In November 1942, a Kaiser shipyard in Richmond, California, assembled the 441-foot Liberty ship SS Robert E. Peary in 4 days, 15 hours and 29 minutes from keel to launch. It was a publicity stunt built on weeks of prefabrication. The program behind it was not: 18 American shipyards completed 2,710 Liberty ships between 1941 and 1945, while U-boats were sinking cargo ships faster than the Allies could replace them. Then the welded hulls began to crack, and a few broke in two.

Inside: Henry J. Kaiser's dam-builder methods, Liberty Fleet Day, the Richmond workers, the Peary record, the brittle-fracture crisis, the convoys and the SS Stephen Hopkins, and the two Liberty ships that still sail.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Cold open: 4 Days, 15 Hours
0:43 The Stunt and the Program
1:44 Sinking Faster Than We Build
4:04 Henry Kaiser Goes to Sea
6:11 Liberty Fleet Day, 1941
7:38 Ships Built Like Cars
10:23 The Workers Who Built Them
12:43 The Race: Four Days, Fifteen Hours
14:47 Ships That Cracked
16:52 Into the Convoys
19:06 The Peary Goes to War
20:30 After the War
21:56 2,710 Ships: The Legacy

Archival footage and photos: U.S. National Archives, U.S. Navy, Library of Congress and other U.S. government sources, public domain unless credited below or on screen. The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement. Some archival footage is representative: where no film of a specific ship or event exists, period footage of the same ship type, yards and convoys is used. No known film shows the SS Robert E. Peary; the launches shown are her sister ships. Stylized recreations are marked as illustrations. Maps, diagrams and data graphics are original. Narration uses a synthetic voice.

FOOTAGE (public domain)
NARA RG 428 Naval Photographic Center, RG 208 OWI/United News, RG 111 War Department · Universal Newsreel · FDR Presidential Library (CC0) · U.S. Bureau of Mines · Library of Congress FSA/OWI · U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships aerials · Imperial War Museum (Crown Copyright expired)

MODERN FOOTAGE (courtesy of the museum ships; credited on screen)
SS Jeremiah O'Brien, National Liberty Ship Memorial, San Francisco: drone view at Pier 35 (ssjeremiahobrien.org) · "Liberty Ship Underway Main Deck" (2018) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VgzxyaP9qI · "SS Jeremiah O'Brien Underway Engine Room Tour" (2018) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGBIiRGeRe0
SS John W. Brown, Project Liberty Ship, Baltimore: "In bound Hampton Roads-SS JOHN W BROWN 1/2020" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N55uhejt1qc

CHAPTER CARD PHOTOS (public domain)
1 Atlantic convoy, c.1942, U.S. Navy/LOC · 2 Allied tanker torpedoed, 1942, NARA 520607 · 3 Kaiser Yard No. 3 basins, Jet Lowe, HAER CA-326/LOC · 4 SS Patrick Henry launch, 27 Sept 1941, Nat. Museum of the U.S. Navy · 5 Liberty ships fitting out, Bethlehem-Fairfield, OWI/LOC · 6 Richmond day shift leaving the ferry, Ann Rosener, OWI/LOC · 7 SS Zebulon B. Vance before launch, 1941, FSA/OWI/LOC · 8 Tanker Schenectady, Portland, Jan 1943, U.S. GPO report 1947 · 9 Liberty ship in convoy RA 64, Feb 1945, IWM A 27518 · 10 DUKW unloading a Liberty ship, France, Aug 1944, U.S. Army Signal Corps SC 193031 · 11 Beaumont Reserve Fleet, 23 Feb 1950, U.S. Navy 80-G-412809/NARA · 12 SS Jeremiah O'Brien, Carol M. Highsmith Archive, LOC

PHOTO CREDITS (CC BY)
"Riveting the SS JOHN W BROWN" by SS John W Brown, Project Liberty Ship (CC BY 4.0) · SS Jeremiah O'Brien by BrokenSphere (CC BY 3.0) · "Jeremiah OBrien" by Daniel Ramirez (CC BY 2.0) · "Liberty Ship Jeremiah O'Brien" by Tony Hisgett (CC BY 2.0) · "Liberty Ship Jeremiah Obrien" by Jay Galvin (CC BY 2.0) · "SS Jeremiah O'Brien at Pier 35" and "View from SS Jeremiah O'Brien at Pier 35" by ArnoldReinhold (CC BY 4.0) · "Bureau of Reclamation - Hoover Dam" by Tony Webster (CC BY 2.0) · SS Jeremiah O'Brien by Bernard Spragg (CC0). Licences: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 /by/3.0 /by/4.0

MAP DATA: Natural Earth (public domain); U.S. Census Bureau.

SOURCES
usmm.org (SS Robert E. Peary, Liberty ships and shipyards, SS Stephen Hopkins) · NPS Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front NHP · U.S. Maritime Administration (Emergency Shipbuilding Program; Gallant Ship Award) · HAER CA-326, Library of Congress · Kaiser Permanente History · FDR, Liberty Fleet Day address, 27 Sept 1941 (American Presidency Project) · Board of Investigation, The Design and Methods of Construction of Welded Steel Merchant Vessels (1946/1947) · TWI, "Schenectady T2 tanker" · University of Cambridge Engineering, Constance Tipper · S. W. Roskill, The War at Sea · NHHC · convoyweb · uboat.net (PQ 17) · NARA film 75400 (E.H. Blum) · UK Government, SS Richard Montgomery · ssjeremiahobrien.org · ssjohnwbrown.org

Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/):
"At Launch"

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