SS Robert E. Peary

Robert E. Peary was built at the Permanente Metals Corporation No. 2 Yard in Richmond, California and was the 47th ship built at the yard.{{cite book|last=Veronico|first=Nicholas|title=World War II Shipyards by the Bay|page=31|publisher=Arcadia Publishing|year=2007|isbn=978-0-7385-4717-6|location=Charleston, SC}} The record set in her construction was the result of a competition between shipyards to see which could build a Liberty ship the fastest. The Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation had built another Liberty ship, {{SS|Joseph N. Teal||2}}, in only ten days between 13 and 23 September 1942. The yard's owner, Henry J. Kaiser (who also owned the Richmond Shipyards), was asked by a reporter if it could have been done quicker. He replied that it could have been constructed in eight days but had been delayed to allow President Franklin D. Roosevelt to attend.

Roosevelt agreed to a proposal to build a ship in half the time. To meet the deadline, the Richmond Shipyard prefabricated as much of the vessel as possible at its No. 2 Yard and pre-positioned the sections to enable the workers to assemble it with maximum efficiency. The keel was laid at 12:01 am on 8 November 1942. The rest of the ship was built from prefabricated 250-ton sections with the engines already in place. The bottom shell unit was installed first, followed by the inner-bottom unit to support the boiler, engine and pump. The boilers were put in place by mid-morning, followed by transverse bulkheads and the shaft tunnel. The upper deck was completed on the second day, with the installation of the lower forepeak, more bulkheads and the fantail. The masts, derricks and superstructure were installed on the third day. During the final day the wiring, welding and painting was completed along with the installation of the forward gun platform and the inner stack.{{cite book|last=Gleichauf|first=Justin F.|title=Unsung Sailors: the Naval Armed Guard in World War II|page=89|publisher=Naval Institute Press|year=2002|isbn=978-1-55750-420-3|location=Annapolis, MD}} She was launched at 3:27 pm on 12 November, after around 250,000 individual parts weighing {{convert|14000000|lb|kg|abbr=on}} had been assembled. After 26 minutes of speeches, Mrs. Maude Byrnes, the wife of the head of Roosevelt's Economic Stabilization Office, christened the ship and it was sent down the slipway into San Francisco Bay. It was delivered for service on 15 November, setting an additional record of 7 days, 14 hours and 32 minutes from laying the keel to delivery.

The record speed of the construction was a propaganda effort{{cite video

| year =1942

| title =Video: America Reports On Aid To Allies Etc. (1942)

| url =https://archive.org/details/gov.archives.arc.38937

| publisher =Universal Newsreel

| access-date =February 21, 2012

}} intended to show that the United States could produce ships faster than they could be sunk. Normally, the Permanente yard took an average of about 50 days to build a Liberty ship. In fact, though, it could not realistically be done much faster as there was not enough steel or capacity to build them at such a pace.{{cite book|editor-last=Spulber|editor-first=Daniel F. |last=Thompson |first=Peter |page=264 |chapter= How Much Did the Liberty Shipbuilders Learn? New Evidence for an Old Case Study|title=Famous Fables of Economics: Myths of Market Failures|publisher=Wiley-Blackwell|year=2002|isbn=978-0-631-22675-8|location=Malden, MA}} The ship was referred to as a "stunt ship", though Henry Kaiser referred to it as an "incentive ship" because of the boost that it provided to his workers' morale.{{cite book|last=Adams|first=Stephen B|title=Mr. Kaiser goes to Washington: the rise of a government entrepreneur|page=[https://archive.org/details/mrkaisergoestowa00adam/page/115 115]|publisher=UNC Press Books|year=1997|isbn=978-0-8078-2358-3|location=Chapel Hill, NC|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/mrkaisergoestowa00adam/page/115}} Nonetheless, the extreme rapidity of the Robert E. Peary{{'s}} construction illustrated how successfully US shipyards had adopted methods of mass production that had been pioneered in the motor industry; at the start of the Liberty ship program, the ships took an average of 1.4 million man-hours and 355 days to build, but by 1943 the figures had come down to under 500,000 man-hours (or 57 man years) and an average of 41 days.{{cite book|last=Overy|first=Richard|title=Why the Allies Won|page=238|publisher=Random House|year=2006|isbn=978-1-84595-065-1|location=London}}

Robert E. Peary sailed on her maiden voyage on 22 November. She was operated by the Weyerhauser Steamship Company and first served in the Pacific Theatre, sailing to Noumea, New Caledonia before heading onwards to Guadalcanal. She sailed to the Atlantic Ocean, in April 1943, and operated there for the remainder of the war on the convoy routes to Europe, ferrying prisoners of war from North Africa and serving off Omaha Beach on D-Day. She was withdrawn to the Wilmington Reserve Fleet in December 1946, and was scrapped in June 1963, at Baltimore, Maryland.Veronico (2007), p. 37Sawyer, L. A. and Mitchell, W. H. The Liberty Ships: The History of the "Emergency" Type Cargo Ships Constructed in the United States During the Second World War, Second Edition, pp. 145, Lloyd's of London Press Ltd., London, England, 1985. {{ISBN|1-85044-049-2}}.

• Vickers Wellington LN514, a British World War II bomber built in 24 hours

{{reflist}}

• [http://www.usmm.org/peary.html American Merchant Marine at War website]
• [http://www.ssjeremiahobrien.org/visit.php Website] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140802000702/http://www.ssjeremiahobrien.org/visit.php |date=2014-08-02 }} for Liberty Ship SS Jeremiah O'Brien
• [http://www.ssjohnwbrown.org/ Website] for Liberty Ship SS John W. Brown

{{Kaiser, Permanente Metals, Richmond Shipyards}}

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Category:Liberty ships

Category:Ships built in Richmond, California

Category:1942 ships