Building Liberty Ships.

[RobbieW]

A surviving Liberty Ship, Jeremiah O’Brian, is berthed at fisherman’s wharf in San Francisco. A fascinating museum that covers what is in the video and more. The last unaltered Liberty ship - museum ship- SS Jeremiah O Brien -

If visiting San Francisco it's worth a trip over to Richmond where they celebrate the women who built those ships...
Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)
So called Rosie the Riveters, I have an American friend who's grandmother went to the US to perform the role.

 

[Biggles Wader]

There is another Liberty ship called John Brown based on the US East coast and I think possibly one more preserved in Greece.

 

[Concerto]

That must have been an awful posting then....
I've lived there twice, first time in 1971-75 when dad as civilian was posted there.
On one flight in a viscount in about 72 it took 3 attempts to land, we finished on the grass at the end of the runway.

Second time 83-85 when some comedian in the RAF posted me there on radar. I'm very glad I wasn't posted back in the 1940s to Borve Castle the original RDF (radar) site on Benbecula. A very windswept site in wooden huts..

They only got colour TV and bbc2, itv and ch 4 in about 1980...

All that military accomodation by the airport just being finished when we arrived in 1971 was knocked down last year.
Only the married quarters, which have been sold off, remain.

Yes it could be grim, but there were local fishermen who provided crabs and lobsters to supplement the rations. They also bought an illegally raised pig (not declared by the farmer to the ministry of agriculture) which they shot and butchered. Plenty of meat for a short while.

 

[ducked]

The Liberty ships program was considered to be a massive success but it was not without its problems. Some poor design together with unsatisfactory welding techniques and poor (Admiralty 'A' type) steel led to square (rather than radiused) hatch corners, sulphation at the grain boundaries and uncontrolled cracking of the sheet steel after having entered the brittleness transition zone due to high latitudes cold weather.
Sadly it led to some loss of ships / life sometimes within 24 hours of launch. The cure for the weld cracking was often 'stop crack' strips which were rivetted in place!
Still, a tremendous achievement who's effects are still felt in shipbuilding today.

I understand they got it sorted for the much less disposable Victory ship series which didnt get going until 1944. Better design, better steel, and critically, better stress relieving welding procedures.

The latter are allegedly attributable to one of the women welders, Bessie Hamill, who worked them out by experiment and observation on the job, and then pestered management to take notice. There are some Youtube videos on it but a quick search didnt find anything else on her, so if its true she seems to be very much the unsung heroine

 

[ducked]

I understand they got it sorted for the much less disposable Victory ship series which didnt get going until 1944. Better design, better steel, and critically, better stress relieving welding procedures.

The latter are allegedly attributable to one of the women welders, Bessie Hamill, who worked them out by experiment and observation on the job, and then pestered management to take notice. There are some Youtube videos on it but a quick search didnt find anything else on her, so if its true she seems to be very much the unsung heroine

EDIT : The multiplicity of these redundant-but-different videos with a similar date and content, the prolix and redundant writing style within the one I looked at, and the lack of confirmative sources, suggests this MIGHT be the mendacious mark of monetised generative AI, and Bessie Hamill may not have existed, though the fact that I, with my slow but supposedly still superior little full-fat brain, can only manage a MIGHT (probably a probably, on reflection) on that, is quite disturbing.