- cross-posted to:
- historymemes@piefed.social
- cross-posted to:
- historymemes@piefed.social
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Explanation: One of the reasons why the USA could supply the UK during WW2 was because, even with the full force of Nazi ‘wolf packs’ of submarines hunting supply ships, the US could produce supply ships at such a ridiculous rate that the Nazis literally couldn’t sink them fast enough to dent the numbers - even if Allied naval forces weren’t whittling Nazi submarine numbers down at the same time.
There was fierce competition between shipyards who could build a Liberty Ship in the least amount of time. Apparently you can crank one out in just 4 days, 15 hours and 29 minutes, if you’re trying really hard.
This insane speed of construction, of course, was mainly a one-off propaganda effort, and not sustainable at scale, because it would have by far outrun the supply of the materials needed. The average build time for a Liberty Ship was around 50 days. Still damn impressive for the technology at the time, yielding 2 ships every 3 days given the number of shipyards involved.
Not all was well with Liberty Ships, though, because due to the design being rushed, and not being adapted to modern production methods (welding instead of riveting), they had an embarrassing tendency to break in half at sea, especially in cold water. After that problem had been identified and rectified, they proved surprisingly long-lived for their planned service life of only 5 years. Many were used for many decades.
