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Historical lessons, learned by bitter experience and paid for by human lives, often have a way of becoming lost momentarily in the headlines of the present. The development of atomic power, the advancement in electronics, the important role that aviation plays in the nation’s growth, all tend to obscure the contribution of the slower, but nevertheless relentless, pressure of sea power as a vital component of this nation’s security.
Without such sea power, historians are agreed, the Allied Nations could not have achieved victory. Moreover, lacking such overwhelming sea power as the United States possessed in World War II, the conflict might very well have been fought on our shores instead of those of the enemy.
An important part of that sea power was the American Merchant Marine, the privately-owned and operated merchant ships . that in wartime become our troop transports, our hospital ships, our carriers of strategic materials, our fleet oilers, our reefers and a score of other types adapted for military and naval usage, and without which war, as it is known now and in the forseeable future, could not be waged.
The American Merchant Marine met its two assignments in World War II: to knit the ocean-separated United Nations into a single wartime organization, and to place our armies and their equipment on hostile territory and maintain them there.
It wasn’t an easy job. It required the building and operation of the greatest fleet of merchant ships the world has ever known. At one time nearly 2,000,000 men and women worked day and night to produce more than 5,000 merchant type ships.
Until the submarine menace was brought under control by the U. S. Navy, losses were heavy; more than 700 American merchant vessels were sunk, nearly 6,000 American merchant seamen had died or were lost, and thousands more were injured or suffered the
nightmare of waiting aboard lifeboats and rafts for rescue.
The losses are not hard to understand. Transport was the jugular vein of the United Nations’ war effort and thus induced all-out attacks by the enemy. The cost of building and operating our wartime merchant fleets reached a total of more than 22 billions.
By the end of the war with Japan, the staggering amount of more than 200,000,000 tons of cargo and nearly 10,000,000 troops had been carried in American merchant ships. The cargoes ranged from pins to locomotives, and comprised most of the naval and military tools of destruction and construction.
The majority of the merchant fleet was under direction of the War Shipping Administration, operating through experienced shipowners acting as agents of the Government. Approximately 75% of the nearly 60,000,000 deadweight tons of merchant shipping in World War II was allocated to Army and Navy cargoes. Thus the Armed Services were at all times the Number One customers of the Merchant Marine.
Today history records how the military powerhouses of Africa, the United Kingdom, and the South and Southwest Pacific were built up so that the successive thunderbolts of Allied naval and military power could be thrown to destroy first Italy, then Germany, and finally Japan. Ships of the American Merchant Marine delivered the goods.
Summarizing the value of the U. S. Merchant Marine to the naval and military forces, it is clear that the Merchant Marine must be viewed as a whole—the ships, the shipowners and operators, the shipbuilders, the port and repair facilities, the marine suppliers, the shipworkers, the officers and seamen—all a unified, flexible whole which resulted in an adequate cargo-carrying and troop capacity available at the time, the place, and in enough strength to carry out the logistical processes of the greatest war in history. This concept has never been better stated than by Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King who, on November 2, 1945, declared:
“During the past 3^ years, the Navy has been dependent upon the Merchant Marine to supply our far-flung fleet and bases. Without this support, the Navy could not have accomplished its mission. Consequently it is fitting that the Merchant Marine share in our success as it shared in our trials.
“The Merchant Marine is a strong bulwark of national defense in peace and war, and a buttress to a sound national economy- A large Merchant Marine is not only an important national resource; it is, in being, an integral part of the country’s armed might during time of crisis. During World War II, this precept has been proven.”
It was the merchant type oiler, such as the Kaskaskia. above, that made possible the tremendous refueling operations that gave the U. S. Fleet the cruising endurance demanded by modern warfare.
This photograph illustrates what a single Nazi torpedo could do to an American Liberty ship; it also illustrates that American officers and crew were able to get their ship into port for repairs and continued service in the nation’s war effort
The never-ending parade of merchant transports and cargo ships, such as these on their way to the South Pacific battle lines, are svmbolic of the stupendous transportation role played by the American Merchant Marine in World War II.
It isn’t enough that this tanker should deliver her usual capacity load of oil and gasoline. In addition she carries a deckload of combat planes, which were being off-loaded in a Mediterranean port when this photograph was taken.
U.S merchant ships carried every conceivable kind of cargo in World War II. The heavy air-strikes kept many merchantmen bus} tankers with fuel, cargo ships with munitions and parts, transports with support personnel.
This is only one of many locomotives that travelled on the deck of a Victory ship en route to one of our major Pacific bases. The man at the rail is an Army “nursemaid” for the big engine.
The Nazi sub captain probably counted this a sure sinking. Despite raging fires, however, crew members brought the flames under control and the tanker was towed to port by a U. S. Navy ship.
Struck off the Florida coast, her stem and bow sections found floating miles apart by the Coast Guard Cutter which sank them to clear the sea lanes of a navigation hazard, the tanker was trying to deliver a cargo ot 5,000,000 gallons of high test gasoline.
Pre-war luxury liners of the merchant marine, converted into troop transports, had to fight for their lives against the Stukas off Sicily. Dexterous handling brought the great majority through, though some were lost and many showed the damage of near misses. •
It is little wonder that with the billions of gallons of gasoline and oil needed to lubricate the sinews of the Allied 'var effort, the German submarines gave top priority to tankers. A total of 700 American merchant ships failed to reach port in World War II.
This modest cemetery in Iceland marks the last resting place of a few of the officers and seamen lost in the North Atlantic during the winter and spring of 1942. In those cold, rough waters, rescue came at once or it was too late.
Seen from the escort protecting them, these Liberty ships and tankers are delivering the goods. Without the convoy system there was no way by which the great industrial might of the United States could be brought to bear upon the enemy.
This general view of the British prefabricated harbor on the Normandy coast shows Liberty ships at moorings in the foreground inside the concrete caissons breakwater and the main discharge piers flanked by special barge and LST piers.
This panoramic view of warships and merchantmen suggests the power that was concentrated against the Nazis even at a time when logistic problems of even greater magnitude were being solved along the Channel.
Only those who served on the picket line off Okinawa can understand the peculiar Hell this ship has come through.
Casualties were removed from the Lajfey and soon received all help possible in the 80 bed hospital of the PCE(R). Three of these rescue ships shared the nightmare of the picket line.