How the Liberty Ship Won WW2 for the Allies

The weapon that was most important to allied victory as we know it was not the T-34 tank or B-17 bomber, or even the atomic bomb, but a simple, cheap, mass produced merchant ship. This is the story of the Liberty Ship.
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0:00 - Intro
0:45 - More Shipping Needed
3:00 - What if Merchant Ship was cheap?
4:10 - Ship printer go brrrrrrrr
8:30 - Impact of the Liberty Ship
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Animation by:
addaway23
Artwork by:
ChrisbyFlanker
Written, Directed and Produced by:
addaway23
Come join the historigraph discord: discord.gg/ygypfs3BEB
Sources:
L.A Sawyer and W.H Mitchell, The Liberty Ships
Stephen Roskill, War at Sea
web.archive.org/web/20080509091805/www.usmm.org/libertyships.html
Peter Elphick, Liberty: The Ships that won the war
archive.org/details/libertyshipsthat0000elph/page/10/mode/2up
Evan Mawdsley, War for the Seas
Joseph B Fabry, Swing shift: building the liberty ships
archive.org/details/swingshiftbuildi0000fabr/page/34/mode/2up
Phillips Payson O’Brien, How the War was Won
Naval Staff History, The Defeat of the Enemy Attack on Shipping, 1939-45
Music Credits:
"Rynos Theme" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
"Crypto" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
"Stay the Course" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Other music and SFX from Epidemic Sound

[@historigraph]

Here’s the last historigraph video of the year- originally planned for Wednesday, but thought I would bring it up by a couple of days. Merry Christmas all!

[@conornoonan6376]

Thanks mate vids are always class !. I might ask what your opinion is of the u boats ? In a similar regard to the liberty ships . If they had been mass produced in a similar fashion to the liberties , would this have won the war for the axis?

[@historigraph]

@@conornoonan6376 I think it could have made a big impact had Germany started the war with many more than they did. After the entry of the US I don’t think any number ultimately triumphes

[@theflyingfool]

Merry Christmas to you too! Thanks for the great videos of the last year!

[@avipatable]

A hearty +1 from me too. Thoroughly enjoyed every video you have put out. Top notch. All the very best for 2024.

[@typxxilps]

@@conornoonan6376 german uboats had been built on a mass scale which meant also lower production quality - at least partially. The ship yards were bombed and so the sub production took a different approach to built subs in sections even far away from the coast and the shipyards which had become more or less the final assembly plant which took days or weeks instead of months before. So you can find pretty much the same industrilisation in the german submarine production if you check the figures from 1939 onwards and the peak around 1943 and 1944. They were not cheap made, but those builders of section had no idea or glimpse about the final product and how bits and pieces were interacting across the sections and their builders. All was based on paper plans the manufacturers had to obeye regarding tolerances and what not. The production volume increased a lot this way but there was also another issue they could not deal that easily : shortage of trained crews, not just volunteers without experience And above all they had a shortage of experienced, skilled officers and captains, not just smart young but blinded by ideaology hitler youth boys that wanted to be a captain but were missing the talents and skills needed. You will find a quite similiar production volume explosion but at the end if you build a sub faster and faster there is the biggest issue from launching a sub to commissioning a sub till its first war mission. You could not shorten the education without cuts in valueable knowledge learned and accumulated in the training centers since 1914. If you double or multiple the production volume you will have to deal with shortages in the training facilities, the training subs, training sites, teachers and what not. It is a lot more needed to increase such output. Remember: an untrained crewmember in a sub turning a valve into the wrong direction and the outcome can be a desaster for a ship under water. A surface ship is a complete different story, far less crewmembers needed and lower risks, easier to train or hire.

[@MortRotu]

Liberty ships are kind of the epitome of the phrase 'amateurs talk armies, generals talk logistics'

[@dfjab]

Its the option where you also just build one unit, a thousand times :D

[@worldwanderer91]

"And KZbinrs talk procurement" - Perun

[@carlrodalegrado4104]

tactics and strategies wins you battles, logistics and economics wins you wars

[@hansheden]

When asked General Patton said that the M1 Garand was the most important battle impliment ever made. Ike said the Higgins-boat. Bradley said the "Duce-and-a-half" 6x6 truck. Figures. Patton was a warrior. Ike and Bradley were commanders. No surprise that they chose transports over weapons.

[@coraldestroyer4202]

@@carlrodalegrado4104thats generalized. Although logistics are incredibly important, you still need a good army to win a war obviously. german logistics in 1940 were generally worse than french logistics

[@fredeisen7401]

My father sailed on the Liberty ships during the war and was torpedoed and sunk three times. Once in the Artic and twice in the Med. Thanks for posting a video about the Merchant Mariners

[@youtubegimme8646]

My great grandfather sat on a skibidi toilet It was glorious 😊

[@biscuitninja]

Was his name Sam?! (AKA Unsinkable Sam)

[@youtubegimme8646]

@@biscuitninja no his name was grandpa

[@dustintacohands1107]

Was it fun or terrifying or both?

[@bubbles190]

Im sure the arctic sinking was his least favourite

[@spyrosvassilakis4212]

I'm just going to mention that there are 3 surviving Liberty ships. One of them is a museum in Piraeus. If you ever come to Athens it's worth a visit.

[@TheEventHorizon909]

I absolutely will if I visit Athens

[@spyrosvassilakis4212]

@@TheEventHorizon909 Please do. Keep in mind the existence of the ship is not advertised at all, very few people know it's there. Even the ships website is down, they probably could not afford to keep it running. I found out about the ship accidentally 2 years ago only because I'm a massive naval history buff...

[@mikearmstrong8483]

For those who may not be able to make it Greece, there is one in San Francisco and I think another on the East Coast.

[@ragingwolfgamesrogue4451]

San Fran is home to the Jeremiah O'Brian She's the last one that can still make steam and sail. She's also where the engine scene for the titanic was filmed!

[@petestorz172]

Across the Bay in Richmond is the USS Red Oak Victory, a Victory ship. Victory ships were of similar size, significantly faster, and had turbine rather than VTE engines. 534 were built.

[@testy462]

You're half way across the atlantic on your first crossing, a storm thunders off the bow. The guy next to you says "you know, they built this ship in like 4 days"...

[@thedyingmeme6]

Just 0_0

[@RomainDelheusy]

"Sir, the enemy is destroying our supply lines with submarines!" "Just build more ships than they have torpedoes."

[@Joeyricottacheese]

Haha

[@bsa45acp]

The ship you show at 5:25 which is broken in half is not a Liberty ship but a Victory ship. Though cracking in the hulls of Liberty ships was happening there were several fixes that solved the problem, the most common of which was the welding of a curved steel beam at the corners of the cargo hatches. The SS Jeremiah, the only full functioning unaltered Liberty ship left has this fix. There were hundreds of ships in WWII that broke in half but if you consider only Liberty ships that did not break in half by running aground, torpedoes, or such external causes, there were only THREE Liberty ships that broke in half. I am the head docent on the SS Jeremiah O'Brien and am very familiar with this undeserved reputation.

[@renatohmoliveira]

Three out of thousands - wow!

[@mastermariner7813]

Actually there are two. Baltimore has the John W Brown.

[@boobah5643]

Nice to see this comment. This is the first time I'd heard of these problems with the Liberty ships, so it's good to hear a little more about the issue before my opinion has a chance to recalcify.

[@bsa45acp]

​@@mastermariner7813 I stated that "The SS Jeremiah O'Brien, was the the only fully functioning unaltered Liberty ship..." which is correct. The SS John W. Brown was converted into a dedicated troop carrier during the war and then post war was converted into a vocational high school for the New York City school system before becoming the museum ship she is today. Obviously she is not entitled to the term 'unaltered'. The O'Brien came out of mothballs on October 6th 1979 and was directly turned into a museum ship and continues to serve as a fully functioning unaltered Liberty ship to this day.

[@pimpompoom93726]

The ship at 5:25 is neither a Liberty nor a Victory ship, it's a T3 fuel tanker.

[@gregwarner3753]

I remember taking a Liberty Ship (USS Tutuila ARG-4) from Portsmouth, Virginia to Vung Tau on the Mekong River RSVN in 1966. Long trip. The Pacific ocean is really big at 10 knots.

[@MHowells5]

WW2 was a resources war and the liberty ship is one of the most prevalent examples of the dominant position the allies had compared to the axis powers

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

Such a war could not happen today, not just because great powers have nukes and would not dare invade each others heartlands, but also because total war requires a strong society where people are willing to sacritice for the cause with trust that others will have their backs.

[@gibbson130]

@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 exactly, leaders and globalists in the West have turned what were once high trust societies with populations willing to fight to the death to protect their of life and each other to low trust "every man for himself" dystopias, while systematically erasing what's left of our culture. They say the past is a foreign country but in our case you only have to go back 30 odd years. Shameful.

[@Sky_Guy]

@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 First, entirely unrelated to the comment. Second, _what?_ What the hell are you talking about? Do you have literally anything else other than your anecdotal bullshit to back that, or are you just a cynical bastard miserably brooding within your own media bubble?

[@darwinism8181]

@@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714 The first reason is the real one, the second is the same standard, 'society these days is so bad compared to when I've been told to believe it was better,' that's been going on since prehistory. The first people to invent language almost definitely immediately used it to complain about how cavemen those days had no integrity.

[@sillygoosexv6778]

It just proves that greater numbers beats quality.

[@cladbecaha]

4 and a half days to build a ship! It takes my local council more than that to dig a hole in the road for no apparent reason.

[@sheboyganshovel5920]

Every time someone remembers the merchant marine, an angel gets its wings.

[@pierheadjump]

⚓️Thank you 😎

[@Ghauster]

I knew two distinguished members of that profession. Both started during the war as midshipmen. One ended his career as the last captain of the SS United States. The other went on to be commandant at King's Point. Both remembered the liberty ships as something that got the job done but that's about all they were good for.

[@xczechr]

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." Even if this is not a real quote from Yamamoto himself, it was very much true.

[@adamtruong1759]

I don't believe I understood how stripped down Liberty ships were until this video.

[@Mika-ph6ku]

They were massive steel canoes

[@biscuitninja]

"Infantry wins battles, logistics wins wars.” That quote by Army General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I, summarizes why logistics is so important to the military.

[@warhawk4494]

He who gets there first with the mostests wins paraphrase Gen.Sherman or Grant. Us Civil War. Lol 😂 merry Christmass

[@erner_wisal]

Guns win battles. Tunnel wins war. -some dude in a ww1 game

[@burnstick1380]

didn't napoleon say this? Or am I wrong?

[@gwtpictgwtpict4214]

A British phrase, PBI, Poor Bloody Infantry. At the end of the day you need boots on the ground to take and hold territory. They absolutely need the logistic backup behind them.

[@PappyGunn]

The problem is that Logiticians often forget about the war and practice Logistics for Logistic's sake. Burying Commanders under paperwork and self serving regulations.

[@kegginstructure]

My dad did his part in WW II at the Higgins Shipyards in New Orleans, where he was in the engineering / drafting department making Liberty ships. Later in the war, they had enough ships. In early 1945, Dad went with Delta Shipyards, which needed people to make PBY (Navy "air boat") aircraft for the Pacific war. Dad's job with the Liberty ships was called "mold loftsman" - I guess because the plans were in the "mold loft." He made full-scale paper templates for various metal bulkheads. These paper templates were carried to the "torch" guys who would mark off that shape on the hull and then cut. Remember, there were no computers and no mechanized cutting tables like we have now. It was ALL done by hand. The Higgins Shipyard was more famous for the OTHER ships they made - the "Higgins boat" landing craft or LCMC, but Dad was on Liberty Ship duty.

[@earlyriser8998]

Loved the video on the Liberty Ships as a war winner. It really could not have been done without the ship and shipyards that built them.

[@spychopath]

Give me the impression that the Americans were building Liberty ships faster than the Nazis were building torpedoes.

[@worldwanderer91]

Now China builds more navy ships faster than we can retire and replace our own

[@ehse7en]

Wouldn’t be surprised if the liberties were cheaper too

[@markfryer9880]

Well certainly faster than they were building U-Boats.

[@Corristo89]

@@markfryer9880Germany could've built a dozen U-Boats per day and it wouldn't have mattered, as Germany lacked the trained crews to run them. Hell, Germany was sending old men and boys into battle by the end, as they had run out of men to conscript.

[@brucewellman]

convoys escorts and the flying boats like the PBY reduce the wolf packs

[@davidvik1451]

A great quick look at emergency class ship production in the USA. FYI: The first photo of a ship broken in two is of a T-2 tanker at the Swan Island yard in Portland Oregon. The problems were not so much due to the pace of construction as to not fully understanding all welded construction and flaws in the designs such as the square hatch corners on the Libs that focused stress between the deck house and the hatches. The T-2's had to be strengthened along the deck with those already built having an additional piece riveted to the sides at the deck. The T-2 shown was placed in dry dock and put back together. A very good book in the subject is "Liberty Factory" by Peter Marsh available online.

[@markjohnson5562]

My grandfather was the captain of four liberty ships during the war. I am proud to say my father still sails as a mate on one of the two remaining operating liberty ships...the John Brown which is docked in Baltimore. I hope to be a part of the crew someday. The Brown is the largest US flagged passenger ship east of the Mississippi.ot is also on of the few remaining steam engines outside of the Great lakes in US waters.

[@K3end0]

What an excellent video on a, and i usually dont like this word, genuinely underrated topic. How many victories were claimed by the allies, solely because they have the equipment, supplies, guns and tanks to fight them? The merchant navy and the dockworkers building their ships played such a big part in the war. Its been a great year of historiograph content, this channel is truly one of my favourites :)

[@RadioactiveSherbet]

As another KZbinr would say, "quantity has a quality of its own." I think I'm paraphrasing that slightly, but the point is there. If you show up with 4 tanks, but the enemy shows up with 50 at the same place at the same time... you're kinda screwed.

[@hedgehog3180]

@@RadioactiveSherbet Logistics isn't really about having more than your enemy, it's about having your stuff where you need it when you need it so you can make it count. The Allies never really outnumbered the Axis particularly, but they were able to concentrate their troops at key points to achieve local superiority by having the logistics to quickly move said troops and keep large concentrations supplied. They then further had the logistics to make sure that once said troops broke through the enemy lines they could keep advancing for hundreds of km without having to stop before the unit became too damaged to keep advancing. In short logistics isn't about having 50 tanks to your enemy's 4, it's about being sure that when you attack all 4 of your tanks are there and in perfect condition while your enemy could only get 3 tanks to the front because their railways lacked capacity, 2 of them suffered engine failure due to lacking spare parts, and the last ran out of fuel after 50 km.

[@allangibson4354]

The preceding designs, which included the "Northeast Coast, Open Shelter Deck Steamer", were based on a simple ship originally produced in Sunderland by J.L. Thompson & Sons based on a 1939 design for a simple tramp steamer, which was cheap to build and cheap to run (see Silver Line). Examples include SS Dorington Court built in 1939.[8] The order specified an 18-inch (0.46 m) increase in draft to boost displacement by 800 long tons (810 t) to 10,100 long tons (10,300 t). The accommodation, bridge, and main engine were located amidships, with a tunnel connecting the main engine shaft to the propeller via a long aft extension. The first Ocean-class ship, SS Ocean Vanguard, was launched on 16 August 1941. At the beginning of WW2 Sunderland was the largest ship building town in the world, at it's height building in excess of 25% of the worlds merchant marine.

[@kenneth9874]

Soon to be eclipsed by the Americans..

[@allangibson4354]

'Twas ever thus. Just as with Jet Propulsion.@@kenneth9874

[@bertamus47]

One of the most overlooked aspects of WWII. Good work!

[@the_christopher]

You're spoiling us with all this content! Even if this is merely burst of activity, it's been great to see videos come out more regularly over the past year.

[@historigraph]

The last few months have been pretty intense in terms of hours. It won’t be as frequent as this in the first couple of months of 2024, but my hope is to move the overall count of videos over the year upwards

[@steveb6103]

The fix that they came up with. Was to weld a strip of steel along the hull from the second hatch to the third.

[@Sleep-is-overrated]

Through high school I volunteered on the SS Jeremiah O’Brien Liberty Ship Museum in San Francisco. She still sails regularly, in fact her fully functional engine room was used by James Cameron to film the engine room scenes in Titanic. Still have fond memories of that place, like being able to sail her for a bit between the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz during a fleet week cruise a number of years ago. Worth a visit if you’re ever in the city

[@hesthatguy]

The liberty ship fleet basically formed a conveyor belt across the Atlantic. Fascinating stuff.

[@cameronnewton7053]

8:04 i love how the the production rates are *literally off the charts* it makes me chuckle in stunned joy every time i see the sheer numbers of ships the US pumped out in ww2 Also, "ship printers go brrrrrr" made me laugh way more then it should of....

[@boobah5643]

The _really_ scary thing is that US industry was doing the same thing with trucks (motorized Soviet logistics consisted of US built trucks once they got off the railways) and all sorts of war machines. Kaiser, in addition to at least two shipyards building Liberty ships, built _another_ ship yard that built fifty _Casablanca_ class escort carriers.

[@steveburgos5013]

Same about "Ship printer go brrrrr". Was not expecting that

[@hedgehog3180]

@@boobah5643 US trucks made up about 2/3rds of trucks in Red Army service, not all of them.

[@Boffin55]

It's worth visiting the Jeremiah O'Brien in San Francisco. I was lucky enough through a friend to be able to get a full tour, and meet crew members that actually had crewed them in the war.

[@IndianaDiecastRacing]

Over the course of 2023, this channel has risen to be one of my top 5 favorites, keep it up!

[@nigelmorroll3343]

It's good to see the liberty ships get the recognition they deserve . They may not have the most fastest, powerful etc, but they did their part.

[@Torontotootwo]

Great vid, especially the stats. I had a home on Whiskey Springs in Sausalito. A Victory Ship facility was built there. My office across the street was the Paymaster's office - still has the huge safe for the cash. I cruised on the Jeremiah O'Brian a few times. The weakness of the hull was never mentioned nor the lack of safety equipment. The triple expansion engine was as simple as a lawnmower, but according to engineers, it was reliable, easy to repair, and some parts could be repaired or reloaced with man-made parts. My first O'Brian ride was in the '80s - there were several vets and merchant mariners onboard that spent a lot of time on these ships.

[@JamesSavik]

Yes, the liberty ships were essential to Allied logistics, but they didn't win the war alone. The Fletcher class destroyers were another class of ships that turned out to be essential. They were a well-rounded design that could fight air, sea, and submarine threats. You might consider a deep dive into them.

[@historigraph]

I’m using the Liberty ship here as an example and being forceful with the hook for the video, but I hope you can see my wider point is about the strength of US production and it’s centrality to victory. Whether merchant ships, destroyers, aircraft etc It’s a point I made in the second Atlantic video (which this one functions as a bit of an addendum to)

[@blip-hn6is]

not really,without flethchers, ww2 still could be won by sending 10x more liberty ships.

[@boobah5643]

@@blip-hn6is The _Fletchers,_ by and large, weren't used as convoy escorts. You don't need ships that top out over thirty knots to escort merchantmen, not when you can throw out two or three destroyer escorts for the same cost. And you're not likely to sink the Japanese Navy with Liberty ships.

[@justandy333]

it is true that fletchers were used in convoy escort duties. But its abilities were kind of lost on those duties, it was a far more capable ship, worthy of front line activities. The ASW Corvettes and ASW frigates were far more numerous, cheaper and much more suited to convoy escort duties. They were purpose built for this job and performed it admirably, especially when the latest ASW tech was installed on these vessels.

[@davidlewis5312]

@@boobah5643 yeah the Fletcher is built more for aggression than convoy duty. She excels at being the raider though. And if it's the USS Johnson, it doubles as a Heavy Cruiser... apparently.

[@bmused55]

Thank you for explaining it was a British design. This fact is almost always lost in documentaries. British designed, American built. What a combination. Worked for the Merlin engine! Sooo many Packard units built. So, so many.

[@OPFlyFisher304]

Not a single Merlin ever saw combat in a Mustang. The Americans improved the Merlin and made the Packard. The American's taught Rolls how to make the motor and how to set up the factories to make them. Ford even ran I or 2 I think.

[@OPFlyFisher304]

The Merlin 28 was used for the Avro Lancaster bomber. The USAAF V-1650-1 version of this engine was used in the Curtiss P-40Fs. The initial Packard modifications to this engine changed the main crankshaft bearings from a copper-lead alloy to a silver-lead combination and featured indium plating. As Robert J. Neal writes in Master Motor Builders, a tome documenting Packard's non-automotive engines: "This was but the beginning of a monumental task of redesigning an engine which was not originally designed for mass production so that it could indeed be made by American mass-production methods, and so that it could be fitted with American fittings and accessories as mentioned above [for example, carburetors, fuel pumps, generators and so on] or British accessories and fittings, depending upon which government the engine was intended for." Neal also notes that "the British did not specify tolerances and fits, and Packard had to take parts from an existing engine and make measurements to determine these specifications as best as they could, using engineering judgement where necessary." Packard's version of the Merlin XX, which the Detroit automaker dubbed the V-1650-1, was ready to run by August 1941. It did feature a number of improvements over the British-built Merlins, such as a two-piece cylinder block. Some of these improvements were developed by Packard engineers in an effort to make the complex engine easier and quicker to build in quantity. Others, however, like the two-piece block, were actually designed by Rolls-Royce and not yet implemented in production. If there's a key to understanding Rolls-Royce's Merlin manufacturing tolerances, or the asserted lack thereof, it might be Ford-Ford of Britain, that is. British Merlins were eventually built at a quartet of facilities: Rolls-Royce Derby, plus two Rolls-Royce "shadow factories" at Crewe (currently Bentley's works) and Glasgow (twice the size of Crewe, its foundry provided castings for the other operations), and a Ford factory in Manchester. That last factory began churning out engines in mid-1941, but not before Ford, like Packard, overcame a few hurdles. Stanley Hooker's autobiography, Not Much of an Engineer, deals mostly with his work on Rolls-Royce jet engines. But its section on Merlin development, the superchargers of which Hooker played a role in developing, is illuminating: "In my enthusiasm, I considered that Rolls-Royce designs were the ne plus ultra, until the Ford Motor Co. in Britain was invited to manufacture the Merlin in the early days of the War. A number of Ford engineers arrived in Derby, and spent some months examining and familiarizing themselves with the drawings and manufacturing methods. One day their Chief Engineer appeared in (Merlin development head Cyril Lovesey's) office, which I was then sharing, and said, 'You know, we can't make the Merlin to these drawings.' "I replied loftily, 'I suppose that is because the drawing tolerances are too difficult for you, and you can't achieve the accuracy.' "'On the contrary,' he replied, 'the tolerances are far too wide for us. We make motor cars far more accurately than this. Every part on our car engines has to be interchangeable with the same part on any other engine, and hence all parts have to be made with extreme accuracy, far closer than you use. That is the only way we can achieve mass production.'" The Merlin V-1650 engine was produced under license by the Packard Motor Car Company in Detroit, Michigan. The engine displaced 1,650 cubic inches and was configured in a 12-cylinder V of 60 degrees. The engine produced 1,029 horsepower early in the war, and was developed to the point of producing 2,000 horsepower later. Difficult to produce and maintain in the original design (the British engines were nearly handmade), significant improvements were made in the basic design by Packard to improve the Merlin’s reliability, maintainability, and ease of manufacture. During WWII, Packard built 55,523 Merlin engines under Rolls-Royce License; 1st engine delivered in 1941; Improved by Packard to increase power & reliability; Installations included USAAF’s P-51 and P-40, plus RAF’s Lancaster & Mosquito

[@jimkeats891]

While all my friends talk about how their grandfathers fought in WW2, mine worked on building Liberty ships.

[@lostinpa-dadenduro7555]

We should have some designs and prototypes of ships like this waiting in the wings. Not every ship has to be fancy or have space age technology. Sometimes you just need a lot of ships to haul a lot of stuff.

[@robertraynor7594]

It doesn't matter what designs there are. Of the shipyards shown on the map in the video only a handful remain and most are involved in building Navy ships. Almost all commercial shipping is built outside of the US.

[@daredemontriple6]

Who says we don't? There's no reason to build ships like this in peacetime, they're a bare-bones last resort to maximise tonnage transported at the cost of everything else. Perhaps if another war broke out we'd see things like this being built again. @robertraynor7594 And as for which of those shipyards may or may not exist, it doesn't matter. As mentioned in the video, the vast majority of the shipyards building the liberty ships didn't exist before the war broke out. Make no mistake a shipyard can be built and staffed in astonishingly quick time when there's a war demanding it! If they were ever needed again, they'd be built again.

[@AllUpOns]

There's no point. Every modern country that can wage war at a meaningful scale can also trivially produce weapons that obliterate simple ships like this. Also, total war in this day and age just means we're nuking each other.

[@daredemontriple6]

@AllUpOns13 it's one thing making the weapons, it's another thing being able to use them. I mean just look at the Uboats in '44, they were more advanced than ever and were even starting to recieve homing torpedoes - however actually getting to use them was incredibly difficult as the allies had all but won the atlantic and were hunting Uboats like fish in a barrel. And as for the Nuclear option, that is a whole thing aside from an all out war. I mean just look at Russia and the Ukraine, the Russians could nuke them if they wanted to and the Ukrainians would have nothing to throw back. But A. They don't want to, there's no point conquering a radioactive wasteland, and B. They know it could mean their own nuclear holocaust should any other nation choose to retaliate on their behalf.

[@hedgehog3180]

Modern cargo ships are very far from what you could call “space age”. They certainly have more modern systems like radar and GPS navigation but both of those are barebones technology today. The only major change is that containerization cut down crew sizes to a few dozen even for the largest cargo ships and so modern ships tend to have better accomodations but that's just because the accomodations take up such a tiny part of the ship that it's not really a major expense to make them nicer. Plus of course the merchant marine has become a lot more concerned with retainning employees.

[@theemissary1313]

Wow, didn't realise how little they put into the ships to speed up construction.

[@jeffbenton6183]

Same; I knew they were built faster then they could be sunk, and they were welded rather than riveted, but the lack of safety and navigation systems was news to me.

[@pretzelbomb6105]

@@jeffbenton6183 They all came with a navigation system. It's just that said system was "follow your escorts or the ship in front of you". That said, I'm sure plenty of Liberty Ship pilots obtained compasses of their own at one point or another. Just about every single navy, coast guard, and merchant marine active during WW2 has a long and storied tradition of stealing stuff from land and being 50 miles out to sea before anyone can get mad, after all.

[@jeffbenton6183]

@@pretzelbomb6105 Fair, I should have worded that better - they didn't have *some* safety and navigation systems that other ships were required to have.

[@janpow331]

I was able to sail two liberty ships to Vietnam in 1966-67. I was about 19 at the time. Sailing from San Francisco to Vietnam took about a month! Got in a typhoon in the South China Sea on our return voyage. It's a good thing we were totally empty or I suspect we would have sunk otherwise.

[@David-ic4by]

A Liberty Ship was named after one of my ancestors, the SS Antoine Saugrain. It was sunk in the Pacific Theater of Operations.

[@whiskeyecho3523]

Amazing, absolutely something to be proud of!

[@David-ic4by]

@@whiskeyecho3523 Oddly a more noble end than being sold for scrap!

[@666toysoldier]

My father was a teen-aged welder in the Kaiser shipyard in Washington during WWII. He mostly worked on LST's and Liberty ships.

[@casey6556]

My great grandfather served on a Liberty ship as Navy Armed Guard, surviving both a Japanese torpedo and a captain with a pistol (who tried to shoot him in his bunk over their dispute about the captain’s drinking… while too drunk to notice that my great grandfather wasn’t there). I’ll be lucky enough to ride on one of the two still-working ones this year, 80 years later. Such massively underrated workhorses

[@mealroyale]

Liberty ships cracking like they did had a huge benefit later in that it forced us understand stress fatigue in steel MUCH better. Not a lot of help to those crews but it helps us today in countless ways.

[@SnapCracklePapa]

It was not as big of a problem as this video makes it sound, but yes, it did lead to some excellent research on the topic of steel fracturing.

[@MaxwellAerialPhotography]

It's worth noting that the Liberty Ship wasn't the only class of mass produced ships built in North America during the WW2. The American Victory ship, successor to the Liberty, added 534 ships to the total. In Canada, the another 270 Park class and 198 Fort class cargo ships were built. While the 468 Canadian ships pales in comparison to the 3000+ ships built in the US. keep in mind that Canada had 1/10th the population and 1/11th the GDP on the US in 1941, and proportionally way less coastal cities and shipyards as well.

[@fearthehoneybadger]

Components, assembled separately, then put together, allowed those ships to be constructed at incredible speed. Some were finished less than three days from being laid down. After the war, many were quickly decommissioned as short cuts in construction also made them deathtraps.

[@christopherconard2831]

I believe they were built with an estimated 4-5 year service span. This, when compared to the estimate of almost 30 years for a regular freighter, made them effectively disposable craft.

[@bradleywoods1999]

I'd love a series on other seiges of WW2, the videos in the Budapest series were some of the best you've made and were fantastic to watch. You could do Stalingrad, Leningrad or Berlin there's so many options.

[@skyden24195]

Related film watch suggestion: 1943 film, "Action in the North Atlantic." This Humphrey Bogart starred film depicts the lives and duties of a group of U.S. Merchant Marines during WWII. The film was given incredible praise for its accurate portrayal of the functions and risks of the merchant marine force, so much so that the real sailors of the Merchant Marines Corps. presented Warner Bros. co-founder Jack Warner the Merchant Marine Victory Flag, as well, the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy adopted the film as part of the academy's educational film library. A couple of good reasons to trust that watching this film will give a (time-contemporary) insight to life as a merchant marine during WWII.

[@johnharris6655]

"My guys could not hit the deck with their hat."

[@skyden24195]

@@johnharris6655 Nice. I've come across few people who've actually seen the film.

[@dpeter6396]

OK, now I have to find that. Thanks!

[@huskergator9479]

My dad went to Viet Nam in ‘65 (at least in part) in a Liberty. Think about that. They broke down, had to be towed,and it took a literal month to get there. I think everybody after them flew. Excellent video! I knew the Liberties were a big deal, but your work really put it in perspective.

[@Echo_Recon_01]

Brits: we produced a million tons of shipping a year. Yanks: You gotta pump those number up those were rookie numbers Kidding aside, although they produced a lot of those liberties they also make sure to protect them by innovating tactics against U-boats. That Batte of Jutland poster on the background is 🔥

[@robertkeyes258]

Very informative. I had long been under the impression that 'liberty ship' was a general description, and not a specific design. My grandfather worked in a South Boston shipyard starting the days after the attack on Pearl Harbour, and my mother said he had worked on Liberty Ships, but it is evident from your map that the many yards around Boston were building other designs. Does anyone know what might have been built in South Boston that would give my mother the idea that these were Liberty Ships? I'll be visiting her in a few hours for Christmas and can ask her for more of her recollections.

[@historigraph]

There were a number of different variants of liberty ships to fulfill different roles, which might be where this impression came from - but they all came from a common base design

[@catman8965]

I remember my father telling me, he crossed the Atlantic on a liberty ship during world war 2. He also told me about mutiny that occurred because the captain kept all the money for the food supplies for himself.

[@davidmushal7862]

Hey, thank you for continuing to make high-quality videos about a variety of topics. You haven’t gone the Liberty Ship route yourself and sacrificed quality for speed. Keep it up!

[@robertcarver4067]

Nice video. Just a note, if you are ever in San Francisco, California visit the museum ship SS Jeremiah O'Brien.

[@thedailydoseofrandomnesscr1931]

Glad to see the merchant marine finally represented

[@OutsideTheTargetDemographic]

I always wondered just how America got all that logistics, food, ammo, tanks, planes, and artillery into Europe. Now I know. 👍

[@patmcdonald766]

Remember the very BRAVE Merchant Marine who gave their lives in great numbers to get the ships to their destinations

[@bladfadsfblaadsfsadf900]

You know you’re gonna lose when Marines are getting ice cream in the Marianas and the Army is getting Thanksgiving dinner in France.

[@Eric_Hutton.1980]

Two videos in three days. God bless you Historigraph and have a very Merry Christmas.

[@brokenbridge6316]

The success of the Liberty Ship is proof positive that logistics in war is crucial to winning or losing a war.

[@haroldbenton979]

Here's how mighty our logistics capabilities were in April of 45. We had 7 theater level attacks going on at one time plus the lend lease support. We had the attacks in Northern Europe the Mediterranean theater plus Burma China along with 2 separate attacks in the Pacific we were attacking in the Philippines and Okinawa. Plus supporting the 8th 15th 9th 20th 5th air forces plus keeping the navy fully supplied and starting relief support into freed countries in Europe.

[@worldtraveler930]

A breakdown and description of the ship and how it functions and layout would have been Greatly Appreciated!!! 🤠👍

[@etiennepilorget8777]

Congratulations for the quality and interest lf your videos, Historiograph.

[@Dog.soldier1950]

As a shipwright Ihave spoken to several veterans of WW2 shipyards., including my father. All confirm it was an abundance of workers at every step of construction that allowed for fast construction

[@JHruby]

Fantastic video as always. Extremely well-researched and presented.

[@OtherSarah2]

My parents were both welders in Kaiser-Permanente's shipyards in Richmond in WW2. Thank you for doing this video.

[@avengermkii7872]

No matter what weapon you build or have, it's the logistics that matter the most. Logistics is what win wars.

[@morgan97475]

As a former infantry officer, I humbly agree.

[@mikedearing6352]

Yup, you can have the best most greatest stuff but without adequate supplies you have little control...ie...fuel for armor formations, air forces, Battleships.

[@Hillbilly001]

Indeed. Amateurs talk about strategy and tactics. Professionals talk about logistics. Cheers from Tennessee

[@Hillbilly001]

​@@morgan97475Indeed. As a former infantry NCO I agree.

[@NathanDudani]

*Pushes up glasses*

[@clank1013]

Having been on the Jeramiah O'Brian in San Francisco, (the last remaining liberty ship in original configuration), this video is very well done, and its so cool to have been able to see this amazing part of history in person.

[@1977Yakko]

This takes the concept of "logistics wins wars" to its peak.

[@benwilson6145]

Maybe spare a thought for the men who crewed them?

[@1977Yakko]

@@benwilson6145 No. They were clearly autonomous. A.I. cargo ships were totally a thing back then. Didn't you know? :-/

[@kyrlchristianboni5263]

@@benwilson6145 they are part of the logistics, just like supply truck drivers in land

[@williamkoppos7039]

Your narration Sir is so much better than the fast majority. Almost "ridiculously" better. :)

[@bothewolf3466]

WOOOOOO LOGISTICS! It dosen't WIN a war in an of itself, but doing it wrong will sure loose you one fast.

[@harrywright5705]

Brilliant video as always really enjoyed your channel this year, keep them coming !

[@tassiehandyman3090]

A very skilled film producer once told my wife..." there is no problem that cannot be solved with enough cash..." If you use the lives of the Merchantmen as the currency of expense, then the Battle of the Atlantic stands as the defining example of this idea... "Oh hear us when we cry to thee, for those in peril on the sea" 🙏❤️🇳🇿

[@catholicmilitantUSA]

Hey Historiograph; amazing vid as usual, I'm always riveted to your vids and watch them as soon as they come out! Although I love them all, possibly my favourite ones have to do with the Battle of the Atlantic; the Plan Z video, the Battle of the River Plate, HX84, the two Atlantic vids, etc. I remember you telling your viewers a few months ago that you wanted to focus on destroyer actions and I thought about a really cool one; the Japanese destroyer Sakaki was sunk by a Habsburg submarine off Crete in 1917, a fact your viewers might find interesting. They might also find the whole story of the Japanese destroyer squadron in the Mediterranean in 1917 interesting. Hpy New Year!

[@lionheartx-ray4135]

Liberty Ship the true wounder weapon of WW2.

[@MaxwellAerialPhotography]

but its not as fancy or eyecatching as all the deutsches wunderwaffles that wehraboos cream their pants over on a regular basis.

[@Isurusish]

I just stumbled upon your channel and I'm hooked! I like your style, please keep it coming

[@fredflint8399]

That was very educational. Thanks for your hard work!!!

[@BuleMichael7]

I love to scuba dive USAT Liberty shipwreck on the eastern shore of Bali, Indonesia. Torpedoed and towed into Indonesia while sinking and beached. In 1963 Mt Agung erupted, causing USAT Liberty to slide deeper into the ocean. Night diving the wreck is surreal. Love your channel. ✌🏼

[@hilegend2859]

Merry Christmas Josh :) thanks for all the great vids this year.

[@javidaderson]

They were churning these things out so fast that sometimes they were loading cargo as it was being finished.

[@dpeter6396]

Here's yer hat, what's yer hurry?

[@robertmorey4104]

Great videos! I love the data and graphics! Well done!

[@ArizonaJoeHines]

The US created the escort carrier, basically a Liberty Ship with a flight deck, to protect convoys across the Atlantic. In the Pacific they served as floating air platforms during the various island invasions. Really versatile.

[@Frostfly]

The story around Keiser's Portland Oregon Yard is a wild ride.

[@GillytheTechpriest]

Another great video, the best Christmas present this year :)

[@Hillbilly001]

Well done. Bloody outstanding! Cheers from Tennessee

[@HistoryHaty]

Historigraph keep up the good work. The Liberty Ship is an amazing story. The cheap ship that was s crucial in Allied victory ✌️ in World War II. Great doc.

[@jimtalbott9535]

My grandmother (ammo factory worker during WW2, Boeing Industrial engineer later) told me stories of Henry Kaiser and the Liberty ship. Deeply impressive.

[@bicbouy4126]

You weren’t at liberty to make this video but I’m glad you did 😉👍🏻👍🏻

[@NorthForkFisherman]

Ba-dum, TISH!

[@richardloewen7177]

Good job to focus on unglamorous but vital infrastructure. BUT also include the corvette, with turning radius tighter than that of the Nazi U-boats.This combo allowed enough liberty ships to get through.

[@PennsyPappas]

And we should not forget about the Destroyer Escort (think Frigate) and Carrier Escorts yhat were built to provide protection for these vital ships. They werent big, fast, or pretty, but they certainly were used in sich a way to not only keep these ships safe but also assist in beach landings.

[@peerelshoff]

huge fan of your site. thank you!!!

[@deanmccormick8070]

My late Dad spent the early part of the war welding those together at Todd Shipyards in San Pedro, CA. He often told me that every time one was launched, he was half surprised that the thing didn't sink immediately.

[@erichammond9308]

Weapons win battles, logistics wins wars. War winners: The Liberty ships and the Duece and a half

[@ArizonaJoeHines]

Many thousands of the latter were constructed in the US, taken apart., and shipped to Iran, where they were reassembled. It saved a lot of space in the hold that way.

[@brucewellman]

I noticed that they talked about the flaw but not about the fix to the flaw namely double plates in the center of the ship it was due to not staggering the welds and basic physics

[@davidpope3943]

Yes, the Liberty ships and their improved cousins the Victory ships were rather unsung heroes considering the immense role they played toward the Allied victory. There’s a Liberty ship in the Thames Estuary in the U.K. about 4.6 miles away from where I sit typing this at home. Although it’s a wreck, I can remember the masts and derricks being clearly visible from the shore back in the 1960’s, although the masts have been reduced over the years until now there are just three remaining stumps although they are still visible from the shore at all states of the tide. Next year, those masts are to be removed as a ‘safety’ measure. Why? Well, THIS Liberty ship is rather special. The name of this ship? The Richard Montgomery. On August 20th 1944, she went aground on a sandbank 820’/250m from The River Medway Approach Channel, just 1.5 miles / 2.4 km from Sheerness & 5 miles / 8 km from Southend. She was carrying around 7,000 tons of munitions of various types. Salvage continued until 25th September 1944 when she broke in two & flooded completely. I’ve often wondered if the well-known issues with welding or steel embrittlement on the Liberties contributed to her breaking apart. Although the ultimate blame lay with the Royal Navy officer who basically had her anchor in the wrong place, the Captain and first officer had been alerted by ships anchored nearby that she was drifting but somehow they failed to do anything about it. After that, there was a bit of buck-passing but basically because of the expense of further cargo salvage, it was just left there with some warning buoys moored nearby. You can bet none of the decision makers lived nearby, for here we are, 79 years later & there are STILL 1,400 tons of explosive ordnance aboard, ranging in size from various pyrotechnic flares up to 286 x 2000lb / 910kg high explosive bombs. The level of risk of a detonation (which would rank as one of the largest man-made non-nuclear explosions ever) runs from ‘nil’ to ‘extreme’ depending on the source. What IS factual is that in 1967, an attempt was made to ‘neutralise’ the contents of the wrecked Polish cargo ship Kielce that had sunk in 1946 several miles off Folkestone in deeper waters (90’) & with ‘a fraction’ of the load of explosives on the Montgomery. During preliminary work, one of the explosive charges being used to cut the hull up caused initiation of part of Kielce’s explosive cargo. There were no injuries in Folkestone but ‘much panic & chaos’ and damage to multiple buildings. The seismic effect of the detonation was recorded up to a distance of nearly 5000 miles away, equivalent to an earthquake measuring 4.5 on the Richter scale. It left a crater 20’ deep, 153’ long & 67’ wide in the seabed! The rationale for removing the Montgomery’s masts is that their weight is putting too much stress on the deck. When they first tried this last year, they couldn’t secure the vessel that was to be the base of operations to the seabed adjacent to the Montgomery because of the presence of ‘suspicious’ objects on the seabed next to the wreck. I wonder what they might have been…🤔 I just hope the 2024 operation doesn’t cause headlines for all the wrong reasons. Watch this space…..

[@Brian-nw2bn]

For the algorithm!!! Merry Christmas to you Historigraph and to everyone else as well! God bless you alll and a blessed and beautiful new year to come for us all. Much love, Brian, some rando in the comments.

[@billmarsano3404]

Excellent! I sailed on Liberty tramp steamers postwar as a punk teenage steward in the officers' mess--and loved every minute of 3 voyages between North American and South America-- and loved every minute. And they were not ugly ducklings--once all their wartime impedimenta was stripped off--all the machine guns, gun tubs, the cannon aft, the mastic armor (lessened effect of ricocheting shrapnel) the Liberty stood revealed as an honest, good-looking ship of foursquare masculine appearance. They were not only, asnoted, build in spanking new shipyards but were built by hordes of men and women who'd never seen a ship, much less the sea. Postwar they were 'sold civilian' and up until the early 1960 had a sale value of up to a million bucks apiece. The Libertys represented the greatest industrial achievement in history. Thanks so much for this video!

[@peterixon8708]

Stunning statistics. Well done with this video.

[@raylauderback5126]

Great video! Just found the channel and subscribed! Merry Christmas!🎅

[@Ralphieboy]

Excellent documentary!

[@grevberg]

When I was a Sailor in the early 60's there were still liberty ships around.

[@ionaguirre]

Thanks a lot for your videos. Ah, Happy new year 2024 !

[@CCoburn3]

My paternal grandparents were welders building liberty ships. The better welder a person was, the lower on the ship he welded. My grandfather welded the bottom seam. Women worked on the interior of the ship. My grandmother welded in the tunnel for the propeller shaft. The people in the shipyard they worked in later developed one of the highest cancer rates in the nation. Both died of cancer. Back in those days, shipyards were not very careful with the chemicals people were exposed to.

[@RaymondCore]

The Merchant Seamen were the unsung heroes of WW2. Thanks for the video.

[@scratchliquid1]

have a holly 2 jolly christmas mr. historigraph