Lest We Forget: Winning at 11 Knots

The Military Sealift Command currently is grappling with having enough cargo ships in the Ready Reserve Force to deliver troops, arms, and cargo when and where needed across the globe. The nation has faced this challenge before, and it was met in astounding fashion, as noted in Proceedings 60 years ago:

One of the strongest of several factors which turned the tide of war and ensured final victory for the Allies in World War II was the vast armada of ships produced by American yards. In late 1940, the Maritime Commission selected as ideally suited for mass production the Liberty ship type. . . . Launched between 1941 and 1945, this huge fleet of emergency ships directly led to decisive victory. Without the supplies they carried, the great Allied air fleets would have been grounded for lack of gasoline and bombs. The North African, European, and Pacific invasions could not have been attempted. There would have been no Normandy, no Lingayen Gulf, and no Tokyo Bay.¹

In his 1972 book, Liberty Ships: The Ugly Ducklings of World War II, John Bunker recounted the history and role of the plodding 10- to 11-knot cargo carriers. Eighteen U.S. shipyards turned out 2,742 of them. Most were operated by commercial steamship companies with merchant crews of 40 to 50—a dozen officers, deckhands, firemen, oilers—and embarked armed guard units of Navy gunners and junior reserve officers manning .50-caliber machine guns, anti-aircraft guns, and one or two four-inch deck guns.

Anything that other merchant ships could do, Liberty ships did: they carried millions of tons of freight—everything from typewriter ribbons to locomotives—to all the Allied ports of the world; they transported troops, prisoners, mules, and war-brides; they sank enemy submarines, shot down aircraft, and, in turn, were torpedoed, bombed, mined and wrecked in all the seas of the world.²

On 17 September 1941, the first Liberty, the SS Patrick Henry, was launched at Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard near Baltimore. Several others were launched that same day in other yards. “The Kaiser yard took 197 days to build and deliver its first Liberty ship in Richmond, California. The keel for ship number 440 was laid in Richmond on 8 November 1942, was completed in four days and 15 hours, and was launched on 12 November as the SS Robert E. Peary.”³ Average building time was 42 days.

The standard Liberty was 441 feet, 6 inches, overall, with a beam of 56 feet, 10 ¾ inches, and a loaded draft of 27 feet, 9 ¼ inches. The deadweight tonnage was 10,920, gross tonnage about 7,500, and displacement tonnage 14,257. Liberties carried 9,146 tons of cargo with a full load of fuel. It was quite common, however, for them to haul more, and most sailed with holds filled and a deckload of planes, tanks, crated aircraft, trucks, heavy machinery, or locomotives. . . . The Maritime Commission specified a reciprocating steam engine with oil-burning boilers for power, partly because of simplicity of operation and ease of procurement.⁴

The tales of the ships’ wartime voyages included hull cracks—the result of manufacturing defects—near misses, heroism, and tragedy:

The SS Stephen Hopkins, eight days out of Cape Town enroute to Dutch Guiana, was approached by the heavily armed German commerce raider Stiers, which already had sunk four ships, and the blockade runner Tannenfels. The Hopkins had one 4-inch gun and lighter arms. She took many hits; her boilers were wrecked; crew members were killed and wounded; but she kept firing. As she finally went down, she left the Stiers an abandoned flaming wreck.

The Germans aboard the Tannenfels made no attempt to intercept the American crew now in lifeboats and rafts. Perhaps they admired the spirited battle put up by the Hopkins. She had fought like a cruiser.⁵