Liberty Ships
— Jason
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This episode is dedicated to the memory of my grandfather, Harold “Harry” Gibson, who served as a member of the US Merchant Marine Armed Guard during World War II. He served aboard several Liberty-class ships while sailing and fighting through the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, as well as the Mediterranean Sea.
The transportation of foodstuffs, raw and manufactured materials, and people across contested seas have always been essential for victory during warfare. As weapons technology has progressed, it has been vital that the construction of new merchant ships outpace their potential loss to enemy action. During the early decades of the twentieth century, two World Wars strained the limits of what nation-state merchant marine fleets were capable of enduring. The Second World War was the catalyst that created the world-saving Liberty-class cargo ship.
Northwestern Europe and the United States had developed extensive overseas trade networks that connected their peoples to the world market over the course of centuries. In order to move materials and people from one continent to another, merchant ships owned by private companies and individuals plied the oceans. The cargo carried could be grain, lumber, fertilizer, fuel oil, weapons, or soldiers. During times of war, those privately owned merchant ships were requisitioned by their home governments and used to ensure victory.
Nations with extensive overseas empires, or those lacking natural resources, Great Britain is an example of both, merchant ships provided means to maintain the lifeline of materials needed to keep the mother country’s economy, and people, alive. During war, Britain needed to maintain, protect, and expand these immense world-spanning trade networks. For Germany, who was the aggressor during both World Wars, it was vital to cut that same line to starve the British into submission. The Atlantic Ocean became the most vital theater of war.
A grotesque type of arithmetic evolved throughout these wars: the combatants sought on one hand to destroy more enemy merchant ships than could be replaced, and to outbuild their own potential losses. The roster of a nation’s existing freighters and tankers may seem immense in peacetime, but the losses suffered by air, surface, and underwater attacks could quickly decimate those numbers. The algebra of destruction was something that haunted the naval commands of both Britain and Germany as they sought some sort of advantage over their opponents.
The Battle of the Atlantic, fought between 1 September 1939 and 7 May 1945, was the most vicious theaters of the Second World War. Allied merchant ships were organized into large convoys along North American ports and, along with their escorting warships, had to fight their way to Great Britain. Despite enjoying naval superiority, the British Royal Navy was overstretched, and its civilian merchant marine desperately needed protection from German aircraft, surface warships, and U-boats.
In 1936, three years before the Second World War erupted, the American Merchant Marine Act was passed, calling for a minimum of fifty new merchant ships to be built per year that the United States Navy could operate as auxiliary craft. As war clouds gathered in Europe, the number of new cargo ships steadily increased each year. Despite the urgency, shipyards struggled to meet production expectations because of the multiple designs that could not be rapidly constructed across different shipyards.
Though the United States had declared neutrality at the outbreak of the Second World War, the sympathies of its people were on the side of the Allied Powers. US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, knowing that the war would eventually reach America, sought both massively expand the country’s industrial production and shift it to a war-footing between 1939 and 1941. The expansion of the American Merchant Marine was a key component of President Roosevelt’s plans.
As losses of British merchant ships began to reach crippling proportions in 1940 and 1941, the British Government increasingly relied on American shipyards for replacements. While Great Britain had its own shipyards, they were employed constructing warships and were under the threat of German air attack. Orders for new freighters and tankers were pouring into the United States, but it took months for these ships to be constructed and crewed.
The United States War Department contracted the Kaiser Shipping Company, run by American industrialist Henry Kaiser to aid the nation in defeating Hitler’s U-boat menace. Kaiser was already well known for his large-scale construction projects, which included the Hoover Dam. Kaiser was tasked with designing and producing massive numbers of cargo ships for the American and Allied merchant marines. By late 1941, Kaiser and his engineers had designed the easily mass-produced Liberty-class cargo ships.
The Liberty ships were low-cost, and easily produced, meaning their construction could quickly outpace Allied merchant ship losses. At 441 feet in length, the Liberty ships were listed as capable of carrying 10,000 tons of cargo, however, this estimated capacity was regularly far exceeded. A speed of 11 knot and range of 20,000 nautical miles allowed the class to effectively operate in any oceanic theater of war. Each ship was designed for a five-year operational lifespan though many served for decades.
Over the course of the war, Kaiser and his team adopted several innovations that helped to speed up the process of shipbuilding: they replaced riveting with welding to build the ships and prefabricated entire sections of the ship’s hull. The first groups of Liberty ships took an average of 230 days to complete from laying down the keel to launch, by 1943 the time had been shaved to just over 39 days.
As with any new type of ship, the Liberties displayed flaws that were corrected over the course of the class’s lifespan. Some of the early welded hulls could, and did, fail catastrophically when damaged by German U-boats. The speed at which the ships were constructed also led to the accidental brittleness of the hulls which could break the ships even without enemy attacks taking place. Constance Tipper, a metallurgy professor at Cambridge University, studied the issue of hull brittleness during the Second World War and her findings indicated that expanding the space between frames would help ensure hull flexibility and survivability.
One of the many bases that trained the Armed Guards was Naval Station Great Lakes located in Chicago, Illinois. Between 1939 and 1945, over one million recruits passed through its doors. Despite being merchant ships, Liberty ships were equipped with an assortment of weapons to defend themselves against both aerial and surface threats. A detachment of Merchant Marine Armed Guards was assigned to each freighter to operate these weapons. Along with being responsible for protection of the ship, the Merchant Marines also took on the roles of radio operators and signalmen. Despite this obvious involvement in combat, it took until a federal court ruling in 1987 for the Merchant Marines to be officially recognized as combatants alongside their fellow World War II veterans.
Between 1941 and 1945 a total of 2,710 Liberty-class ships were built over 2,400 of which survived the war. In total, eighteen shipyards across the US Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf coasts constructed this impressive number. Liberty-class, and the later Victory-class, ships operated in all the theaters of war hauling cargo, fuel, and troops. By 1943, an average of three ships were commissioned every two days by American shipyards. The sheer number of newly constructed Liberty ships ensured that the enemy could not destroy enough of them to cut Great Britain’s supply lines.
The ships were largely financed through expansive naval acquisition bills passed through the US legislature during the war. This funding was further supplemented by the sale of war bonds that private citizens could purchase. Any group that raised $2 million dollars of war bonds could propose a name for the new ships. One way to drive these sales fit perfectly with Kaiser’s design: as the techniques for the construction of Liberty- and Victory-class were refined, different shipyards competed to see which could finish a ship the fastest. The SS Robert E. Perry was completed in only 4 days, 15 hours, and 29 minutes on 2 January 1942 was the quickest ever constructed.
When the Second World War ended in 1945, the Liberty class of cargo ships was of the largest type in the world’s merchant navies. The last to be completed was the SS Albert B. Boe, finished on 30 October 1945 two months after the end of hostilities. Those ships that were retained by the United States either went into the naval reserve yards, were converted into intelligence-gathering vessels, or were employed by the Merchant Marine. The United States government sold, or gifted, many Liberties to its former allies to help them rebuild their shattered countries.
Despite the massive number completed, today only two operational Liberty-class ships, the SS John W. Brown and SS Jeremiah O’Brien, still exist. The John W. Brown is a museum ship currently located in Baltimore, Maryland, while the Jeremiah O’Brien is in San Francisco, California. Both ships regularly take passengers out into the oceans for limited cruises and help them understand what it was like to live on and operate these fascinating vessels. A third Liberty, the SS Hellas Liberty (formerly the SS Arthur M. Huddell) is a static museum ship based at the Port of Piraeus, Athens, Greece.