination. It speeds up the loading/unloading time and reduces cargo damage and loss. Considering all the drawbacks of that time, they did a remarkable job.
2:10 - Chapter 1 - 1940
3:20 - Chapter 2 - Construction
8:15 - Chapter 3 - Reaction
9:10 - Mid roll ads
10:40 - Chapter 4 - The drawbacks
12:35 - Chapter 5 - A change of jobs
16:55 - Chapter 6 - Victory ships
17:45 - Chapter 7 - Post war
18:40 - Chapter 8 - The ugly duckling
There is one more Liberty ship the "Hellas Liberty" (former Arthur M. Huddell) that has being restored and is currently a museum ship at the port of Piraeus, Greece.
Theres a fouth one used as a landlocked cannery in alaska, renamed Star of Kodiak
@@raymondleggs5508 There used to be one in Dutch Harbor too, Royal Aleutian Seafoods. Though actually I can't remember now if i was told Liberty Ship or Victory Ship. Got bought out by Unisea 10-15 years ago and "accidentally" sank while being towed somewhere else.
Allegedly.
FYI: The 1943, Humphrey Bogart film, "Action In The North Atlantic," depicts the lives, strategies, and tactics of the Merchant Marine Core during WWII. The film was considered so accurate in it's overall telling of the experience of the Merchant Marine Core, that the actual core, still in the midst of WWII, adopted the film into the core's library of cadet training films.
My favorite Bogart movie...think I'll watch it later!
....and the little Kitten is sooo cute.... oh, and leave that door open please..
Cordialement,
A more recent movie, "The Finest Hours," tells the story of what remains the most daring small-boat rescue in the history of the U.S. Coast Guard. During a hellish Nor'easter off the coast of Cape Cod in 1950, a former Liberty Ship split in half in heavy seas, and most of the Chatham station's resources went out to rescue the crew. While this was going on, a SECOND former Liberty Ship split in half, and there were only a few Guardsmen left in the station and a small boat with a rated capacity of about 12 passengers. They went out anyway, and came back with something like 30 crewmen from the second ship, plus the 4 who crewed the small boat. If you search for "Bernie Webber" you can find the real story.
-- It's a real balls-of-steel story. With a lot of odd twists. Sort of a cross between "The Perfect Storm" and "The Guardian," more uplifting than the former, but unlike the latter, a true freaking story. (If you're a "Perfect Storm" fan, the book by Sebastian Junger is HUGELY better than the movie.)
@@sarran1955 The first kitten (Peaches) didn't fare too good...like the bloke with the record player.
Bogart sailed on cargo ships in WW1.
Germany: No, you can't just build more ships, our U-boats are sinking them
USA: Haha shipyard go brrrr
Germans: Quality over Quantity
Soviets: Quantity over Quality
Americans: Yes!
Shipyard: "Hold my brrrr."
My maternal grandfather built them, my paternal grandfather commanded several of them, my father and 2 uncles served on them in varying capacities. They were the merchant marine equivalent of the Ford F150.
Sailed on a liberty ship while in college. It was seriously cool, lots of history. Now it’s a reef.
@Dillon Brunschon well lets just say they didnt write so many songs about drunken sailors for nothing.
What's her name? :o
That's awesome. I love diving to sunken ships. Where is it located?
Haha, the only time I’ve been “on” a Liberty ship was while diving. Many of them eventually ended up as intentional reefs. Due to their simple construction, it was relatively easy to remove all the parts and fluids you don’t want to sink.
I visited one with my dad during middle school! We didn’t sail on it but it was a really cool experience regardless.
I don't care what it is Simon.
WE WANT MORE SHIPS.
☝️ THIS ☝️
The truth is displayed above 👍
And planes
Like....YAMATO.
The Pioneering Spirit is not a cargo ship! It is a specialized offshore installation/removal vessel.
However, for simplicity sake I understand why you would call it a cargo ship...
I'd like to see a video about the Glomar Explorer. That was an amazing ship, and the mission was top secret, and had a really interesting cover story.
I remember in 4th grade my teacher had a poster on the wall. It showed the ship and what it's "mission" was. How it would my mine the ocean floor for rare elements. To me that's a pretty deep cover story. Going so far as fooling 4th graders.
@@9HighFlyer9 Heh, this is one of those "actually" moments .. it was an incrediable cover story .. that became reality, it went so far as to mine the ocean floor and discovered at it was actually profitable ..
@@arakheno4051 when was it profitable? I cant find anything but estimates of future profits.
@@9HighFlyer9 After the partial recovery of the soviet sub, they went to the west coast of africa and discovered rare earth elements, they returned after 6 months with proof of concept and turned a profit on what they found. The ships "cover" story had turned out to be possible and true, new ships were built and this kind of mining is now fairly common, since resources can be easily mined in that form today .. there are few ships out there now doing exactly that.
@@arakheno4051 yes. I just watched a Mighty Ships episode about a deBeers mining ship working the western coastline of Africa vacuuming up silt and gravel to extract diamonds.
As a percentage, the loss of merchant seamen was the greatest of any service.
Moreso if you include all the port calls
Simon. Dude. Do the Starship Enterprise. I don’t care make it up.
But there are 7 Starship Enterprises... so what USS Enterprise are you talking about?
@@johnilarde8440 This is Megaprojects, the obvious choice is the Galaxy Class.
@@johnilarde8440 I would say have a long video covering all, the real USS Enterprises, there are nine listed on Wikipedia (although the newest is under construction so not sure how much would be available about it), The Space shuttle and the various Star Trek spacecraft, that would be legendary
Samuel Reeser Nah men, it doesn’t even get close to the REAL large USS Enterprise.. aka Enterprise-J
God don't say that. He will make a new channel
I toured the SS Jeremiah O'Brien years ago. Crude but effective, as Kaiser intended.
(There are also many other museum ships in San Francisco including the U.S.S. Pampanito with a recorded narration by Edward Beach. If you're a ship geek they are all worth checking out.)
And thank you for this episode, Mr. Whistler.
Captain Edward L. Beach, who was the commissioning CO of the USS Triton (SSN 586) retraced the voyage of Magellan, by remaining submerged. When a crewman had to be medivaced the ship broached (not a surfacing) and he was sent off by helicopter.
He captained a WWII diesel boat and wrote the first submarine novel I ever read while still in school (which became a movie with Bert Lancaster and Clark Gable), Run Silent Run Deep. During my 11 weeks of Navy boot camp I was asked if I had considered being a crew member aboard a Navy sub. I did and served aboard 5 during my career.
I’ve learned more history from Simon during Covid than in 17 years of schooling.
IKR
Not sure if that is a condemnation of your teachers or your span of attention. 😉
Don't let your schooling get in the way of your education.
@@MatthewStinar So true
I think something being 'work' makes a huge difference in our mindset. I used to read textbooks out of interest, but then as soon as I started studying the exact same thing (sometimes even the same textbook) just that fact of 'having' to do something made my motivation go down. Weird, but anyway.
An interesting story I learned from a man who participated with me in our daughters reading class. Dad's and children participated in reading and discussion on the book we shared. One Dad was named 'Liberty'. His story was that after the war, his family came to America from Europe. His mother was over 8 months pregnant as they fled Italy, and she gave birth to a son on the way over on a Liberty ship pressed into service to ferry refugee's. They named him Liberty to always remember the ship that brought them to America. I met him over 25 years ago, and I still remember his story, though I have only met him once since. In a used book store.
Liberty ships taught us something fundamental about metallurgy that we didnt know until then. Liberty ships sent to the north atlantic were being lost without any known cause and they were breaking in half. It was learned that the carbon steel's properties changed when the temperature got below about 32°F. It became very brittle, particularly in the heat affected zone of the welds. The result was the cold rough seas caused the ships to break in half at the midships weld. The fix was to weld a reinforcing band all around the ship to help prevent flexing at the welds. Until that fix was developed they were redeployed to more southern ports. A major metallurgical test (the Charpy test) was developed in order to investigate this effect. Metallurgy was more of a black art than a science up until WWII. The war brought metallurgy out of the dark ages.
Many Liberty ships still had riveted hulls, including the SS John W. Brown. As you said, welded hulls allowed cracks to propagate. By having riveted hull plates, a crack would stop at the end of the plate. Also, the ships internal structure had many sharp corners. This made them easier to manufacture, but introduced stress concentrations where cracks could start. These spots were often reinforced later to try to minimize cracking. The SS John W. Brown has some buckling in the lower 3 Hold where many Liberties broke in two, but she's still doing great! If COVID ever relents, they'll be doing living history cruises and classes again.
Well if everybody going crazy for ship videos then might as well do a video on the seawise giant the largest ship ever made
MSC was my thing for years in the service. Anything, anywhere, anytime. When I was a kid, we had a hired hand. he was was a Merchant Marine sailor in the war. One day I asked him how many ships he had shot out of under him, He said 5, five! Like nothing to it. He was a cool guy. Long gone. The Victory ships. The follow on boats. I got to sail on one after helping fix it up (for years) .
The cracking was addressed with a patchwork type remedy. They welded additional bands of steel along the hull. You can see them in one of the photos in this video.
And, as Simon points out, it wasn't limited to Liberty ships. The SS Schenectady, a T-2 tanker (the tanker equivalent of the Libertys) actually broke in half while moored to the pier in the Willamette River. Steel embrittlement may have been a factor in the loss of RMS Titanic, as well.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Schenectady
One of my uncles came back from New Guinea at the end of WWII on a transport he called a liberty ship. There were assembled on an island in preparation to come home, and he was offered the chance to go to the US in the transport which brought him to the island, or wait for an aircraft carrier which was coming 'soon'.
He said he could see the 'old rustbucket' in the harbor, and despite scanning the horizon he couldn't see the carrier, and he was done taking the Army's word for things, so he got back on the liberty ship. On the way back they went through a typhoon locked in the hold, but when they got to San Francisco the captain told everyone to get off, since he had no water or food left. The promised carrier was in the harbor - it beat them back by days - but the men on it were stuck for some time, waiting to be discharged, and he felt the tossing around was worth it to get out of the Army a week or two early.
well, since we are talking about "quantity over quality for the war efforts" here, how about a video about T-34 tank? Those things were built in the same fashion.
Coff coff, sherman...
@@adamlewellen5081 tens of thousands of both were made, but the T-34 was specifically made with the idea that it was going to be short lived, so take every shortcut you can find in its construction. Substandard parts, rough welds were left in place, generally good enough was considered a finished product. Also they were built in American designed factories.
I was taught that in virtually every project there three main factors that influenced every decision: Time, Money, and Quality. These factors were perpetually linked. How much time and money was available and what was the quality desired. If you want to do it in less time, it will cost more money and or reduced quality of the output. You can favor one of these factors but must keep the balance by reducing one or both of the other factors.
When you got to the part about the ships developing cracks it reminded me of my father who was in the British royal navy . He was on a ship that was sent out to meet a convoy and several of the crew on his ship were transfered to liberty ships to help out , he spent a good amount of his time with a canvas sheet trying to shield welders as they tried to repair the cracks.
Your point about quantity ober quality is true for those times , the soviet T-34 is a prime example of that with very rough castings and welding but they turned out huge numbers of them
My father was a shipyard electrician during WWll. He work on the building of the SS Robert E. Peary. He told that there were so many people working on it that it resembled an anthill.
Simon:"So do you guys want me to cover..."
Comment Section: YES
Holman projectors, please!
I was stationed on the USS Skywatcher AGR3 1964-1965. It was a converted Liberty ship, formerly the Rafael S. Rivera. It was used during the cold war as a radar picket ship. Top heavy with radar. Would rock at the pier. One voyage so rough the hull cracked amidship. These ships were originally made for 1 voyage, US to GB. Decommissioned April of 1965 in Bayonne, NJ.
Simon: "Do you want me to make a video about..."
Us: "Yes!'
Simon: "I was going to say, "the color, white.""
Us: "Did we stutter?"
Me: "If you mispronounce "white", I'm going to get angry."
xD
Not gonna lie, man could likely make a one hour documentary on the color white easily.
Woieet
Casablanca-class escort carrier, the liberty ship of carriers, the US had more of this one class of carrier than any other country has or has had carriers total.
Not that that's a Particularly high bar to clear...
The Casablanca-class of Escort Carriers was also based on the Liberty design.
Very well documented. A similar story is that of the LSTs (Landing Ship Tank), used in the landings of D-day, Sicily and the Pacific campaign.
Simon thanks for this history. My Grandfather moved from Kansas to Southern California to join the war effort and was a welder on Liberty Ships in Long Beach California it great to know more about the product of his work.
My Dad was a Fireman and Water tender in these ships engine room at seventeen years old. My dad 's Libertyship was in a river in Marsailles and the ship was anchored on the right bank of the shore when a V2
rocket came down and exploded in the baseball park across the river. The Captain ordered Let's GTFOH , they fired the ship up and got... When the war ended the longshoremen went on strike, and as an engineer, he and his ship were stuck there, so he went and joined the Air Force as A&P Mechanic and then flight engineer and eventually Sac air refueling missions all over the Arctic, I was in third grade in school in Fairbanks, Alaska.
SAC was in the air 24/7 with, bombers, re-fuelers, recon, chow halls. schools, you name it. And it was cold.
Oh god, yes please to cargo ships! They're such genius and fascinating pieces of engineering! Would love to see a video hosted by you on the subject.
Simon ask yourself this. How many times have you said "this could be boring" and turns out its not?
Simon is an actor dude...
It’s British. It’s genetically encoded to be boring :)
Hbhmini He’s really not
Much agreed.
Ships to talk about:
LST
USS Iowa
Other things to talk about:
Heavy Press Program
Apollo
This story which I read from the book "The Liberty Ships" by Leonard Arthur Sawyer and William Harry Mitchell, illustrated the interchangeability of the parts of a Liberty ship. It involved a British-flagged Liberty, the Sambrian, operated by Clan Line for the Ministry of War Transport.
On the morning of August 31, 1946, Sambrian sailed from Port Said in Egypt to Naples to pick up military cargo. A few minutes into the voyage, she was shaking so bad from stem to stern, which culminated by a fearsome noise at around midday.
The bridge crew thought that engine suffered catastrophic damage, but the engine room reported something else. "The propeller's gone." In fact, the propeller and tail end shaft were sheared off and gone! Fortunately, the the stern post and rudder were not damaged in that incident.
After anchoring overnight, another MoWT Liberty, the Saminver, which was operated by Blue Star Line, came to Sambrian's aid and towed her to Alexandria. In the harbor were two Liberty wrecks, the Samsylarna and the Thomas G. Masaryk. The Samsylarna's stern was severely damaged, but the Masaryk's stern was fairly intact, with the tail end shaft and prop in good condition. With the aid of a floating crane, the tail end shaft and prop were removed, and, by flooding Sambrian's No. 1 and No. 2 holds, the "new" prop and tail end shaft was fitted without the need for drydocking. The entire operation lasted less than ten days, after which Sambrian went on her way to Naples.
My Dad served on a Liberty that in the Pacific. It was converted to a Fleet Maintenance ship that served the Pacific Fleet. If a ship was damaged they would send crew to that ship to make repairs. Along with damage repair these 2 ship had desalination units on them providing fresh water to ships that did not have that capability.
Simon, ships are the biggest, heaviest vehicles that people have ever made. the fact that there are ships bigger than skyscrapers that can move over 20 miles an hour is astounding to me. You bet I'd love hearing about more of them.
Code is "readyforbattle2020", ya...appropiate.
Do a video on the long history of the Jahre Viking (Seawise Giant) and how it eventually became the biggest ship.
I was going to suggest the same.
I think one of his channels covered or at least talked about it in a video recent. Not that that precludes him from doing it here.
My Dad was aide to Vice Admiral Howard Vickery, who was in Charge of the Liberty/Victory Ship Program. The beauty of the thing was that Kaiser and Bechtel had to create whole new types of shipyards to allow for the component storage and assemblage of these vessels. California had the first of these new yards and they were created for the British, whose yards were traditional. Using a lot of unskilled labor, they also built housing, schools, and shops for the workers. Kaiser Permante is part of that legacy.
My father had TB before WW 2 he worked at Keiser shipyards in Portland Oregon during the war he used too talk about building liberty ships and baby carriers . That ship that was build so quickly, it would float after five days but that was about it.
What about the moon landing?
If it's too big for one video, you could do a video on say the Saturn V, the lander / rendezvous capsule itself, etc
In conjunction with that, the crawler transport could be its own megaproject
I listened to this mix whilst I slept. I love the dreams that these type of informative videos give me. Simon, keep up the great work over all your channels.
It’s alleged that the famous “Kilroy was here” graffiti came from Liberty Ship inspector James Kilroy, who scribbled the symbol after giving a passing inspection. Since Liberty Ships generally lacked interior paint, soldiers ferried oversees may have seen the graffiti and adopted it.
Wow, I had never heard that but that origin story would make sense.
?
My Dad served with the USMM during ww2 sailed in both Atlantic and Pacific.
He served on a C-4 class. He said the C class out preformed in speed the liberty class. He did enjoyed his service and had alot of interesting stories.
My father (now 94 years old) served on the John C. Breckenridge, during WW2. He was a gunner on the 20MM, and the 3"-50. The John W. Brown is a twin to his ship.
My grandfather was a welder with The California Shipbuilding Corporation, during World War II
Germany early war: Hey man, this is pretty easy...
Germany late war: ACH SCHEISSE, STOP !!! SLOW DOWN FFS!
>Germany has left the chat
Heiliege SCHEISSE!!!
I can't imagine even attempting to sink more than three ships a day. That's impossible
This US used to be a powerhouse of industry and we’ve been reduced to a bunch of whiny bitches
Don't forget the concrete ships built during the war. There is at least one used as a dock near the St. John's bridge in Portland, Oregon.
Thanks so much for posting this video. My father served on liberty ships in WWII. He was in the first graduating class from the US Merchant Marine Academy and was sent immediately out to sea as a navigator. He served the Atlantic theater and Mediterranean. He had many a harrowing tale. My son who is 19 is same age as my father when he went off to war as a naval officer. Hard to believe how much was ask from so many young people.
Back in 2013 I went on a cruise in Baltimore Bay on the John W. Brown. I tell you it was an amazing experience. Not only did they do an outstanding job in creating a top notch reenactment atmosphere and an awesome dog fight, but the ship itself was a sight to behold. We were able to tour through (yes, through) the engine as well as the cargo bays. I would highly recommend getting a ticket to experience this historical ship!
Fun fact: The UK finally paid off the debt they owed for all of these ships and supplies in 2006.
Seriously???
@@BLACKAAROW every penny, with interest. Didn't get our war debt forgiven like Germany.
And no Marshall plan assistance.
WOW!
We could afford to pay. Just. Germany? Not so much. Hard to repay debt when your living in a crater. Plus they had to go easy on Germany. They had just helped to smash their country to pieces. If they had demanded crushing reparations, and not helped Germany out, there was a good chance of it going communist and joining the U.S.S.R. Before the Second World War, the communist party (socialism) was the largest party second only to the Nazis (socialism). Germany was a very, pro-Socialist country.
'Decimated' has a definite meaning: 1 out of 10.
@@chaist94 your speaking modern English. The only correct way is old English.
Going through my dad's papers long after his death, I found his in-cruise flyers from the SS Mexico Victory. He was one of the men landed in NYC on 12/6/1945. He was discharged finally on December 12th, his mother's wedding anniversary (dad died when he was 5), and got home that day.
Well done. One fact you may have missed. Because of the cracking problem. most of the later Liberty ships had a reinforcing band welded around the the ship at the about deck height to keep the cracks from starting and spreading.
3:05 The pier in the photo is still there in South Portland Maine, extended to take modern oil tankers. Next to it is a park with a memorial to the shipyards on the site that employed ~10,000 workers churning out Liberty ships. I worked right next door in a factory (Portland Valve) that was one of the shipyard's shops in WW2.
Cargo ships and shipping containers yes have a great day everyone
More cargo ships would be great. But, have you considered the lend lease program (tanks, aircraft, etc) that the allies leased to each other to defeat the axis during WW2? The Arctic convoys are exceptional in lending aid to the soviets during WW2. Anything would be appreciated and I'm sure, once more people learn of these endeavors, would be fascinating to all!
Nasa Transport Crawler! Sheesh!
Hell ya
And all of the launch complex at Kennedy would be cool
oh yeah , liking this up the chart
A good, and informative, video about a great lot of ships produced fast, and remarkably well. I learned a lot from it. Thank You. I am however, disappointed that you left out a whole, very important, section of them! These ships not only were 'Liberty Ships' that survived the Second World War, but were again called into service during Vietnam! I speak, of course, about the LST's and their associated small craft like LCVP's. Having spent the better part of my 3 year, 11 months, and 13 days in Vietnam operating on, and from, a few of them, as a Gunner's Mate 3rd Class, I was looking for them in your video. I saw them in the background of one shot, on a beach. Being what back then was reverentially known as a proud 'T' Sailor, I was saddened. Most folks don't even know that a lot of the 'T's we used there eventually were again sold/transferred to other Southeast Asia, and Pacific, countries for use in their own 'Navies'. LST 515, the USS Caddo Parish was transferred to the Navy of Guam when the 'Brown Water Navy' of the US was being reduced. Granted she was a bit 'long in the tooth' and a bit worse for wear when given to Guam, but she still was a war ready fighting ship! She mainly served as a Mobile Riverine Force Supply ship in the Rivers of the Mekong Delta, along with many others that were used for barracks ships, repair, and re-supply depots for the small boats in the Delta. Check out the USS Benowah, and the USS Iredell County as two more examples of what we did with 'Liberty Ships' during the second of two Wars they were called into service for. I'd say that IMHO, having been designed and built for only ONE TRIP (it was noted that "if these ships survived the crossing, and never leave the shores of Normandy, they will have done their duty") across the Atlantic, and the English Channel, that those 'Liberty Ships' have served this country very well!
My father worked on Liberty Ships at the Long Beach, CA shipyards during the later years of the war. He was a surveyor charged with leveling the gun mounts. He said all the ships he worked on were destroyed during the Hydrogen Bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. I noticed you did not mention that in your "What happened to them..." segment.
He also worked on the fuel oil storage tanks under Red Hill in Honolulu. These provide a gravity fed fuel supply to Pearl Harbor to this day. In June 1995, the Facility was designated a Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers and referred as the eighth great wonder of the world. There was a celebration honoring the (few) surviving workers; and, my father being one, my mother and I accompanied him on a tour of the facility. It might make a good subject for Megaprojects.
The triple expansion steam engine of the liberty ship was also stingy with fuel.
And speed. Turbines were around more SHP more speed the closer you got to 20 the safer you’d be
I imagine the logic for using the TESE was similar to the use of steam locomotives during the war. Steam locomotives were already being replaced rather expeditiously by much more economical diesels.
But, in both cases, the tooling, factories, and maintenance shops existed. The work force to build, maintain and operate them was already in existence, and consisted of men who were often too old for military service, and after coming through the Great Depression, (which had only just begun to ease) were more than willing to go to work. Many I imagine were recruited out of retirement.
Hmm... Drinking game; take a shot every time Simon says "5 days!"
But the sign on the ship says 4 days
"World of warships the thinking man's action game"
Unless you've got a smolensk
Or money
Or a "Skilla-kaze". . . .
or a Kremlin, or a Stalingrad.
Smolensk, Kremlin, Conqueror, Yamato, Midway, Hakuryu, Kaga, Colbert, Stalingrad
Payfast, Pay2Rico, Colbert
I've toured the "SS John W. Brown" as a museum ship, twice. It's docked not far from where I grew up in Baltimore. They now do cruises around The Chesapeake Bay, (All cruises on hold due to Pandemic, 2020), I may look into going on one when they start back up.
As a Brit, is Simon aware of the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery? In 1944 this Liberty ship ran aground and sank in shallow water near Sheerness, England, in the Thames Estuary. Among its cargo was a massive supply of bombs intended to be dropped on Germany--approximately 1400 metric tons (1500 short tons). Despite reassurances to the public that the wreck is stable, salt water is corrosive and every year the chances of a detonation increase. Various studies have predicted a tsunami of between one meter and five meters in height roaring up the Thames towards London. The masts of the ship are above the water and the constant tides and current shifts put strain on them and thus the underwater hull, so last year plans were made to remove the masts without detonating the cargo. Wikipedia does not say whether this has been done. I read somewhere else that the wreck is near at least one of the proposed locations for a new London airport, and there are concerns that the constant sound vibrations of jet engines would make an explosion more likely.
The Liberty Ship is the most important vehicle of WW2, nothing less.
People often cite the Jeep as the most important, but how did they get to Blighty?......
Proud to say I live in a house built from materials salvaged from one of the shipyards that built the Liberty Ships.
Wow, that's a cool bit of history literally surrounding you in day to day life! Thanks for sharing 😁
Grandson/nephew of a couple of Rosies! Girls that weld rock!
The Liberty ship building program is one of the best examples of needing an engineering challenge met Throwing a bunch of quality engineers and draftsmen at a project with deadlines, unlimited coffee, amphetamines, they grinded through a development process that turns Years into months by way of throwing EVERYTHING, and the kitchen sink at the board and seeing what sticks, what works. Ironing out the design only After its built the first 3 and incorporating the best version afterwards. This also shows how engineering is also an artwork because only artists can be thrown into a crunch project and by way of stress compaction come up with ingenious solutions. The b29 was a similar program and suffered more setbacks than the freaking Atom bomb Manhattan project did! If you don't believe me look at the cost, the super fortress program cost more THAN the a- bomb project did!
I had an uncle, now deceased, who was a merchant seaman during WWII. During the war he had two merchant ships blown out from under him and survived. Whether these were Liberty ships I do not known, but both sinkings were in the Atlantic. These seaman were a tough bunch of men who did their part in the war, as civilians, but never received their due, even from the U.S. who never gave them VA benefits/pensions or access to the healthcare system, as I understand. Thank you for the great segment.
If you haven't covered the Panama Canal that would pair well with an episode on mega cargo ships
Re: Subjects for Megaprojects. Nothing is boring if presented in an interesting way. Education is fun!
"Give me liberty or give me death."
"Cake please."
Strawberry tart and cream
My dad served in the USN as a member of the "armed guard" on a WWII liberty ship, at times, on the Murmansk run. He was a 20mm anti-aircraft gunner. He came home safely but never talked much about the war - like most others. He did say that some later liberty ships had a design change - a steel "belt" running around the ship to prevent cracks and break ups at sea.
My grandfather was on one of these merchant marines vessels. What a great piece of history of the everyday man that was absolutely essential to win this war.