page_title: Henry J. Kaiser
section_title: Kaiser Shipbuilding
hierarchical_section_title: Henry J. Kaiser / World War II / Kaiser Shipbuilding
caption_attribution_description: Lot-9427-4 (LC-USZ62-78607): Freighter Reinforcements Almost Ready For Sea. Machinery and cargo-handling equipment are being installed in a group of Liberty ships at the fitting out dock of a U.S. Shipyard. Soon, the ships will carry vital United Nations cargoes to world battlefronts. Photograph released March 1942 by Office of War Information. (2015/11/20).
context_page_description: Henry John Kaiser was an American industrialist who became known as the father of modern American shipbuilding. Prior to World War II, Kaiser was involved in the construction industry; his company was one of the companies that built Hoover Dam. He established the Kaiser Shipyards, which built Liberty ships during World War II, after which he formed Kaiser Aluminum and Kaiser Steel. Kaiser organized Kaiser Permanente health care for his workers and their families. He led Kaiser-Frazer followed by Kaiser Motors, automobile companies known for the safety of their designs. Kaiser was involved in large construction projects such as civic centers and dams, and invested in real estate, later moving into television broadcasting. With his wealth, he established the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit, non-partisan, charitable organization.
context_section_description: Kaiser fought Hitler far more directly with what he is most famous for: the Kaiser Shipyard in Richmond, California; during World War II adapting production techniques to enable building cargo ships with an average construction time of 45 days. These ships became known as Liberty ships and were later supplemented in the mid-war period by improved, larger and faster Victory ships. He became world-renowned when his teams built a ship in four days.
  The keel for the 10,500-ton SS Robert E. Peary was laid on Sunday, November 8, 1942, and the ship was launched in California from the Richmond Shipyard #2 on Thursday, November 12, four days and 15½ hours later. The previous record had been ten days for the Liberty ship Joseph M. Teal.
  A visit to a Ford assembly plant by one of his associates led to the decision to use welding instead of riveting for shipbuilding. Welding was advantageous because it took less strength to do and it was easier to teach to thousands of employees, mostly unskilled laborers and many of them women. Kaiser adopted the use of sub-assemblies in ship construction. Formerly hundreds of laborers crowded together to complete a ship. Though this practice had been tried on the East Coast and in Britain, Kaiser was able to take full advantage of the process by constructing new shipyards utilizing this concept.
  Other Kaiser shipyards were located in Ryan Point (Vancouver) on the Columbia River in Washington state and on Swan Island in Portland, Oregon. A smaller vessel was turned out in 71 hours and 40 minutes from the Vancouver yard on November 16, 1942. The Kaiser hulls also became America's smaller, more numerous "escort carriers", over one hundred small aircraft carriers employed in both the Pacific and the Atlantic theaters. The concepts he developed for the mass production of commercial and naval ships remain in use today.
  One problem with welded hulls, unknown at that time, was the issue of brittle fracture. This caused the loss of some Liberty ships in cold seas as the welds failed and the hulls would crack—sometimes completely in two. Constance Tipper was one of the first people to discover why the Liberty ships were breaking in two. Minor changes in design and more rigid welding control implemented in 1947 eliminated Liberty ship losses until 1955. Through his membership in a group called the Six Companies, Kaiser also had a major role in the Joshua Hendy Iron Works of Sunnyvale, California, which built the EC-2 triple expansion steam engines for the Liberty ships. Kaiser and his associates organized the California Shipbuilding Corporation.
caption: Kaiser-built Liberty ships being outfitted, 1942
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