Kaiser Shipyard in Richmond, CA 

My first day on the Job with American Mail Lines, 22 Jul 1968, was as a Port Engineer on board the SS Red Oak Victory, getting her read to sail for Vietnam.

One of the things I've always found astonishing is not just the speed with which shipyards were turning out ships, but also the speed with which they could repair and refit existing ships. It takes years to plan and then more than a year to refit a modern carrier. In WWII, when Enterprise was finally relieved and sent back for repair and refit, within 6 months she was not just repaired, she'd been upgraded and lengthened, given a lot more antiaircraft firepower, and sent back out.

I remember that Henry J. Kaiser was a well-known public figure when I was a kid during World War II. He was into all sorts of ventures and was somewhat like the modern-day Elon Musk. After the war, he was one of the owners of the Kaiser-Fraser automobile company. I actually owned a used Kaiser when I was in college in the 1950s. The company also produced a compact automobile called the Henry J. It was slightly modified and was sold in the Sears catalog under the brand name Allstate.

Thanks to all volunteers and crew of S.S. Red Oak Victory for preserving such an important piece of merchant marine heritage. The video was very informative as to the Kaiser shipyards in Richmond, California. I knew of them but not in such great detail as presented. Kaiser was certainly a man who got things done in record fashion. Thanks to Ryan, Libby and the crew for a great video !

My grandmother-in-law worked at one of Kaiser’s shipyards in ww2. I never got to know her very well, but by all accounts she was a badass back in the day.

A note about the SS Red Oak Victory. The ship was named after a small town in western Iowa because the town of Red Oak, Iowa had the highest number of WW2 casualties per capita of any other city or town in the US. Although the Red Oak Victory is not part of the National Park Service's Rosie the Riveter Memorial Park in Richmond the ship is listed on that Park's webpage with it's history.

I was stationed at NAS Alameda, from 1970 to 1973, with the Marine Reserve Detachment. I was a Helicopter Crew Chief and we would fly over the old Richmond Shipyards. I got to see the USS Valley Forge, when she was brought in to be scrapped. I also got to see her when she burned sitting pier side. There were also four (4) old Jeep Carriers that were tied up at the Old Point Castro Ferry Terminal, that were waiting to be towed to the shipyard to be scrapped. They filmed part of one of the Dirty Harry movies on them. They jumped two (2) motorcycles between them at the end of the movie. Most of the movie was filmed at the old Hunters Point Navy Shipyard.

An old friend several times related a story about a friend of his who was a foreman or supervisor there, can't remember which. Seems there was a lady sitting on a box welding a seam on the deck. She seemed to be moving too fast. On investigation, he found that she was filling the joint with welding rod and running a cover pass over it. He fired her. Next day she was back having been re-hired. The Kaiser Steel plant in Fontana was, as I understand, built from scratch during the war. It was built 50 miles from the coast as it was thought that the Japs would not be able to reach it at that distance. Henry Kaiser also had a connection to R. G. LeTourneau who manufactured the vast amount of construction equipment used by the military. At the time, LeTourneau was allied with Caterpillar, providing blades, cable control units, pull scrapers, etc.

Kaiser was into everything, ship building, Kaiser Aluminum, construction, and his enduring legacy, Kaiser Health now Kaiser Permamente. His health care became the template for HMO's today. I am familiar with both Kaiser shipyards and health. Once while talking to a citizen of Oakland who called regarding some complaint regarding neighbors we got onto the subject of ships. He had worked in one of those shipyards and described a problem they had. Steel gets larger with temperature, not much but sometimes enough. Apparently heating from summer sun was enough that the sections added during the day would alter the fit usually resolving in the bow being changed to accommodate the changes locked in by the hot plate. Once welded you lock in that shape so the errors did accumulate. I imagine this also caused problems when the ships transited the North Atlantic where the seawater could be less than 32 degrees because seawater freezes at a lower temp. That's a lot of stress from the plate shrinking. I don't think this was ever documented but some were known to crack weather from cold or other stresses such as those Ryan mentioned with square corners on hatches creating stress risers causing cracks.

3:49 *Liberty ship SS Benjamin Warner* Benjamin Warner (1858-1935) was a small business owner in Cleveland, Ohio. Warner’s sons founded Warner Brothers Studios. The _Benjamin Warner_ was the 519th Liberty ship built at the Kaiser Richmond Shipyards and the last Liberty Ship launched on the West Coast, on 1 July 1944. The ship was laid up on the Hudson River and was scrapped in 1971 at Bilbao, Spain.

Both of my grandfathers worked just across the bay at Mare Island in Vallejo. The first I heard of Kaiser Healthcare was there in Vallejo of which all my grandparents were members of. I’ve been through the display ships over in San Francisco and of course numerous times to Mare Island but I definitely need to go over to Richmond and visit Red Oak Victory. Thanks Ryan for the presentations of the historic ships in the Bay Area…

It's lovely to see Curator Szimanski and the NJ team advocating for this hopefully future museum. Seems more fascinating than I might have expected!

My grandparents came from Arkansas to Richmond and worked at Kaiser during the war. Grandma was one of the Wendy The Welder ladies and proud of it.

i've had Kaiser insurance when i worked out in CA. but i never had any idea it was connected to a WW2 shipyard.

Thank you Alan Byrnes. Very Interesting. Don't know about out congress - but our Navy currently wishes our shipbuilding could built more - If Funded Would take then a while to ramp up speed.

What Kaiser did in Richmond is even more remarkable when you consider he was at the same time building three yards in the Portland - Vancouver area on the Columbia river. These three yards delivered 729 ships, if my math is right, that included: Liberties, Victories, LST's, T-2 tankers, and CVE's. I highly recommend " Victory Factory, The untold story of Henry Kaiser's Oregon shipyards" by Peter J. Marsh. It's a great read with fantastic photos covering the Kaiser yards, and other facilities in the area that combined produced over 1000 vessels of various description.

Awesome…. Thanks for sharing!

I have visited both the Liberty Ship Jeremiah O'Brien and the Victory Ship Red Oak Victory; great reminders of the World War II generation!

I am a "war baby" born in Richmond in 1944 during the war at the Richmond Hospital on 23rd St between Garvin and Gaynor. The building still stands at that location. It was an exciting time to have been born. My father was employed at the Richmond Independent Newspaper which is long gone; however, the building still exists on the east side of 10th St. My mother was a Nurse at the Richmond Hospital. They came to Richmond in 1940 at the beginning of the mass buildup as a result of the war. When I graduated from high school in 1962 I found employment with Chevron on a tanker based at the Richmond Long Wharf.

There were two other shipyards in the Bay Area: Alameda and Sausalito. The four slipways on Alameda in the Oakland Estuary are still there.

I live in Atchison Village.. last remnant of the housing that was built for the ship yard. Thx for covering this... 🙂

I believe one of the Dirty Harry movies, (Magnum Force) finale' was filmed on CVE's tied up at Richmond.

I grew up in Richmond in the '80s and there were still a lot of remnants of the war-time industrialization back then, in addition to the big Chevron refinery and the Santa Fe rail yard. I remember going to the Kaiser hospital a couple of times for emergencies. It was a pretty tough neighborhood back then. Hopefully things have gotten better down there and the museum ship can bring in a good number of visitors.

Victory would never have happened without the shipyards, factories, foundries, lumberyards, textiles etcetera. A generation that valued freedom, liberty and had the fortitude to sacrifice and work hard to become the greatest. The logistical giant that only America could have quickly assembled is a truly incredible chapter of the war.

My Dad worked at this shipyard during WWII, we lived in Richmond, Ca during this time with my father & mother and my sister and 2 brothers. I still remember those years, we moved to southern Ca in 1953. I worked at this same shipyard in 1961 for 2 weeks, before joining the US Navy.

Interesting film clip with what looks like Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov visiting Henry Kaiser and his shipyards during the war. Molotov I'm sure very interested as many of these ships would be soon sailing bound for Murmansk and Archangel on the Arctic convoy routes.

I have heard of the Kaiser Shipyards. Hoover dam is not far from where I live.

Kaiser also built a steel mill at Pomona, Ca.

That was great, enjoyed it a lot.

I believe he also started Kaiser Aluminum after the war and they are still in business.

Oh yes, my father used to mention Kaiser Ships, and mention how they were wielded instead of ribbits. Before he left the Naval Reserve, they ask him if he want to be on board U.S.S. Makin Island.

Loved this video Ryan thank you so much.

Great Vidio good to know our past Hopefully learn from our past

Kaiser also had a steel mill in Fontana, CA that supplied the steel used at their seven shipyards and to other companies.

Thanks Ryan. I think the ship building revolution started here is an under-recognized aspect of the war contribution. War Factories did a recent episode on it but there are few other videos on line. Behind you were pictures of ships built by the shipyards but I have never seen a video on the Kaiser hospital ships or corvettes or.... This revolutionized ship building around the world and is the standard way to build ships today.

I lived in California for several years and always heard and saw "Kaiser Permanente" signs and facilities. I thought it was odd this Kaiser guy... where'd that come from?? It wasn't until many many years later I realized it was from the Kaiser shipyards of WWII. I had no clue.

Great stuff, thank you. Too bad as usual, there are serious problems with the audio. Since it's clear in house isn't up to the mark, please hire someone to engineer the audio!

In the fall of 1966 she was taken out of moth ball and reactivated in Portland Oregon. I worked for Albina Engine and Machine we reactivated her, during her dock and river trials I worked as fireman water tender and oiler. documented along with 13 other Victory ships.

I have a stick welder I bought years ago from a man who used it in the Kaiser ship yards building Liberty Ships.

I’ve visited this ship. Well worth the effort.

Can build a ship in four and a half days is amazing With today's labor force red tape and unions if they got it done in four and a half months would be amazing.

The logistics chain that fed the shipyards is the real industrial marvel.

Across the channel from Red Oak Victory is the "Rosie the Riveter National Historical Park". Among other things, it has a wall honoring women who worked in defense manufacturing jobs during WW2. One also has nice vistas of northern SF Bay and a boat marina from the park. In late February there is an annual half marathon, 10K and 5K trail run along the Bay Trail that starts near the park (BTDTGTTS, literally).

Interesting but you failed to mention that Henry Kaiser was escorting Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin's Prime Minister, around the shipyard. The 'Molotov' cocktail was named after Molotov. There was also a large shipyard between Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington, called Vanport but it was wiped out after the war by a flooding Columbia River.

In Iron bottom sound there is talk of several piles of military equipment that was dropped overboard while being unloaded off these and other vessels. The story goes one officer drops a jeep in the water and sends divers down to recover it, and they ask for the serial number to ensure they are bringing up the correct jeep. Got that from an Old WW2 vet that served in the Pacific and has since passed. He served on DE202 USS Eichenberger

Is Henry Kaiser giving Molotov a tour?

I would love to come down and volunteer / work full time as a video production guy.

It should be noted that the star in the vintage shipyard videos is Molotov, the Soviet Foreign Minister during War II. Henry Kaiser is the portly gentleman showing him around. The film must have been for a courtesy tour for Molotov.

I was born and raised in Richmond. My folks moved to Richmond prior to WWII. My father worked at the sardine plant at Point San Pablo. According to my folks Richmond was a quiet town prior to the shipyards being built. The influx of people really changed to look of Richmond overnight and it wasn’t good. Housing shortages and the strain on the public schools to handle the children who came with the workers. Schools went on double sessions. Workers who had no place to live would buy a ticket to the 24 hour movie theaters and sleep in the seats. A side note: the battleship USS Indiana was scrapped at shipyard #3 in 1963.

Kaiser also made a car. The Henry J. steve

I've lived within walking distance to Shipyard 3 and the Red Oak for almost eight years now. That area still has various active shipping operations including automobile shipping and there is a winery in the former sheet metal shop. Adjacent to the Red Oak there is a single remaining whirlycrane that is the home for a nesting pair of osprey (Rosie and Richmond) for the last 8 years. The Shipyard 1 location has been redeveloped into a beautiful residential area called Marina Bay with restaurants, walk/bike trails and parks. There's a museum and visitors center for the Rosie the Riveter National Historic Park located by the Craneway Pavilion and Richmond Ferry Terminal with ferry service to and from San Francisco. It's worth a trip if you are visiting or live in the Bay area.

As a student of WWII history...HECK YES I have heard about all this!

😮 The world owes a great debt to Henry J. Kaiser. ❤

Now you should cover Marinship over on Richardson Bay. The Bay Model there is also worth seeing.

I like that a worker started working and he worked on his welding a particular part a boss gave him his check the end of the week said what’s this she said it’s your check. The welder ask if she had cash. They never seen a check before. Never helped him see the new payroll.

Ryan, you need to make a trip down the west coast to San Diego to visit the USS MIDWAY CV-41, NAS North Island, the birthplace of Naval Aviation, the former Kaiser shipyard, now called NASSCO, a General Dynamics company, and Naval Station San Diego, home to the pacific fleet. Total time to see all these sights estimated to be at least 1 week.

Visiting the ship is awesome! I'm so glad I live close by. But I do need to visit again soon. It's also next to a National Park, Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front NHP. That is TOTALLY worth the visit! (And it's free!) There's a lot of great rangers and volunteers there, and they talk about a lot of things, including Rosies and Wendy's, Japanese internment/ Executive Order 9066, etc, as well as the "competing" shipyard across the bay, Marinship, in Sausalito. That's who they were competing with to finish that ship in only 4 days. So, i most definitely think all those places are worth a visit. Marinship's building is now owned by the Army Corps of Engineers because it was turned into a water flow test area in the '60's to see if they could dam the SF Bay to keep in all the fresh snowmelt from the Sierras. (Hint-no.) www.nps.gov/rori/index.htm

Kaiser had no previous experience with shipbuilding. His prior experience was building dams and such.

The Kaiser class oilers used in Military Sealift Command are named after him.

Love these videos! Who is the gentle with the mustache and cigarette in hand at 5:51? He looks super familiar, but I can't name him.

A video about the Port Chicago weapons station explosion would be cool! Happened not far from Richmond

I was stationed in Alameda, so yeah, i know about the Richmond yards 😂

It would be great if you could do a story on the Armed Guard, the regular seamen and naval officers of the U S Navy that were the military complement on these ships.

While I had not heard of the Kaiser Shipyard, I know of the former yard in Brunswick, Georgia. By comparison they only built 85 liberty ships, including seven in December 1944. Great information in this video, unfortunately at times the sound was all over the place in volume.

Please do one on Don Ho at the Shipyard .

Kaiser's ship yard # v5 in Oakland Ca, made victory class attack transports

It's probably safe to say almost everybody living in the Bay Area has had -- or knows someone who had -- Kaiser health insurance. And interesting footage of Soviet ambassador Molotov. There were always closer ties between the shipworker unions and the communist party in the USA, so I'll bet he was a welcome guest for at least some of those workers! I have to wonder if Molotov wasn't using his visit to stoke even stronger connections. And I wonder what old Henry Kaiser thought of him!

A great argument that the war may have been won in this shipyard! It certainly contributed it's part for sure.

I am writing a paper about yards like this right now.

yes

3:25 heyyy Comrade Molotov

When placing the Mike, can you consider which way they will be facing? Mike is on his left lapel but he is talking to his right and sound frequently drops out. Otherwise a great video.

It's an idea in the making seeing those kids drawings! The New Jersey could hold a day where children can come and draw the ship and the best pics judged by a poll of some type of New Jersey RU-vid viewers decides the winner or winners that can be placed somewhere on the tour route? I think that would be super cool and draw in the younger generation of budding artists to Battleships.

Intresting they put it in a vido game.

So, assuming about 3000 tonnes per ship that's about 2,000,000 tonnes of steel used for 747 ships. By the way, about 2,000,000 tonnes of iron ore leaves Australia every single day!!

I think the images included were of the Bolshevik Molotov.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vyacheslav_Molotov.

An order of magnitude? NJ is three orders of magnitude (and change) heavier, bigger, more difficult to build than a car!

after a thousand videos, I'm surprised that the audio issues are still a problem.

Kaiser also made car's.

We could never build manufacturing facilities like that now. Too many regulations and too many people with agendas that would slow things down.

If only we had the will to build or refurbish and reopen more shipyards today.

Yes, those appear to be Russians on a tour.

Probably went past Richmond 200 times as a child in the back seat of my parent’s car. Unfortunately they hadn’t any interest in history. Even though they lived thru WW2. A pity

@ryan: Your videos are always very informative, but the audio is terrible. When people turn theirs heads away, the voice becomes very low and noisy. I have to constantly have the mouse over the volume slider and adjust constantly. Would upgrading to headset microphones be an option? That at least would make the sound independent from head movement.

Kaiser shipyard created concrete ships during WWII

Bechtel at Sausalito built almost as many just as fast with better quality.

Dude would be spinning in his grave if he saw the state of US shipyards now

Wasn’t the Red Oak Victory originally a museum ship in LA close to the USS IOWA MUSEUM?

The shorter time frame is a prime example of the difference between the public sector and the private sector.... Efficiency equals profit in the private sector, in the public sector all efficiency means if more work for the same money, hence the public sector working so slowly.

No wonder Germany lost both world wars. They built their shipyard in California!

its not the spruce goose, its the H-4 Hercules! You're welcome Howard. Seriously an insult to the man for calling it that. And it was made from birch, not spruce. Your man needs to be more repsectfull

Molotov and Gromyko on tour.

The sound with the changes in volume is rather anoying. It does not match the usual quality for your great videos

Wow! Crazy that after losing WW1 the Kaiser came over to the US and built ships for the allies during WW2.

4th, 27 April 2023

During the war, the poor sailors called them ‘Kaiser Coffins’ for a reason..

We could not do this today. Currently The US Army is borrowing artilliary shells from South Korea because our inventory is low. Bary Sotero and the Communism invasion ha s taken a heavy toll.

Holy lip smack!

@battleship new jersey what is the difference between a riveted versus welded ship?