THE WAR UNDER THE WAVES: How the British and American Navies, Air Forces and Merchant Marines Battled against the German Submarines in the Atlantic that Helped Save Britain Defeat Hitler in World War Two

By Carl Steinhouse

Immerse yourself in one of the most riveting World War 2 history books, The War Under the Waves. This exceptional military history book plunges you into the depths of naval warfare, highlighting the courage, resilience, and sacrifice of the British and American Navies, Air Forces, and particularly the unsung heroes of the merchant marines of World War 2.

As Churchill's Britain stood alone against Hitler's onslaught, Roosevelt's America had to navigate an isolationist Congress to lend a helping hand. Britain's survival hung in the balance, hinging on the crucial lifeline of ocean shipping for sustenance, supplies, and fuel—a lifeline ruthlessly threatened by Germany's formidable submarine fleet. Britain's monumental struggle to keep the lifeline intact, initially aided by fifty American destroyers generously lent by Roosevelt, forms the crux of this gripping narrative.

The book emphasizes the importance of Churchill and Roosevelt's leadership in overcoming the direst of circumstances. After Pearl Harbor, the United States became wholly immersed in the war, battling the Japanese and Hitler's forces, including the menacing German U-boats lurking in the Atlantic's depths.

The War Under the Waves presents the stark reality of how close Britain came to the brink of defeat. Yet, it was through the combined bravery of British and American forces that merchant shipping, troopships, and tankers were safeguarded, facilitating the safe crossing of the Atlantic. The war's turning point emerged from these perilous battles under the waves— a tide that carried with it the defeat of Hitler's Germany and the victory of Allied forces.

This compelling historical account is a testament to the audacious triumph over Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz's U-boats, charting the course of the victories that determined the Second World War's outcome. Readers of all ages, particularly young adults seeking to understand the history of the U-boat war and older adults appreciating the magnitude of the Allies' victory, will find this "war history book" unforgettable.

Discover the story of survival, perseverance, and victory in The War Under the Waves, where history unfolds under the depths of the Atlantic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665551656

Carl Steinhouse

Carl L. Steinhouse formerly a federal prosecutor for the United States Department of Justice and later in private practice specializing in class actions, white-collar crime, and civil and criminal antitrust trials. He wrote or edited several textbooks for the American Bar Association on conducting antitrust trials and grand juries. During the Korean War, he served in as an intelligence analyst in the Army Counterintelligence Corps. He is a graduate of New York University and Brooklyn Law School. He has authored two legal thrillers, Harassment and Extreme Malice, one Holocaust novel, The Outfielder, Irreverent memoirs, Now What?, seven books in his Holocaust Heroes series to rave reviews by scholars, and three volumes on the Pacific War against the Japanese. See WWW.carlsteinhouse .com. Communicate with Mr. Steinhouse at [e-mail].

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© 2022 Carl Steinhouse. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 03/18/2022

ISBN: 978-1-6655-5166-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-5165-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022902891

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Dedicated to My Cousin, Alfred Ross

CONTENTS

Author’s Note

Prelude

Chapter 1     War Explodes In Europe

Chapter 2     Norway And Hitler’s Battleships

Chapter 3     End Of The Phoney War

Chapter 4     The Miracle Of Dunkirk

Chapter 5     Germans Easily Roll Over Surrendering France; Dönitz Now Has His U-Boat In French Ports Right On The Atlantic; Operation Sea Lion

Chapter 6     Lend-Lease; Operation Sea Lion Called Off In Favor Of Operation Barbarossa, The Proposed The Invasion Of Russia

Chapter 7     Attack At Taranto; Germany First Strategy; Hitler To Invade Russia Next May

Chapter 8     Beefing Up The Protection Of The Convoys; Avoiding Incidents With The Americans

Chapter 9     Stalin Ignores The West’s Warning Of An Invasion; Germany Invades The Soviet Union

Chapter 10   The Atlantic Charter; Provoking Hitler; Capturing An Enigma Machine: German And American Warships Exchange Fire

Chapter 11   The Artic Supply Route To Russia; Battleship Bismarck Sunk; The U-Boat Wolfpacks; Completion Of The Sub Pens In France; The Situation Rooms

Chapter 12   The Effect Of Weather; Attack On A Convoy; The Sinking Of The Uss Reuben James

Chapter 13   War Comes To The United States; Attack On Pearl Harbor; Hitler Declares War On The United States; Churchill Sleeps Well; U-Boats Head For The American Coast; Admiral King Becomes Head Of Us Navy

Chapter 14   Churchill Visits Roosevelt; Agreed: Germany First; Bad Cooking At The White House; United Nations Born

Chapter 15   Hitler: Cut Off Supplies To Russia; Battleships To The Artic; U-Boats Find Easy Pickings On America’s Well Lit East Coast

Chapter 16   Hitler Orders: U-Boats To Norway; Build More Battleships; Shortage Of Escorts; Daring Raid At St. Nazaire Destroys Battleship Facilities

Chapter 17   Problem Of Protecting The Convoys; The Problem Of Rommel; First American Kill; No Second Front In 1942; No Convoys To Russia In The Artic Daylight Summer; The Milch Cows; Western Approaches

Chapter 18   American Escorts Improving Against U-Boats; Exaggerated Claims Of Sinkings; Lethality Of The Depth Charges; East Coast Finally Blacked Out

Chapter 19   German Battleships Break Out; Churchill Visits Roosevelt To Discuss The Atomic Bomb; Massacre In The Artic Sea; Amercians More Lethal Against U-Boats With New Radar And Sonar

Chapter 20   Stalin Presses For A Second Front, Churchill: We Are Not Ready Yet; Mediterranean Free Of Italian Warships; Do Not Pick Up Survivors; Operation Torch; Problems At Stalingrad; Debacle In Algiers

Chapter 21   North African Campaign; Sinking Of The Tirpitz; Casablanca In Allied Hands; 1942 A Disaster For Convoys; Hitler Down On His Navy After Defeat; Dönitz Had No Answer To New Radar And Sonar; Grand Admiral Raeder Resigns, Dönitz Becomes The Grand Admiral

Chapter 22   The Need For Escort Planes; The ‘Tokyo Rose’ Of The Atlantic; German Acoustic Torpedoes; Casablanca Meeting; De Gaulle

Chapter 23   Fierce Weather Of The North Atlantic; Surrender At Stalingrad; What The New Grand Admiral Needs; Going On The Offensive With New Destroyers And Escort Carriers; Closing The Atlantic Gap; The ‘Tokyo Rose’ Of The Atlantic Directed To German Sailors

Chapter 24   Escort Carriers Closed The Atlantic Gap; Incessant Bombing Slowed Production Of U-Boats; The Fight Back Directive; General Hap Arnold Resisted Using Air Force For Convoy Duty

Chapter 25   Rommel Recalled, Axis Surrendered In North Africa; With New Allied Technology U-Boat Losses Increased; Escort Carriers On The Offensive; Rescue Ships; New Allied Radar; No More Experienced Submariners Left

Chapter 26   Plan To Help Submariner Pows Escape From Canada; New Radar Devastated U-Boats; Liberators Joined The U-Boat Fight; Goering Refused To Help Dönitz’s U-Boats; More Guns For U-Boats

Chapter 27   Roosevelt’s Surprise Announcement Of Requiring ‘Unconditional Surrender’; Escort Carriers Unleashed; Allied Radar Frustrates U-Boats; Fido Finds Target; The Dangerous Bay Of Biscay

Chapter 28   Hf/Df Finds Its Mark; Retrenchment And The Missing Milch Cows; Hitler Sends Too Many U-Boats To Norway; New Transpacific Route To Supply Russia; Ramming Can Sink Both Sub And Escort

Chapter 29   Convoy Dangers From The Sky; Clash Of Enemies; Never Satisfied; Acoustic Torpedoes Fail; Sonobuoys; All Large Carriers To The Pacific; Sinking Of The Scharnhorst; Meeting Increase Of U-Boats With More Long-Range Bombers

Chapter 30   Dönitz’s New Tactic A Failure; Sneaking Up; Operation Overlord, But Where?; Problems Of The Snorkel; Captured U-Boat

Chapter 31   Allied Invasion Of France; U-Boats Overwhelmed; U-Boats Ordered To Norway Harbors; Plans For Better U-Boats; Hitler Insists That Trains Taking Jews To Camps Cannot Be Used To Supply German Troops

Chapter 32   Restraining Stalin Considered; Hedgehogging A U-Boat; Allies Closing In On Berlin; Roosevelt Dies, Truman Becomes President; Hitler Bunkers Down, Orders ‘Scorched Earth’ Policy; The Pillenwerfer; Hitler’s Suicide, Dönitz Becomes The Fuhrer; The Surrender

Epilogue

Bibliography

Other Books By Author

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Some scenes, particularly meetings between the Allied leaders, which were very numerous, have been consolidated for clarity, comprehension, and size. (e.g., FDR, Churchill, and Stalin meetings in Teheran).

Edward R. Morrow, a famous wartime correspondence, described Churchill of the 1940s as mobilizing the English language and sending it into battle. It is perhaps one of the best characterizations of the prime minister’s finest asset in the war against Hitler, as you will see throughout the book.

Both Churchill and Roosevelt had a close personal relationship that contributed to the coordinated defense, and then joint offense, against Hitler. But one area where they parted company was the British Empire, which Churchill was determined to rebuild to pre-war status, while Roosevelt was equally determined to stop the colonization of the countries of the world.

This book is narrative non-fiction. Obviously, I am not the fly on the wall, so the dialogue is based on my extensive research of the facts, diaries, and reported meetings, so I am confident that the dialogue does not do an injustice to history and permits you to live it in an interesting and educational manner without merely throwing facts at you. The focus of this book is not on the land war with Germany, but on the Atlantic War. In other words, the battle against the German U-boats (submarines) and surface ships.

This is a continuation of my writing on World War Two. Recently I published a trilogy on the Pacific War, Yamamoto’s Dilemma, Nimitz’s Bypass, and Truman’s Resolve.

I am indebted to my wife, Diana, who read my drafts and gave me valuable insights and edits and suffered through my busy writing periods with love and understanding.

PRELUDE

After Germany’s successful conquering of Poland in a matter of days, there was all quiet on the western front, so to speak. Actually, there were two wars going on. The land war entered a phase known as the Twilight War where, after the German attack on Poland, the French did not attack the Germans, nor the Germans, the French. Reconnaissance flights occurred, but no bombings. The French insisted that the British refrain from air attacks on the Germans for fear that the Germans would retaliate by bombing its unprotected war factories. Thus, France and England remained impassive while Poland got torn apart and destroyed. And Hitler, not desirous of a two-front war, ignored the surreptitious help the Americans were providing to Britain.

President Roosevelt could not fight Hitler, not that he did not want to, but the isolationists in Congress were too strong to permit the United States to declare war on anybody and forbade, by law, any American ships to enter the war zones. It also required belligerents to pay cash for American supplies. While Americans were hostile to Hitler and his gang, most would not tolerate involvement in any war in Europe. They had had it with the large casualties in Europe’s ‘Great War’—World War One—and we were just emerging from the Great Depression. Besides, most assumed that the British Navy and the French Army could handle the Germans with no help from America.

And this is the way this strange phase of war continued with a seemingly uneasy peace on land they called twilight war. But not so at sea. This other war, at that same time, in the Atlantic, took the very opposite course, fierce, uncompromising, and unremitting, beginning from the very first hour. One day, the ships were sailing around the world on normal business and suddenly they the U-boats attacked, after being carefully positioned beforehand, especially in the North Atlantic and around the British Isles. Thus began one of the most ferocious and intense struggles of the World War Two and the focus of this book: the U-boats against the merchant shipping and the escort warships and planes protecting the merchant ships and convoys.

I’ll talk a little now about the submarines, because it will give you a better understanding of their actions and reactions in the Battle of the Atlantic. The submarine, or as the Germans call them, U-boat (in German, unterseeboot or under-sea-boat), moves in two ways. Above water, it uses its diesel engines, but when submerged, the diesels are inoperative because they require fresh air, so the boat has to run on electric motors powered by its batteries (the Germans developed the schnorkel, which permitted the submarine to breathe underwater, but too late to be of any significance in the war). The model VII U-boat, a vast improvement towards the end of World War One, could submerge rapidly in about twenty seconds.

Actually, the U-boats spent most of their time not underwater but on the ocean surface because the batteries, which propel the ship underwater, last for only about two hours. U-boats often launch torpedo attacks from the surface, but only at night. That was a lot easier than a periscope attack with its restricted view of the battle zone. And the submarine would dive only to escape detection or attacks from enemy warships or planes.

When submerged, the U-boat had a speed of maybe seven knots going all-out, but that would exhaust the batteries within an hour, requiring the U-boat to surface, so the most he could expect to cruise is at about three knots, in order to stay submerged for any length of time, required when it is under attack by enemy warships or planes. The crew was well practiced at crash dives where the U-boat, under attack, had to disappear quickly from the surface in twenty-seconds or less and go down to a depth of at least twenty meters. The crew expelled the air from the ballast tanks and replaced it with heavy sea water which forced the U-boat down.

Often the U-boat skipper had no option but to surface if his batteries or breathable air ran down to dangerous levels and were close to exhaustion. The surfaced submarine’s diesel engines recharged its batteries, expelled the stale air and carbon monoxide. The submarine’s surface speed is quite capable of 17 knots, with enough fuel to travel some 9,000 miles.

The submarine watch changed every four hours and the men going off duty crept into the warm bunks of the men who just went on duty. Space requirements prevented the men from having their very own bunks. And the longer patrols meant more food and other supplies with the problem of where to store it all. It required them to stow food supplies even in the boat’s toilet.

Life aboard a submarine was very difficult and uncomfortable. A submariner had to be somewhat of a stoic. Fuel, armaments, and equipment monopolized most of the space, requiring the crew to live in extreme intimacy. There really was no personal space. A crewman’s personal possessions were only a kitbag and a change of underwear, a toothbrush, and perhaps a handkerchief. The air inside the boat was usually rancid, smelling from diesel, cooking, old and decaying food, and the body odor of many unwashed bodies. They were lucky if their water did not taste of diesel. It was so deleterious of life that when they returned from patrol, they really needed the time off to relax and recover.

Fearsome winter storms threw men in a surfaced submarine from their bunks and hammocks. The storms tossed those standing around like dice on a crap table. In such storms, those on watch on deck or in the conning tower had to be chained in place to avoid being swept overboard as the boat plunged down into the troughs and enormous waves slammed into the boat.

On a crash dive, the men had literally to fall through the conning tower hatch. There was a ladder, but speed was essential, and they simply let themselves slide down the hatch rather than go down step by step on the ladder. The commander was always the last to jump down and secure the hatch.

Even on the surface, the U-boat was a dangerous fighting vessel, with most submarines having an 88MM cannon and, behind the bridge, an antiaircraft gun, and some machine guns. It had four bow torpedo tubes and one in the stern and usually carried 14 torpedoes when on patrol.

The U-boat has a double hull—a strong inner hull and a thinner outer one. The inner one is the pressure hull and contains all the command systems for the control room, the engines, and the underwater weapons. It can go as deep as its designers built it to submerge and, depending on the model U-boat, ranged from fifty to two hundred and fifty meters. Beyond that, the hull is in danger of cracking like an eggshell (though, in fact, many boats have, in desperation, gone deeper and survived). The thinner outer hull contains the ballast or diving tanks. When surfaced, fresh air fills the tanks and prevents water from entering, keeping the boat floating on the surface. To dive, the air must escape, replaced by the heavier weight of sea water. Then, the boat submerges as the inside pressure on the tanks equals the outside pressure of the sea. When submerged, the pressure hull is constantly trimmed and balanced by adding or removing sea water from the tanks to maintain depth and equilibrium.

The crew and officers learned and rehearsed the handling of a U-boat in all situations until it became second nature—from conventional maneuvers to crash dives, where the submarine must disappear under water within seconds. Practicing this occurred not only on the shakedown cruise but also while on patrol, to keep the crew sharp.

The torpedoes the U-boats launch leave a highly visible white wake so that a ship, especially a fast and maneuverable one like a destroyer, if its lookouts are alert and spot it in time, can usually get out of the way of the deadly missile.

About 600 medium size VII-C boats were built-the most common U-boat used in the war. She was reliable, sturdy, could take punishment and gave the Allies many worries and sleepless nights. At 760 tons, it was 218 feet long, had twin screws and diesel engines that delivered 3,000 HP.

The German Navy had a given number of submarines, but only a percentage of them could be out searching for prey to sink. Half the boats were in for repair, resupply and R&R. Between war cruises, a U-boat laid up for 28 days at one of the five French bases: Brest, Lorient, St. Nazaire, La Pallice, or Bordeaux, where bomb-proof concrete-roofed pens protected the boats. One third of the crew lodged ashore, and provided with hotels, brothels, and a rest house, while one third went on leave to Germany by special tram, and the final third worked at repairs and upkeep. Thus, each member of the crew had nine days’ work, nine days’ rest, and nine days’ home leave between cruises. And they needed it!

Air bombing attacks on these bases, which were carried out with increasing frequency after July 1942, with the aid of the United States Army Air Force based in England, did no essential damage to the U-boats or their operations, protected under tons of concrete and steel; and when the town of Lorient was badly hit, the Germans simply moved their recreational activities out into the country. U-boats also had to travel considerably long distances to and from the war zones.

U-boats are most dangerous when they hunt in groups, called wolfpacks, usually a group of six submarines. Often, one of the pack would separate from the group and fire a torpedo simply to draw off the protecting escort warships, while the rest of the pack slips in among the convoy to pick off merchant ships.

Warships, called escorts, protect the convoys, and they can be anything from corvettes, frigates, destroyer escorts (smaller that a destroyer but larger that a frigate or a corvette), and destroyers (the most common escorts), to the larger cruisers and aircraft carriers

At first, the British attempts to find and sink U-boats by using hunting groups to search the ocean turned out to be a futile exercise in the vast Atlantic. They instituted instead a convoy system, with protective escort warships and planes. Planes force the submarines to submerge, leaving them short-sighted and immobile. The U-boat does not have a choice. If attacked by a plane, the U-boat commander could not risk damage to his pressure hull because the inability to submerge meant almost certain destruction. So they crash dived.

The natural enemy of the submarine is the destroyer, which is only a football field long and thirty-nine feet wide—a small ship compared to cruisers and battleships, but lethal to submarines, with their 35-knot speed, armed with torpedo tubes, search and destroy capabilities, and ramming and depth charging abilities. Basically, destroyers were a power plant inside a thin 3/8 steel-plate hull. The thinness of their hulls gave them the name tin cans—one accurate ammunition shell could sink them. But they were dangerous ships, even against larger warships, carrying a bevy of high explosive torpedoes and bristling with cannons and antiaircraft batteries. The destroyers could play havoc with other ships and planes. Often, their antiaircraft batteries were the first line of air defense for aircraft carriers and convoys.

But at the beginning of the war, the primary protection of the merchant shipping and convoys was the corvette. A warship, smaller than a destroyer and much slower (top speed 16 knots), designed to be built speedily by smaller merchant shipyards. These ships, called Flower Class Corvettes (each named for a flower), became the mainstay for protection of the convoys during the first few years of the war.

Just how does a surface vessel attack a submerged submarine? With depth charges and hedgehogs. The depth charge is basically a bomb packed with plenty of explosives, packaged in a canister shaped like a garbage can, which is launched off the stern of the escort vessel and designed to be detonated by water pressure. It destroys submarines not so much by direct strikes but by the concussive effect of a nearby detonation, splitting the hull seams, popping the rivets, causing valves to leak. The weakness of the depth charge is its destructive radius, which is only twenty-five feet. Depth charges were effective down to 300 feet. The depth charge also posed a danger to the escort vessel launching it. The vessel had to scoot away after launch to avoid damage from the charges’ concussive effects. No method of accurately determining the depth of a submarine was ever found and the attack would fail if the depth charge setting was too high or too low. Thus, a depth charge attack caused guesswork, though the experienced escort commanders were good at it.

A newer device, developed in World War Two, was the hedgehog, an anti-submarine bomb fired by a mortar, thrown ahead from the front of the escort vessel. It is just as lethal to submarines and does not pose the dangers to the escort vessel of depth charges.

Natural enemies of the submarine were enemy aircraft. Besides the bombing danger that they posed, such aircraft forced the submarine to submerge, making it far more difficult for the U-boat to launch an attack or even keep up with a convoy. U-boats preferred operating in the ‘Atlantic Gap’ which was too far from land for the aircraft to operate (until later in the war when VLR–Very Long Range—aircraft and aircraft carriers were used to cover the Gap). Conversely, operating in coastal waters subjected the U-boats to constant air patrols by planes and blimps stationed on land, which either attacked or radioed the U-boat’s location. At America’s entry into the war, the Navy air arm consisted of Catalinas, both a flying boat and amphibious aircraft. They were useful in covering convoys out of Newfoundland, not only for their ability to attack submarines, but also for locating them and reporting it to surface vessels to carry out the attack. These planes forced German subs to dive when their lookouts sighted a Catalina and thereby kept these marauders from attacking the shipping. Finally, the Cats, as the Catalinas were called, capable of landing on water, were very useful in air-sea rescue work and eventually much of the rescue work fell to them.

Rather than have merchant ships sail independently over the ocean as big fat targets for U-boats, they sailed in groups called convoys, protected by Allied warships called ‘escorts.’ Individual ships would come from a score of different ports. They would be manned and loaded with cargo, then would rendezvous at a set place and hour, laden with cargo and ready to sail. The convoy, leaving England, would sail past Scotland, the Isle of Man, and the neutral Ireland to pick up the contingents sailing from different ports. As the war advanced, slowly the advantages shifted from the U-boats to the convoy escorts, what with the increase in ships, and technological developments of radar to spot submarines on the surface, even at night and in a fog and the ASDIC (the Americans called it sonar) sound equipment for detecting submarines submerged, and the HF/DF which, through numerous antennas among ships and shore installations, could locate a U-boat sending its radio signals to the home base or to each other.

Detecting a submerged submarine was no simple thing. Using the ASDIC device to send out sounds, sounds were sent out and when they struck a submarine, echoes were sent back to a dome on the ship’s keel and relayed to a sonar operator’s earphones, fixing the location of the U-boat.

The HF/DF located submarines on the surface. A single receiver on a ship with two aerials proved effective in locating U-boats that radioed to its Lorient headquarters. The two aerials permitted triangulation of the radio signal, regardless of how brief it was, to pinpoint the submarine.

The worst conditions for convoys were those sailing to Russia via the Artic Sea where there was insufferable cold from which you could not escape on deck or inside the ship, icebergs, and no real darkness of the night. And the convoy had to sail close to the German airbases in Norway with their bombers, torpedo planes and dive-bombers on the ready, and the ports and harbors housing many of the German battleships and cruisers, which meant German attacks would be easier and more frequent.

General Billy Mitchell of the Army Air Force violently opposed a naval air arm and aircraft carriers. Admiral King and others just as vigorously supported the naval air arm and built a mighty force of large aircraft carriers and, to support convoys, smaller escort carriers. Using the escort carriers, they closed, in 1943, the Atlantic Gap, that is, the area of the Atlantic Ocean where previously there was no air support for convoys because the range was too far for the land-based airbases. The escort carriers, nicknamed Woolworth Carriers, did a great job protecting the convoys once in use.

A crash building program, by using merchant ship hulls, they could build escort carriers quickly and in quantity. The escort carriers needed plenty of room to operate since they had to head into the wind to launch and recover planes, being careful not to collide with the merchant ships of the convoy they were protecting.

The first escort carrier, the British HMS Audacity, sank in December 1941, in a battle between U-boats and a Gibraltar-UK convoy, but not before her planes sank five U-boats. The American navy took note and began building escort carriers both for itself and for Britain.

The United States Navy, immediately after World War One, turned to naval aviation. A General Board of the navy recognized that the naval air development was of paramount importance and undertaken immediately. And so it was. The first carrier, the Langley, so impressed the fleet in war games that the fleet commander ordered two big carriers rushed to completion and smaller carriers built for escort duties, landing support, and anti-submarine work; they developed and built the modern dive-bombers and torpedo planes. Improvements were vast in the building of destroyers, cruisers, and battleships. Modern propulsion systems gave the navy fast ships that could go for 100,000 miles without overhaul. The Navy developed amphibious forces with many types of landing craft, though their use, forced upon the United States before there could be any significant dress rehearsals of landing by the Marine sea assaults at Guadalcanal . Combat became the dress rehearsal, particularly in the Pacific.

Then there was the specifically designed standard emergency cargo vessel, called the Liberty Ship, simple of construction with reciprocating engines that even an inexperienced engineer could operate and designed to be built quickly, simply, and in the same way by many ship-building yards. The first Liberty Ship required 230 days to build, but the average eventually dropped to forty-two days. In 1942, shipyards in the United States constructed 646 freighters, 597 of which were Liberty Ships, exceeding the number of ships lost to enemy action. With these ships added to the mix, the supplying of Britain and our troops was possible throughout the war. In the first six months of 1943, shipyards delivered 724 ships.

In 1934, Admiral Joseph Reeves, then Commander-in-Chief of the United States Fleet, brought to the attention of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, one of whose missions was to develop plans for mobilization for the next war, to solve the following problem: while we were producing a great number of tanks, they were useless unless we had an adequate means of transporting them to the theater of war. Unlike World War One, where the French harbors with excellent terminals were available, large numbers of tanks and artillery pieces will now have to be landed against opposition on hostile beaches. And so the United States embarked upon a crash program to build landing craft for troops and for equipment and tanks, which were used by the American troops for the first