SS John W. Brown B4611

SS John W. Brown B4611 History

SS John W. Brown (B-4611) is a "Liberty" ship, launched on September 7, 1942 at the Fairfield Shipyard in Bethlehem, Baltimore, Maryland - National Day "Labor Day". 'Celebrate the state across America. That day, six Liberty ships were finally launched from various shipyards along the coast, all in support of U.S. operations during World War II. Despite its origins in 1940, the Brown is still an operational vessel today, albeit with limited cruising, and often as a floating museum ship docked at Pier 1 in the Port of Baltimore, USA.

The ship is named after union leader John W. Brown, who helped organize Local 4 - Shipbuilders of America.

In 1936, as civil unrest in Europe intensified, the US Congress passed the Merchant Shipping Act, which allowed the construction of about 50 ships per year. By 1940, Imperial Japan's growing presence in the Pacific led to an increase in the number of these ships to 200 per year.

The ships became a mix of cargo ships and tankers of all sizes, all requiring steam turbine propulsion. However, due to this advanced new engine technology and the lack of suitable manufacturing facilities in the United States, very few were eventually built.

By 1939, England was besieged by German U-boats roaming the Atlantic Ocean between the east coast of the United States and the British Isles - about 600 ships would be sunk or damaged in this ocean - this is England and Great Britain The key arteries for survival Britons. With logistics always winning and losing in wars, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt called for the construction of a new ship to transport goods from the United States to soldiers abroad and allies around the world.

The concept is to simply build ships that sink more than the enemy. The new ship's design will be a larger replica of the Hoag Island cargo ship built for the same purpose decades earlier during World War I.

The U.S. Maritime Commission has changed the design of a charter vessel currently being built for the UK. The new vessel, numbered "EC2-S-C1", is designed to conform to the economy and economy of U.S. shipbuilding practices and reduce overall construction time. Classes are EC = "Emergency Cargo", 2 = 400 to 450 ft in length, S = steam engine propulsion, C1 = construction number. Henry J. Kaiser won the arms production contract and formed a group of companies called "Six Companies" headquartered on the West Coast.

Coal-fired boilers will be replaced by engines powered by oil-fired boilers to reduce the risk of coal dust explosions onboard. The hull construction consists of riveting and welding - the rivets are individually heated to a white-hot state, then inserted into pre-drilled holes between the two panels, and finally hammered into place with a jackhammer.

Welding the parts together is cheap and requires less labor - although the main concern is that boats have never been welded together before, with some questioning their resilience in the harsh weather conditions common in the Atlantic.

Builders have to be trained from scratch, as no one has attempted to build a boat with a welded hull so far. When the U.S. entered the war after Pearl Harbor in December 1941, shipyards began hiring more women to replace the men who enlisted in drovesindeed, World War II did much to attract women to the war labor force More than any other American event ever. President Franklin D. Roosevelt finally saw a finished ship and told the media it looked like an "ugly duckling." Knowing they needed to change public perceptions of these ships, the government designated September 27, 1941, a patriotic "Freedom Fleet Day"the day when the first 14 of these ships were launched. The first ship completed was the SS Patrick Henry, launched by President Roosevelt himself.

At the ceremony, Roosevelt referred to Patrick Henry's 1775 speech in which he sternly used the famous phrase "Give me liberty or give me death." Roosevelt said that the new class would bring "freedom" to Europe, so the name "Freedom Ship" has been used for this class.

Kaiser knew how to build ships, and having federal support for him enabled him to create a shipbuilding program unlike any other. This force consists of seventeen shipyards along the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts. He wants ships to be delivered in fewer days than before and uses incentives in the form of bonuses to create healthy competition among different shipyards.

In the early days of the program, it took approximately 230 days to complete one ship per ship converted to welding. However, when the workforce is fully trained and experienced, this average drops to just 42 days. The record for shipbuilding performance belongs to SS Robert E. Peary, which was launched only 4 days 15 1.5 hours after the keel was laid. The boats are built in the American auto industry, in-line, using prefabricated parts to speed up construction.

The expected cost of a Liberty ship is estimated at $2,000,000, although the actual cost per ship at various shipyards may range from $1,543,000 to $2,099,000. Based on comparing the cost of the 10,000 tonnes of cargo carried with the cost of the vessel itself, if the vessel only delivers the cargo on its maiden voyage, it is considered "paid" - if the vessel begins to return, the case is considered a bonus.

It should be noted that each ship is built to last only five years.

Cracks appeared in the hulls and decks of some of the first Liberty ships due to limited training in new welding practices - 3 of the 2,710 Liberty ships built broke in half without warning and took some lives sunk at the cost. Shipyards often hire inexperienced new workers, a lack of training, combined with the new welding techniques needed to produce large numbers of "emergency" ships, naturally led to some errors in the construction process. The research finally showed that the crack was not only caused by hasty welding, but also by using some poor quality steel, which made the metal brittle.

Ships in the North Atlantic are exposed to temperatures that can lead to brittle fractures and thus severe hull fractures. Further complicating the issue, ships are loaded with cargo, putting them at great risk when they encounter severe storms at sea.

Structural reinforcements were added to the Liberty ship to address cracking, and the next design, the Victory, was considered stronger and less prone to metal fatigue.

Liberty ships are slow-moving ships, with 2,751 ships built, and the Navy knows they need to defend themselves because destroyers cannot be assigned to every cargo ship. As such, her armament consisted of a 3"/50 card gun in the bow, a 5"/38 card gun and two 3"/50 card guns in the stern and eight 20mm anti-aircraft guns. Two 20mm guns flanked the 3"/50" bow guns, four 20mm guns were located at the corners of the flybridge, and two 20mm guns were mounted on raised port and starboard gun platforms on the rear deck.

The assumption is that a free ship will always stay away from a given threat, rather than approaching it like a warshiphence a defensive armament. The Brown was designed to carry 500 soldiers and cargo, carrying more guns than the average cargo-only merchant ship.

The Liberty ship has a small base crew compared to previous large cargo ships. Eight merchant naval officers and thirty-eight merchant seamen command the ship. Loaders assist in loading port crews and direct engine and bridge operations. The ship's equipment was carried out by an officer of the U.S. Navy Armed Guard and 40 sailors from the USNAG.

The U.S. Naval Armed Guard is a service of the U.S. Navy responsible for protecting U.S. and allied merchant ships from enemy aircraft, submarines, and surface ships during World War II.

Armed guardsmen served as gunners, signalmen, and radio operators on cargo ships, tankers, troop carriers, and other merchant ships. The U.S. Marine Corps was disbanded after the war, and few today know or remember the courage and sacrifice of the Armed Guard, even in the Navy today.

The purpose of the USS Liberty was to transport supplies and weapons to combatants on the front lines around the world, so Roosevelt's "Ugly Duckling" became the workhorse of the Abyss. The vessel was designed and built to carry around 10,000 tonnes of cargo a standard of transport that still applies today.

However, due to the needs of the front lines, war planners often let them carry more and more stuff. War planners in the military were told the exact "cube" (or length, width, height and weight) of each item and the packing plan for the cargo.

Then according to the mission requirements of the port of destination, the equipment is placed according to the weight and arranged according to the principle of last-in, first-out. Like a puzzle, the cargo is expertly assembled in the cargo hold. The Liberty ships are approximately 440 feet long and have a steam radius of 21,000 miles for 80 days.

The ship has five large cargo holds, each with a hatch, the largest measuring 35 feet by 20 feet. Three large outriggers - one front, one middle and one rear - are used to load and unload cargo. The largest boom can lift 50 tons of cargo, tanks or other vehicles. Most ships carry hundreds of items - even as many as thousands - on any given voyage, but to understand the ship's enormous capacity, the cargo on each line or split line listed below May fill up a Liberty ship:

A) 2,840 Jeeps - Packed and loaded onto a 40-foot flatbed, the equivalent of a 2 1.5-mile long train.

(B) 525 x Armored Car - When loaded onto a 40 foot flatbed, the equivalent train will be 2 miles long.

(C) 525 x 3/4 ton Ambulance - Ambulance after ambulance, they are 1.5 miles in length.

(D) 440 x light tanks on board or 260 x medium tanks per ship.

(E) 390 x M3 half-track personnel carriers per vessel or 425 x 2 1.5 ton cargo trucks per vessel.

(F) 7,200 x 1.75 ton cargo trailer per vessel or 3,600 x 1 ton cargo trailer per vessel.

(G) 156,000 x box of 234,000,000 rounds of .30 caliber ammunition.

(H) 156,000 x box of 41,340,000 rounds of .50 caliber ammunition.

(I) 430,000 x boxes of "C" rations, which can feed 3,440,000 people for a day.

(J) 217??,000 x boxed 651,000 rounds of 75mm projectiles.

(K) 150,000 x boxed 300,000 rounds of 105mm projectiles.

These copious amounts of ordnance, food or equipment help the reader to really get a sense of the vast supply of supplies needed in the theater ahead, used by the 2,751 Liberty ships and all other cargo ships on the 2nd to carry the World War.

Launched in late September 1942, the Brown made 13 voyages during World War II. Her maiden voyage included a Lend-Lease shipment to Russia, and she was sent for protection without an escort or escort.

The port of destination is in the Persian Gulf, so Brown sailed across the Caribbean to the Panama Canal, then south along the coast of South America, past the Cape of Good Hope, then north along the coast of Africa, and finally into the Persian Gulf (this exhaustive voyage is specifically for designed to protect them from enemy submarines). On the way back, she stopped in South America and retrieved a shipment of bauxite.

By now, she's officially "paid her price" to make it into one piece.

For the remainder of the war, she sailed to the Mediterranean in August 1944 to supply the Anzio landings and the French invading forces. She spent months moving troops and cargo across ports in North Africa, Italy and France voyages that are now linked to convoys.

When the war ended in mid-1945, she did not retire, but continued in her original role, shipping goods to Europe to help rebuild programs there.

Returning to the United States in 1946, the U.S. Navy leased Brown to New York City, where it became a floating high school at sea - the only such school in the United States. She held that role from 1946 to 1982, graduating from thousands of students who were preparing to start their careers on the oft-forgotten merchant ships.

In 1988, she had to be rescued herself, so the Baltimore Freedom Ship Program was launched. The project eventually found her a home in Baltimore, Maryland where she was born. In September 1988, the John W. Brown was redesignated as a Memorial Museum Ship.

It was officially listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.