Ленд-лиз

Most importantly, President Roosevelt could not possibly abide a plan that put so much power in the hands of the uniffmned military, it The implementation of such a plan in 1939 when Poland was conquered or even June 1940 when France fell would be out of the question politically. It was not even possible when the Soviet Union was invaded in June 1941.

 

The president, t~r example, called in 1940 for industry to tool up to build 50,000 airplanes per year (in 1944 the United States produced 96,000, but at the time of R(~)sevelt's call 50,000
seemed out of reach). But nobody told the Commission what kinds of airplanes m produce or the numbers of each model. Everybody knew that tanks would be needed in great numbers after Germany's lightning war in Poland and France, but nobody told the Commission what kind of tanks to build.

 

Automobiles made Americans machine minded and made American industry oriented to mass production teclmiques. They consumed 51 percent of the country's mmual production of malleable iron, 75 percent of plate glass. 68 percent of upholstery leather, 80 percent of rubber. 34 percent of lead, 13 percent of copper, and abc~ut 10 percent of aluminum. One of Nelson's first orders was to cut off car production, and the last automobile to come off the production line during World War II did so on 10 February 1942. Tiffs was an essential move because during the war, General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Packard and a few other automobile manufacturers produced more than 50 percent of all aircraft engines.

 

In 1939 the German Navy launched submarine warfare in the North Atlantic Ocean to enforce a naval blockade against Great Britain. Their submarines, called Unterseebooten or U-Boats, sank great numbers of merchant ships approaching the British Isles. Under these pressures, the United States greatly increased the production of its own merchant fleet. Cargo ships were needed to ferry supplies to allies if the United States entered the war. The United States decided to modify the English design being used for the Lend-Lease ships. The new emergency cargo ships came to be known as the Liberty ships. Yet, between 1939 and 1940, only 82 vessels were constructed. In 1941, Congress passed the Ship Warrants Act, giving the Maritime Commission power to allot ship construction priorities. Since existing shipyards were working full capacity on naval contracts, the Maritime Commission established 18 new shipyards to work on these identical merchant ships. They were built on a common design in assembly-line fashion along the West, East, and Gulf coasts of the United States. Parts were manufactured in every state in the country.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and U.S. entry into World War II, ships were being sunk by German U-Boats almost as fast as they were being built. The Maritime Commission called for 2,000 ships to be constructed by the end of 1943. (The Japanese also inflicted a toll on supply ships in the Solomon Islands and New Guinea, but following their naval and air losses at Coral Sea and Midway, in mid-1942, they were less of a problem to merchant shipping than the Germans.) The ship building effort was a success. Finally, the United States had enough ships to keep pace with the losses caused by the U-Boats.

However, the Liberty ships were slow and small. Their design had a weakness in the hull that caused ships to sometimes break in two. In 1943, the United States started a new emergency cargo ship program to replace the Liberty ships. The newer ships were bigger and faster with better engines. These ships were designated Victory ships. While the Liberty ships were designed to be the workhorse of the war, Victory ships could continue to be used after the war as part of the regular merchant fleet.