Why America's WW2 Ships Kept Snapping in Half (One Was Tied to a Dock)

In January 1943, a brand-new American tanker broke in half while tied to a dock in calm water in Portland, Oregon, "with a report which was heard for at least a mile." Then the WW2 Liberty ships started cracking in the North Atlantic, and some broke in half. Investigators chased every suspect: sabotage, the new welders, a steel mill caught falsifying its reports, even the ships' names. The answer, in the Navy board's 1946 report, was a sharp hatch corner, steel that turned brittle in the cold, and the cold itself. The fix was rounded corners and a few rivets put back into welded ships: "No crack has been known to pass an arrestor." 0:00 Heard a Mile Away 1:43 Suspect One: Sabotage 4:56 It Happens Again 7:20 Suspect Two: The Welders 9:51 Suspect Three: The Steel 12:29 Suspect Four: The Cold 17:09 The Corner 21:05 The Verdict ▶ Watch next WW2: The Army Borrowed 13,000 Tons of Silver to Build the A-Bomb    • WW2: The Army Borrowed 13,000 Tons of Silv...   Grand Coulee Dam: The "White Elephant" That Helped Win World War II    • Grand Coulee Dam: The "White Elephant" Tha...   We check every fact against the 1946 Board report and other primary sources, but small errors can slip through. If you spot one, tell us in the comments and we'll correct it. Sources: • Board of Investigation, "The Design and Methods of Construction of Welded Steel Merchant Vessels," final report, 15 July 1946 (GPO, 1947): https://archive.org/details/DTIC_AD06... • National Park Service, "Historic Richmond Shipyards": https://home.nps.gov/rori/learn/histo... • H. C. Campbell, Engineering Case Library ECL 1007, Stanford University (1967): https://archive.org/details/ECL-1007 • Truman Library Institute, excerpt from "The Watchdog" by Steve Drummond: https://www.trumanlibraryinstitute.or... • HistoryNet, "When Everybody Loved Congress" (the Truman Committee): https://historynet.com/when-everybody... • University of Cambridge, Department of Engineering, "Constance Tipper": https://www-g.eng.cam.ac.uk/125/1925-... • The Maritime Executive, "WWII Merchant Mariners Receive Congressional Gold Medal": https://maritime-executive.com/articl... Further reading: The Watchdog by Steve Drummond (2024) Archival photographs and documents are labeled ARCHIVAL on screen with their source. Everything labeled VISUAL RECONSTRUCTION is AI-generated for illustration and is not a historical record. Narration is AI-generated. #WW2 #LibertyShips #History #Engineering #Shipbuilding