# The Liberty ship....



## Lucky13 (Oct 18, 2013)

Simple....pros and cons of the design?


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## Shortround6 (Oct 18, 2013)

It did what it was supposed to do, it was cheap and easy to build.

What cons?

Any increase in capability (speed, capacity, durability) would only come at the expense of cost and build time.


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## vikingBerserker (Oct 18, 2013)

I think the only con to them were when used in the icy North Atlantic to Russia, IIRC they had a habit of splitting open or breaking in half. They ended up reinforcing them to prevent it from happening.


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## fastmongrel (Oct 18, 2013)

Liberty Ships Interesting piece about the design of the Liberty


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## davebender (Oct 18, 2013)

That about sums it up. 

Early production ships were structurally weak sometimes leading to catastrophic failure (i.e. ships broke in half during heavy seas). Once bugs were fixed it was the right ship for the job.


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## pattle (Oct 19, 2013)

Much better ships could have been built, the Liberty ship was a Ford not an Aston Martin. Liberty ships were crucially the only vessels that could be produced quickly enough to satisfy demand, so they were of absolutely vital importance.


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## Glider (Oct 19, 2013)

Liberty ships were in civilain use for decades after the war. They were a good solid design and my Grandfather who was assigned to a Liberty ship after he was sunk for the second time was very impressed. It was the little things that were unexpected such as a cold water fountain in the engine room.

If I dare to disagree with the article on the design of the Liberty Ship. 10,000 tons and 10-11 knots was a good size and speed for a 1930's cargo ship and I would never deescribe them as small or slow.


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## Milosh (Oct 20, 2013)

Wiki has a list of all the Liberty ships and their fates,

List of Liberty ships - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## Lucky13 (Oct 20, 2013)

Found a hull number '13', but no '1313', they probably thought, that it'd be taking it a bit too far....
Some did quite a few travels...


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## Mobius (Oct 20, 2013)

That list didn't have my dad's Liberty ship USS Eridamus. I guess because it was Coast Guard.
One weakness was the 20mm AA guns that it had for most of time (There was one 3" and one 5" at either end). They were replaced just before the end of the war with 40mm because they were going to invade of Japan and feared the kamikaze. The ship was slow. 
My dad said the problem with the design was the boiler pipes. They became corroded too often.


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## yulzari (Oct 20, 2013)

vikingBerserker said:


> I think the only con to them were when used in the icy North Atlantic to Russia, IIRC they had a habit of splitting open or breaking in half. They ended up reinforcing them to prevent it from happening.



I understand that this was not only the structural weakness of the Liberty ships (which generally served their users well) but also because they were welded. Period ship welding left the steel of the weld, and adjacent steel, brittle and vulnerable to differential contraction of the sheet steel panels in extreme cold conditions. Rivetted ships were free of this problem as the rivets were softer, never melted and the panels were able to contract at the same rate. Hence the Admiralty preferred rivetted ships on Arctic convoys. Thus the original British design had no such problems in their 60 years of life through being rivetted.

Curiously the brittle nature of gas fusion welds was the cause of the early Lotus grand prix cars cracking their frames. The works cars were gas fusion welded by the team and always cracked at the joints. Even being given welded repairs on the grid. Whereas the production ones were brazed by their contracted frame makers and had no such problems. Allegedly it was discovered only after one team car burnt out in a minor accident and the frame was straightened, cleaned and reused and the team found that the fire had annealed the whole frame and it no longer cracked.


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## Milosh (Oct 20, 2013)

Mobius said:


> That list didn't have my dad's Liberty ship USS Eridamus. I guess because it was Coast Guard..



It is there:

SS Luther Burbank, Luther Burbank, 1099, standard, 12 March 1943, 9 April 1943, To U.S. Navy as Eridanus (AK-92), sold private 1947, broke in two 1955, repaired, scrapped 1972

Wiki link for USS Eridanus (AK-92)
USS Eridanus (AK-92) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Today, the Russet Burbank potato is the most widely cultivated potato in the United States. A large percentage of McDonald's french fries are made from this cultivar.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Burbank


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## R Pope (Oct 20, 2013)

I read that the main hulls were built in California and the bows in Washington, and when they tried joining them, they didn't line up. The different temperatures when they were built so far apart resulted in expansion/contraction enough so the parts didn't fit right!


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## pattle (Oct 20, 2013)

Most of the aircraft built during the war were not intended to last indefinitely, they were just built to do one job and then be replaced by something else if they were lucky enough to survive that long, it was a similar thing with Liberty ships.


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