Battle Stations
Liberty Ship
In the days following the fall of France in summer 1940, which gave German U-boats access to the ports on France's Atlantic seaboard, the outcome of the Battle of the Atlantic depended on a grim equation: could the Allies build merchant ships faster than the U-boats could sink them?
The answer was that they could, thanks to the American genius for mass production. In May 1941, as part of the Lend Lease programme, President Franklin D Roosevelt ordered 2 million tons of shipping to be built. The shipyards of Delaware, the Great Lakes, the Mississippi and the West Coast went to work with a will. Standardised designs allowed ships to be prefabricated in sections for quick and easy assembly at US yards.
Two ships saved the day: the T10 tanker (14,000 tons) and the Liberty Ship freighter (10,500 tons), which was driven by a single screw at a speed of 11 knots. Thousands of the latter rolled down the slipways under the guidance of such men as Henry J Kaiser. The first Liberty Ship – the Patrick Henry – gave the fleet its name: the hero of the American Revolution had written, 'Give me liberty or give me death.'
The Patrick Henry took 244 days to build before its launch in Baltimore on 27 September 1941. But once design problems were ironed out, the construction time was cut to an average of only 42 days. In November 1942, the Robert E Peary was built from the keel up in four days and 15 hours – a PR stunt perhaps, but grim evidence to the German submariners of the challenge that prefabrication techniques posed to the U-boats.
As the war progressed, the labour force in US shipyards was increased from 100,000 to 700,000 to cope with the programme. Many of the new recruits were women, and 'Rosie the Riveter' became a national heroine.
By 1945, 2,770 Liberty Ships had been built. They served not only in the Atlantic and Mediterranean theatres but also with the US Navy's fleet trains in the Pacific. The majority were general cargo carriers, but some were purpose-built tank and aircraft transports or repair and supply ships.
Although usually seen as a totally American concept, the basic design for these quickly constructed, general-purpose freighters had been produced by the Sunderland Shipping Company at Newcastle as early as 1879.
