He SILENCED Every Admiral Who Mocked Him – By Building An Aircraft Carrier Every 13 Days

The admirals called his ships too slow, too small and too cheap to take seriously. So a dam builder who had never built a warship gave the U.S. Navy 50 aircraft carriers, one every 13 days. In 1942, Henry J. Kaiser walked into a meeting with the United States Navy and promised fifty escort carriers in thirteen months. He had no naval training. He had never studied engineering. Until the age of 58 he had never built a ship of any kind. The Navy said no, with more than a hint of condescension: these ships had been "proposed by a man who built dams." So he stopped asking admirals and went straight to President Roosevelt. What followed was one of the most incredible feats of industrial war. Farmhands, schoolteachers and women who had never set foot in a shipyard built carriers in pieces and joined them on the ways like an enormous kit. Fifty ordered. Fifty delivered. Seven of them for the price of a single Essex. Sailors called them "jeep carriers." Less charitable people called them "Kaiser's coffins." Then, on the morning of 25 October 1944, six of them stood between the Yamato, the biggest battleship ever built, and 100,000 American soldiers ashore at Leyte. Two and a half hours later, the Yamato turned away. This is the story of the man, the ships the admirals mocked, and the letter in which Admiral Ernest King, who had opposed them, took it all back. CHAPTERS 00:00 Six Ships Nobody Wanted 03:33 The Photographer 07:01 Thirty Ships for Britain 10:33 The Gap 15:06 One Every Thirteen Days 19:38 Closing the Gap 23:30 Hull 302 29:34 The Morning off Samar 38:35 Mere Jeep Carriers Did someone in your family serve on a jeep carrier, on one of their destroyers, or on the beaches they covered? Leave the ship's name in the comments. Stories like these deserve to be kept. SOURCES AND CREDITS Archival film and photographs, all in the public domain: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (U.S. Navy films, series 428-NPC; Office of War Information; U.S. Army Signal Corps), Naval History and Heritage Command, Library of Congress (Office of War Information, HAER), National Park Service (Louis Lee collection, Vancouver National Historic Reserve), U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Maritime Commission, National Museum of the U.S. Navy, National Naval Aviation Museum, University of Washington Libraries, Prelinger Archives, Imperial War Museums (A 11269). Thumbnail portrait: Harris & Ewing, 1947 (NARA 350298687). Technical drawings and animation: Design Under Fire. The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement. #WW2 #NavalHistory #Documentary