How the Liberty Ship Won WW2 for the Allies 

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?

@@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

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

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

@@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.

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

"And RU-vidrs talk procurement" - Perun

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

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.

@@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

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

Was his name Sam?! (AKA Unsinkable Sam)

@@biscuitninja no his name was grandpa

Was it fun or terrifying or both?

Im sure the arctic sinking was his least favourite

⚓️Thank you 😎

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.

I absolutely will if I visit Athens

@@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...

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.

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!

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.

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.

@@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.

@@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?

@@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.

It just proves that greater numbers beats quality.

Three out of thousands - wow!

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

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.

​@@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.

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

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

Wouldn’t be surprised if the liberties were cheaper too

Well certainly faster than they were building U-Boats.

@@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.

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

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

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

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

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.

They were massive steel canoes

As a former infantry officer, I humbly agree.

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.

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

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

*Pushes up glasses*

Maybe spare a thought for the men who crewed them?

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

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

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.

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

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.

@@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.

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

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.

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

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

Soon to be eclipsed by the Americans..

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

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

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)

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

@@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.

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.

@@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.

Before you laugh too hard, consider the SS _Kielce._ Sank in 1946 with a hold full of explosives; exploded during attempted salvage operations twenty-one years later, scored a 4.5 on the Richter scale. And explosives are, well, volatile. The older the explosive is, the less stable. Add in the unpredictable effects of corrosion on detonators... and don't forget, _Monty_ is still out there because, despite being in the middle of one of the busier waterways on the planet (it's in the mouth of the Thames,) it's just seen as too dangerous to touch. Consider also that _Monty_ is made of pre-atomic steel, which makes it more valuable than such a large chunk of steel would otherwise be.

@boobah5643 I will just ask you to Google sheerness on sea, if it does go up we have webbed feet so water won’t affect us 😂 But I did look into the SS Kielce and it was a very good read so thank you for that.

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.

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.

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.

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.

@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.

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.

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.

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

As another RU-vidr 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.

@@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.

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

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

Amazing, absolutely something to be proud of!

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

Not quite. You reference the Jones Act, which is meant to *protect* shipbuilding. What holds them back is a lack of subsidies. Every major shipbuilding country in the World heavily subsidizes that industry. We stopped doing that starting in the 80s. Our shipbuilders can't compete in that kind of market, so they quit. You're right insofar that the American *shipfaring* industry can't operate cheaply because of the Jones Act, but *shipbuilders* need both "cabotage" laws (such as the Jones Act) and subsides to stay afloat.

​@@jeffbenton6183 It was probably "meant" to protect shipbuilding, but not even the extremely few US ship builders which still exist are under any illusions that it has the exact opposite effect. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the millionaire owners are constantly out in the press saying "I need more free monies from the tax payers, or I won't be able to buy a third private jet", but that's not exactly evidence.

It definitely hurts US seafaring, but it doesn't hurt US shipbuilding - that was my only point. Every shipbuilding country has both cabatoge and subsidies. Anyone who lacks one of those can't compete. We often criticize the Jones Act for the suppressive effect it has on *using* ships, but it has no effect on us *building* ships. It's important not to conflate the two. The Jones Act was passed in the 20s, and - obviously - it didn't stop us from building 5000 merchant ships in WWII. EDIT: This was in response to a post that responded to my previous one, but I don't see that reply anymore

It mostly hurts the outlying territories, who can really only get bulk cargo by sea.

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

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

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

eat more fresh fruit then

Considering the spontaneous failure rate of the ships (and lack of basically any backup, safety, or emergency systems on them), that's probably a good thing lol

I mean modern ships are also built fairly quickly.

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.

The downside of Liberty ships is they weren't particularly robust. They were designed with only a 5 year lifetime in mind and many never got beyond their initial voyages due to U-boats and hull crack issues. Lower quality steel had issues, the designs didn't take into account stress-raisers from sharp corners, the frame was too rigid with rib spacing too close, crack propagation could be cataclysmic in a hull with few rivets. The designers were learning their way and corrected nearly all these issues in the subsequent Victory Ship design. But the Liberty ship did the job that was needed at that time, getting supplies to England in preparation to the Normandy invasion, so it was money well invested. These ships were not 'throw away', but they were not designed for long term usage.