try and image Japan or Germany trying to invade the US. German wasn't even able to cross 20 miles of the English channel and japan just said make due for their forces.
They were an end-game crisis. They managed to do the following: - Supply the UK with food and military equipment though Lend-Lease - Supply the USSR with military equipment and food through Lend-Lease - Fighting at one point on 3 major fronts and still supply everyone - Supplied the Allies with the bulk of all of the gasoline they used (5 out of every 6 barrels the Allies used came from the US). - Funded the Manhattan Project (which was astronomically expensive) - Re-equipped allied armies (not limited to, French, Commonwealth, Italian, Greek, etc) - Built the largest navy of the war and still had ships pumping out of the shipyards at the end of the war. - Completed rearming the US Military with M1 Garands (one thing to have a semi-auto for specialists or some units. Another thing entirely to make it standard for EVERYONE). - Managed to fight the war on opposite ends of the planet and not have any major logistical issues. They did this without breaking a sweat and by August 1945, they were still not at 100%; US industry was still gearing up. Absolutely terrifying if you were on the receiving end. The US economy made up about 50% of GNP for the entire world by the end of the war.
Once upon a time there was a famous captain of a Liberty Ship. Never did stormy seas or pirates get the best of him. He was admired by all his crew. Every morning he would open a small safe with a piece of paper inside. He would stare at it for a minute, and then lock it back up. Was it a map? Was it a letter from a long lost love? Everyone speculated about the piece of paper. One day the captain died. After laying him to rest, the mate led the crew into the safe and opened it. The first mate turned pale and showed the paper to the others. Four words: Port Left Starboard Right
Heh, for me, I was permanently taught the port/starboard concept after so many years... by a Mr. Bean: The Animated Series episode involving a wayward sun on a cloudy day.
At reenactments I enjoy telling gun loving spectators that Liberty ships, C-47s, Jeep and 2 and 1/2 ton trucks were the war winning weapons, not M1 Garands or Sherman tanks.
@@Lonovavir I agree, I got into an argument once on another board when someone asked what the most important weapon America had given the Soviets in WW2 and I answered, "The Deuce and a Half."
I met a friend's neighbor who had helped build Liberty ships in Richmond, CA; he couldn't enlist because of his eyesight, so he welded instead. His grandmother worked at the same shipyard doing electrical work. WWII was a hell of a thing.
I came across a quote once, I believe it was Donitz, but it might have been Raeder, "I knew the war was lost when I got a report that we had Sunk 150,000 tons of allied shipping and had lost 45 U-boats doing it. Then I got a report that the Allies had built 200,000 tons of shipping and we had only built thirty U boats." The numbers are paraphrased as I don't remember the actual ones, but the thought is accurate. We were not on building tonnage faster than they could sink it, but we were killing them faster than they could make up loses.
That is good and it was done with the same mindset as Ford because they learned to produce over 9000 cars a day with and assembly line back in 1925. We had the soul, the patriotism, the honor and respect for who we were and knew we were lucky enough to live in the best and strongest country in the world. And whether it was cars or ships...WE were American enough to do what was needed to fight true evil for not only ourselves...but the world.
I know that the Jeremiah O'Brien is a Liberty ship that's preserved as a museum and still has the ability to run the engine. Is that the ship you're thinking of?
I remember seeing a Liberty ship still in use in the Philippines many years ago. It was rusty and had seen better days, but she was still working. I wonder how many generations of crew she'd seen? Thanks again Johnny for a great video. You never fail to give us something special.
@@JohnnyJohnsonEsq What about the chain of airports and highways that the US/Canada built from Seattle to Alaska, away from the coast? Probably still some significant distance from you, but not 3000 miles...
My father was in the merchant marines in the Pacific during the war. He said that a number of captains were not happy about the welding of the ships. From long experience with rivited hulls, they couldn't "feel" how the ship was doing. They felt the welding prevented the ship being battered by rough seas. Considering the speed with which the ships were made, liberty ships were pretty rugged.
A lot of people don't realize how important logistics & industrial manufacturing are for winning a war. This was one of the main factors, while the Allies won WWII.
@@DIY_Miracle One of the reasons why the Soviets defeated the Wehrmacht, was because all their manufacturing was located beyond the Ural Mountains and was out of reach for the German Luftwaffe. Just like the US, the Soviets were pumping out tanks & planes like crazy, during the last 2 years of the war, meanwhile Germany's & Japan's industries were bombed into oblivion.Just the amount of Sherman & T-34 tanks produced is insane.
@@doublep1980 No you're absolutely right but the economic power of the Germans was significantly more directed west than east. A lot of Soviet loving communists will tell you the Soviets almost exclusively win the war because of sheer manpower but the majority of capital investment in the war on both sides was in the western front. The titan of Allied industry is severely understated.
A fun Liberty Ship related fact is that when the band of the US Marine Corps plays "The Liberty Bell" by John Philip Sousa, they use the ship's bell from the Liberty Ship the SS John Philip Sousa.
It definitely helped that the US was the only major country with its shipyards and factories not in the range of enemy bombers both before and after they joined the war. Russia had to strip their factories and relocate all their production across the Urals away from the German advance before they could finally have enough equipment for a counter attack.
@@jayschafer1760 Japan developed the capability of bombing New York City, in theory, during the war. This involved aircraft carrier submarines of the I-400 class (only three built), which had the range to travel from the Pacific, around Africa, up to the US Eastern seaboard, and back. Each submarine carried three floatplanes each of which could carry a single 850 kg bomb with a round trip range of just over 700 miles. I said "in theory" because these planes were not particularly fast and only carried a single machinegun for defense. Any intercepting fighter should be able to shred these aircraft - even older aircraft like the P-40 and F4F. There was a plan underway late in the war to bomb multiple cities on the US Eastern seaboard with bubonic plague bombs they had tested in China. This plan was cancelled out of fear that USA had greater means than Japan to develop and build chemical or biological weapons and, at this point, was bombing Japan regularly with impunity..
@@chaosXP3RT LOL, there was a thing called Lend Lease under which USA sent 400,000 jeeps and trucks to USSR, along with 14,000 aircraft, 8,000 tractors, 13,000 tanks. What was sent was based on what USSR told them they needed most, so the majority of the tons of goods and materials shipped was food. The British started the aid months earlier providing vital communications equipment for the Red Army to re-form and coordinate, and tanks. About a third of tanks used in the stubborn defense of Moscow in 1941 were British Matilda II and Valentine tanks. But the American aid dwarfed everything the British provided. And back to the theme of Liberty ships, they were used in convoys carrying aid to USSR, and part of Lend-Lease was giving some Liberty Ships to both UK and USSR. In Kruschev's memoirs he said that Stalin had admitted privately on multiple occasions that without the American aid USSR would have lost the war. That it wasn't altruism. They provided supplies and equipment so that the Red Army would continue to pay in blood for the defeat of Germany. But the aid was needed.
@@iansneddon2956us sent three times more aid to Britain than USSR which was hilarious considering the British spent the good part of three years sitting on their island doing nothing after being dunkirked off Europe while the soviets were struggling against the entire might of the werhmacht, this was werhmacht 3.0 mind u not the shytty werhmacht 1.0 that invaded Poland and France.... with a total strength of over 3.2 million on the frontline How many Germans did us and allies even faced in the western theatre?like 40,000 Germans in Normandy?and a few hundred thousand scattered throughout? No one wanted nor cared for us shytty tanks not even the allies themselves....ur Sherman's and what's the other?m3 lees.....u sent about 7000 tanks,which was maybe significant in the first year or so but once Soviet got their production into full gear it dwarfed anything the us sent,the soviets were literally producing 13,000 medium tanks a year.....like 100,000 heavy medium lights total. Pay in blood u talk as though blood is nothing and ur money is......do u even think American cowards whom have been playing isolationist even have the guts or stomach or will to stomach these kind of losses?just look at how quickly all the western countries, industrialised powerhouses in the 20th century surrendered one after another like dominoes, U think america could have looked into the abyss and faced the brink of annihilation not just of one but the entire,and kept on fighting after the deaths of millions in the first year alone? USA would have capitulated,and surrendered like u know what's.......before their death toll even reached a million against the Nazis. That's why u harp on lend lease all day ,that's ur only call to fame, a mega war where 65 million were killed,and USA was practically nowhere to be seen. Lemme ask u who fought the japanese?was it the Chinese who fought almost 3 million of them in mainland china and Manchuria.....or.....was it the Americans who spent the entire duration of 3 years hopping from one island to the other fighting tens of thousands here and there....before dropping the bomb and calling it quits? U know what was the largest battle USA fought against the japanese.....it was something called Okinawa or Iwo jima where American forces fought 130,000 japanese of which 60,000 were last minute volunteers and female nurses. Do u know what was the size of the German 6th army that perished in Stalingrad with only 65,000 survivors? When the 6th army was encircled they had 600,000 men.
My understanding is that liberty ships were not all that well made, due to how fast they were built. Lots of stories of them just falling apart once they were sold off after the war. (I see now that it was covered in the video).
What’s interesting is how the Roosevelt administration was able to mobilize the entirety of US industrial production and focus it on war production. Whether by convincing or coercing industrial bosses its accomplishments were extraordinary.
@@Chiller01 Roosevelt doesn't get enough credit for seeing the war was coming and getting American industry prepared ahead of time. If he had waited until Pearl Harbor the world might be a very different place today
Shout out for mentioning the Port Chicago and Texas City disasters. The Wiki articles on those are some STRANGE reading! They found Grandcamp's anchor a mile and a half inland!
That really is insane and also hard to imagine considering the problems of steering those ships and the weather, U-Boats and enemy bombers and fighters. weren't the only problems a Liberty Ship captain and crew had to face. Really bad conditions there all around.
@@kellychuang8373 Well, an unsaid thing was that these ships were designed to be expendable, both in combat terms and in their general longevity/reliability. If they lost some due to storm, breakage, or sinking, JJ made the point very emphatically: they were kicking these things out every week or more. Industrial warfare like WW2 is very hard on individual ships, platforms, and people, something that gets obscured by so many histories/docs focusing on things like, oh, Bismarck, or USS Enterprise, or any specific ship, person, unit, etc. It was mass warfare. It is also why Grandchamp was in French service; they offloaded these ships for virtually free onto people who needed ANY kind of merchant ship after the war was over...or they just went straight to the breaker yard.
@@MM22966 That is also something to know really a rough time for those people being on those ships or of anyone who they knew that they had to make it let alone be on these ships or steered it ancestors really had it rough. Anyway I can still say good video and also who knows what other topics this author can cover like another legendary chopper the Mi-24 Hind, MIG Jet, A-1 Cobra more in depth, Apache Helicopter, RPG-7, DSHK Machine Gun and Stinger Missile are just some examples and also hear that Stinger is really doing a number on Russia in Ukraine right now as well.
There's a Victory Ship in Tampa, FL that has been preserved as a museum ship. Well worth a visit. Interestingly enough, the volunteers at that Victory Ship help the crew of the cruise ship that docks next to them by allowing those who work on the cruise ship to have their online orders and packages delivered to the Victory Ship (and thus allowing the crew to order stuff online, without having to leave the dock area to pick it up), so now the ship has become it's own mini cargo depot of sorts once again.
We had a case study on the liberty ships in one of my materials classes for my engineering degree. You're spot on with why they failed. It had to do with converting a design to welding, which was a very new technology still.
I think only three Liberty ships still exist today. One in Alaska which is permanently grounded, one in Baltimore, and one in San Francisco the S.S. Jeremiah O'Brien which is berthed behind the USS Pampanito submarine. Both are museum ships.
Imagine what the world could have accomplished if all the effort expended during war was used for something productive? Why didn't the cutting torch cut off Brutus' head? Thanks for another fun and interesting video Johnny.
As horrible as war is, if you look where technology was at the beginning of the war, and where it was at the end, you have to conclude, yeah, war is terrible, but there is nothing like a fight for survival to incentivize research.
@@eamonnclabby7067 Not really, I mean it sounds great, but if you beat your swords to plow shears, sometime soon, like next Thursday, someone who hasn't is going to roll over your country.
Really neat video btw. So often the combat and politics of WW2 are the primary focus in media. I dont think people fully realise the true extent of the massive logistical achievements of the war. Which, quite possibly are amongst the most epic in scale
My grandfather was on the arg-6, a Liberty ship converted to a floating factory to repair battle damaged naval vessels while at sea. I'm told it had fabrication, machine shops and even a small foundry. My grandfather was a welder and pipe fitter on it. He said anyone who stood on deck when the mount hood exploded died. Liberty ships are a monumental feat of American manufacturing.
American industrialism is unrivaled. 3 ships every 2 days, 18 shipyards, over 7,000 completed. God Bless America. Not the best ships, but they could be built in the numbers needed for the war.
It also helped that the Americans didn't have to worry about enemy bombers. When the enemy can't reach your factories or even your material supply lines, you find you can get a lot of stuff done.
@@mrquirky3626 Correct. The allied bombing campaign was relentless and extremely brutal. I actually kinda feel bad for the civilians who had to try and work under that constant rain of ordnance
I volunteer aboard the SS Jerrmiah O’Brien in honor of my father who was a WWII Merchant Mariner. Thank you for producing such an information-packed video about the Liberty Ship story. If you’re ever in SF be sure to come visit or take a cruise aboard our beloved ship.
In the mid 1950s - My Dad did a 5 month cruise on a Liberty ship (I would have to find notes to get the name) - part of a DoD project during early nuclear testing - they were down in the far South Pacific with a series of trailer "laboratories" built by SRI - strapped to the deck to measure electro-magnetic effects.
Britain: You're not just going to solve the U-boat problem by building ships faster than they can be sunk will you? USA: Don't be ridiculous. I'm going to solve it by building ships faster than they can build ammunition to sink them with.
My Dad had TB before WW2 he tried to join the Military but was classified 4F, so he went to work at Kaiser shipyards in Portland Oregon , I heard a lot about the building of Liberty Ships when I was a boy .
@@JohnnyJohnsonEsq Yeah he started off working in the yard but he got promoted because he had some college , but something I found interesting is they had USO shows for the workers , not the Bob Hopes ,but the B show celebrities, My father would MC those shows
The Liberty ships were a British design brought over in September 1940 by R. Cyril Thompson heading the British shipbuilding mission at the request of the British Admiralty. Harry Hunter led the engineering side of the mission. Cyril Thompson himself helped lay out the new yards used by Henty Kaiser. Thompsons ship home, the Western Prince, was torpedoed in mid-Atlantic. He spent 9 hours helping row the lifeboat with his precious plans and blueprints tucked under his seat before being rescued. The main advantage the American shipbuilders had was that of space to build the yards properly laid out to facilitate building. The existing British shipyards were cramped, and there was not enough time or money to build new yards. Added bonuses for the Americans was a lack of air raids, blackouts at night, and that their personnel were not involved in home defense training or Air Raid Precautions after hours.
@JohnnyJohnsonEsq Read John Sladers The Fourth Service about the Merchantmen at War 1939 -45. Slader himself was a young British merchantman during WWII and even survived a Japanese sub, the I-29 sinking of his ship, Gazcon, taking 13 crew with her, including it's captain. He wrote a book about this called The Red Duster at War that I want to read now. The Merchant Navies of the world did not receive the recognition they deserved. Your video goes a long way to show the American involvement in this struggle.
As a lifelong Maine resident I am proud to say that one of the Surviving Liberty ships was the S.S. Jeremiah O'Brien, was Built in a Portland Maine shipyard. I am sad she is on the west coast, thought Glad she is Preserved considering the Important role her class played in Helping to win the Second world war.
In addition the Iowa class battleships main guns were 16in 50 calibers (in naval terms caliber is the length of the barrel and you multiply it by the diameter so 16x50=800 so 66.6 ft and the 16 in. super heavy shell was 6ft long and 2300 lbs and a void with 80lbs of high explosive for a bursting charge when it arrives it used six 100lb bags of propellent for each she'll and with 9 guns a full salvo brings almost 21 THOUSAND POUNDS of persuasive arguments in fact there was a fortified island off the coast of Vietnam that USS New Jersey donated ballast too and the shock was so great over a mile of the cliffs broke way and slid into the ocean there's headlines from the time that read "US BATTLESHIP SINKS ISLAND" witch even naval historians like drachenifell scoff and say it's not possible to sink an island but if ya look at the definition of sink..... A US Iowa class battleship has in fact sunk part of an island
Its the 40's cant imagine how busy those individuals were to help the war through manufacturing from its air,sea and land equipment and vehicles,really like this video.
I think it was Nicholas Moran who was commenting on the relative effectiveness of German infantry vs US infantry during WW 2. One factor was that the front line army units were the premier branch of service and received personnel from among the best recruits. Meanwhile the US Army funneled men who were good at math to Artillery and spotting, men who were mechanically inclined into the motor pools, etc. So, on average, the US grunts were not as smart as the German grunts and could get into trouble from this. Until that artillery spotter attached to their company calls in accurate artillery fire in copious quantity because of all the shipping capacity that allowed large quantities of ordnance to be shipped to the theatre of operations and those motor pools that kept the supplies flowing to where they were needed. Battleships and cruisers kept the soldiers going in combat with their shore bombardment for a few critical days after landing, but the transport ships got them and their supplies there in the first place, and kept those soldiers supplied every day after.
Gods, they may be propaganda pieces, but those cartoons sure are still fine looking. Interesting that they like the Liberty ship much... any plans to make a video on your favorites of these wartime animations, JJ? Oh, and in a Star Wars sidenote, this ship may have become the inspiration for the GR-75 medium transport used by the Alliance to Restore the Republic.
a nice salute to a famous line of ships. Some liberty ships had bad welding and would come apart in rough water, later ships had an extra steel band welded around the hull as a reinforcement. Supposedly, the cost-to-benefit ratio was calculated that even if a Liberty Ship only made one run it paid back the costs of its construction. As you mentioned, a number of them served well after WW2, as they were cheap and available to many countries after the war ended. I'm glad to see that you included clips from "Action In The North Atlantic", very cliche, but a fine look at a Liberty Ship.
One of the last surviving liberty ships has been turned into a museum and is near where I live, my family and I have visited it countless times, they are a lot larger than they seem
I wish I could remember the title but I once watched an old black and white movie about a ship designer struggling to introduce the Liberty Ship prefab concept to a ‘traditional’ US shipyard. It was only with news of the attack on Pearl Harbour that they agreed. From my classes in metallurgy, the cracks were more common in frigid waters; the “Ductile to Brittle Transition Temperature” (DBTT). The cracks would stop at a riveted plate but with welded hulls could continue all the way around the girth of the ship: SS Schenectady.
''Empire ships were supplements to Britain's normal peacetime merchant fleet, swelling its wartime numbers to 12,000, then the largest merchant ship fleet in the world. Approximately 4,000 ships on the British register were lost between 1939 and 1945, a considerable number being sunk during the Battle of the Atlantic.'' Th Uk had approximately 750 tramp ships at the outbreak of ww2. DEMS had 5500 Me3rchant ships armed by 1939. The USA had to make ships from scratch to replace what the German sank but Britain mainly converted pre-existing Cruise liners from across the Empire larger then the liberty ships. The British Empire had little standardization in terms of ship models as constant improvement or conversion of obsolete assets were present. Even obsolete Victorian armoured cruisers were converted armoured cargo ships. Britain's Ministry of War Transport ships /MoWTS had over 400 types of vessel used for transport. I tried sending copies of all registries but this is not the site for that sort of thing.
Like with the DC-3 replacement "Liberty Ship replacement" designs were a thing in the 1960s though by then the general cargo steamer was beginning to be replaced by container vessels.
300 000 AIRCRAFT. 200 000 ARTILLERY PIECES. 86 000 TANKS. 2 MILLION TRUCKS. SWEDEN HAS 48 ARTILLERY PIECES AND A FEW THOUSAND TRUCKS. 100 PLANES. 100 TANKS. SWEDEN SPEAKS ABOUT MATERIAL MANUFACTURE DURING WAR TIME.
Third Reich: We have a Ghost Division. Imperial Japan: And we’ve got the Akagi, Hiryu, Kaga and Soryu. America: I’ve got 2,700 Liberty ships that can transport men and equipment globally. DM: America wins.
I love your videos! I've been watching you for a while, but have always been interested in the source material you use! I know that the focus is on film , but could you share the historical references you've used? I love your work, please keep it coming!
Thanks for the kind words! Usually for source material I'll try to find two lengthy documentaries, I'll use wiki, and then the best sources are usually museum websites and museum RU-vid channels. I don't do any primary research - my focus is more putting something together that is concise and hopefully a little entertaining while exposing people to some new movies.
SS john w brown is a liberty ship in Baltimore Maryland built from the steelmills of Maryland and it have 2 jeeps in the hold and you want to take a ride and a tour of it get tickets ahead of schedules for it
Needs must, very much a product of the times, no complaints here, from what the WW2 generation told me when I was a youngster growing up by Birkenhead docks...good choice, sir...E...😊😊
Just like the T-34 Tank the Liberty Ship had a expiration date to. After so many miles of wear n tear it was cheaper to build a new one then fix the ship or tank. Built-in obsolescence
