"Launching Liberty" by Doug Most

When it comes to World War II, you often hear about "the arsenal of democracy," a characterization of U.S. factories that produced all the food, medical supplies, tanks, planes, and tractors that helped win the war.In Launching Liberty, Doug Most writes about the U.S. effort required to build the ships needed to transport those goods overseas.The Liberty Ships were 440-foot cargo ships built to the same exact specifications. Over 2,700 were built between 1941 and 1945. When packed full of cargo, one ship could hold the equivalent of 300 railroad boxcars. That might be 2,800 jeeps or 430,000 K-rations.Most chronicles how American shipyards — and their workers — rose to the wartime challenge. There were 228,000 workers in U.S. shipyards in December 1940. Less than two years later, 2.2 million worked on constructing ships.There was a reason for that build-up. The United States was engaged in a two-front war that included both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.Forgotten, perhaps, is that in the spring of 1942, just a few months after entering the war, the Allies lost 397 ships. Eighty-two of those ships were sunk off the coast of North Carolina and Virginia.The heat was on. Along with the increase in manpower--and woman power--came new ideas on setting up shipyards and on building cargo ships fast.Henry Kaiser, described by Most as "a dynamic builder of highways, dams, and bridges," turned his attention to shipbuilding, having never built a ship in his life before the war. Kaiser and others brought about "the greatest emergency shipbuilding program the world has ever seen," noted Most.The shipyard brought "poor housewives, farmers, plumbers and Phds, inventors and patriotic handymen, brilliant engineers, hard-driving politicians, and billionaire businessmen" together to build giant steel cargo ships faster than the Germans could sink them," stated Most.The author humanizes the Liberty Ship story with accounts of individuals like Wilmer Patrick Shea, the Marine corporal who lost an arm in battle but returned to the states to become a one-armed welder in the shipyard along with becoming an advocate of the healthcare program that Kaiser offered workers.But it wasn't all smooth sailing. Most talks about a blended workforce required for the construction of so many ships. "But it didn't blend easily," he said.Women and African Americans had to deal with resistance when they joined the shipyard workforce. "Unions were initially dismissive but the barriers did eventually come down," said Most.Most doesn't gloss over the fact that there were problems in the construction of some of the ships. "The Liberty Ships were a critical component of the war program, but they weren't perfect. They had to be done quickly. They had flaws," he said.Yet the fact that the S.S. Robert E. Peary, the Liberty Ship constructed in a record four days, carried supplies as the Allied troops were landing on the beaches of Normandy served as inspiration to all Americans, said Most.