Michael Pearson - Red Sky in the Morning

This phenomenal effort represents the most prodigious shipbuilding programme ever undertaken, accounting for a total of 56,300,000 deadweight tons (57,200,800 tonnes), at a cost of $13 billion, and constitutes one of the most significant contributions made by any nation to the eventual winning of the Second World War. [196]

The basic premise behind the Liberty ships was to build them faster than it would be possible for the Axis powers to sink them. It was said that they were ‘built by the mile, and chopped off by the yard’, and indeed one Liberty ship is recorded as having been launched 4 days and 15½ hours after her keel was laid. This rapid rate of build inevitably caused a few problems, particularly as inexperienced workers often manned shipyards during the war years. Liberties experienced a high percentage of defects, and 1 in 30 suffered major hull fractures. [197]

Britain placed orders for Liberty ships in US yards, and built similar-sized ships of various standard design types in British shipyards. Adoption of the faster welding method was slow in coming however, and most British-built ships were riveted, although a nod towards modern methods was made with the utilisation of a prefabrication system similar to that in the United States. A significant proportion of ships built in the UK were coal-fired, for the understandable reason that Britain had a considerable coal resource to draw upon. Canada took the opportunity to expand its shipbuilding capacity, and had considerable success in producing standard cargo ships, with designs which tended to follow the British types, but a construction method which favoured welding over riveting. [198]While it would have been impossible to meet the vast tonnage requirements without the massive industrial capacity of the United States, it is also true to say that the US alone could not have met the demands, and the substantial building and repair programmes put in hand by British and Canadian shipyards were vital contributions to ultimate victory.

It was calculated that if a Liberty ship made one loaded trip across the Atlantic she had done all that could be expected, and was unlikely to survive another. The rate at which they would be sunk by the enemy, or would in all probability fall apart due to the way in which they were constructed, would see to that. Despite these pessimistic predictions, war-surplus Liberty ships were snapped up by commercial shipping companies at knock-down prices after the war, and many a fortune was made with them. Liberty ships were to be seen plying the trade routes of the world until the early 1970s, and such was the success of the type that as they came at last to the end of their colourful careers, shipyards around the world fell over themselves to produce designs for ‘Liberty replacement types’. The best-known UK version proved to be the Austin & Pickersgill SD14, which kept the same basic design but with a diesel engine, a deadweight increased to just over 14,000 tons (14,224 tonnes) and much improved cargo handling gear.

Of the convoys to Russia, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound commented that they were ‘a most unsound operation, with the dice loaded against us in every direction’. [199]Despite this a total of 4,430,000 tons (4,500,880 tonnes) of essential equipment and foodstuffs were transported by this method, although ship losses were higher than on any other Allied convoy route – 7.8 per cent eastbound, 3.8 per cent westbound (in ballast).

A quarter of all Allied supplies to Russia were carried in the Arctic convoys, but the United States sent almost half its total aid to Russia across the Pacific to Vladivostock, carried in Russian ships which, as Russia was not at war with Japan, travelled largely unmolested.

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Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations

Achates , HMS

engagement with Admiral Hipper

sinks after engagement

Admiral Graf Spee

Admiral Hipper

captains’ meeting

crew

engagement with British destroyers

engagement with HMS Achates

engagement with HMS Bramble

engagement with HMS Jamaica

engagement with HMS Obedient

engagement with HMS Onslow

engagement with HMS Sheffield

after engagement

damage from first salvoes

entertainment aboard

war service

Admiral Scheer

Aisthorpe, Lieutenant H.C., RNR

Altenfjord

Ark Royal , HMS

Ashanti , HMS

Austen, Lieutenant-Commander N.H.G., DSO, RN

Ayreshire

Ballot

Barents Sea, conditions on board ship

Belford, Smith

Bermuda , HMS

Berwick , HMS

Bismarck

Blankney , HMS

Bonaventure , HMS

Bramble , HMS

British Expeditionary Force

Bulldog , HMS

Burnett, Rear-Admiral Robert

Calobre

Chester Valley

Chiddingfold , HMS

Churchill, Winston

memo to General Sir Hastings Ismay, 17 May 1942

minute from Admiralty, 22 November 1942

cable to Stalin, 24 November 1942

Circe , HMS

City of Flint

convoy escort, life aboard Royal Navy ship

convoys

Excess

JW51A

JW51B

31 December 1942

attacked by ützow

JW53

JW55B

PQ1

PQ8 , 9 , 10 and