WW II Wouldn't Have Been Won Without Liberty Ships

IN OCTOBER 1940, the world was at war. Poland and much of Scandinavia had fallen to Germany. France and England were both under siege as well. Having faced catastrophic naval losses at the hands of the Nazis, Britain feared a total collapse. As a last-ditch effort, a delegation of British shipbuilders, surveyors, and members of the admiralty arrived in the US with one desperate mission: to find a shipyard capable of building sixty merchant vessels that could continue the Allies’ fight. It would not be an easy battle. The empire’s commercial fleet had sustained catastrophic losses during World War I; the global Great Depression had stymied that fleet’s recovery. Now, just a year into the second World War, Britain was facing immeasurable odds. Squadrons of German U-boat submarines known as “wolf packs” were laying siege on the almost entirely unprotected merchant fleet and threatened to collapse the empire’s economy, leaving millions of people without basic goods and supplies.