LIBERTY, Vehicles Carrier - Details and current position - IMO 9310109 (2024)

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LIBERTY, Vehicles Carrier - Details and current position - IMO 9310109? ›

Vehicles Carrier, IMO 9310109

USS Liberty (AGTR-5), a US Navy electronic intelligence ship strafed and bombed by the Israeli airforce resulting in more than 34 dead and 171 wounded and its decommissioning as beyond repair.

Vessel LIBERTY PEACE is a vehicles carrier ship sailing under the flag of United States of America.

The first Liberty built, the Patrick Henry, was sent to the ship breakers (scrap yard) in October 1958. Of the nearly 3,000 Liberty ships built, 200 were lost during World War II to enemy action, weather and accidents. Only two are still operational today, the SS Jeremiah O'Brien and the SS John W. Brown.

During World War II there were nearly 1,500 instances of significant brittle fractures. Twelve ships, including three of the 2,710 Liberty ships built, broke in half without warning, including SS John P. Gaines, which sank on 24 November 1943 with the loss of 10 lives.

A Liberty ship could carry 390 Personnel Carriers. If they were lined up bumper to bumper they would form a line 1 1/2 miles long. A Liberty ship could carry 156,000 boxes of 30 caliber ammunition. This would be 234,000,000 rounds.

It was discovered that the ships in the North Atlantic were exposed to low temperatures that changed the mechanism of cracking from ductile to brittle, causing the hull to fracture easily. The predominantly welded (as opposed to riveted) hull construction then allowed cracks to run large distances unimpeded.

Named by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to bring "liberty" back to Europe, Liberty ships were from a British design and were built on a mass-production scale in order to save supplies. The first Liberty ship was SS Patrick Henry and was launched on September 27, 1941, at Bethlehem-Fairfield Yards, Baltimore, Maryland.

At 1235Z (2:35 local time) one torpedo hit Liberty on the starboard side forward of the superstructure, creating a 39 ft (12 m) wide hole in what had been a cargo hold converted to the ship's research spaces and killing 25 servicemen, almost all of them from the intelligence section, and wounding dozens.

Many were put into merchant service, many were scrapped, a number were scuttled full of surplus war materials and munitions and some were scuttled to help reinforce coastal sea defenses left damaged by the Germans. Of the 2710 Liberty ships built during the war, a little more that 2400 survived.

What is the significance of the Liberty ship? ›

Named by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to bring "liberty" back to Europe, Liberty ships were from a British design and were built on a mass-production scale in order to save supplies. The first Liberty ship was SS Patrick Henry and was launched on September 27, 1941, at Bethlehem-Fairfield Yards, Baltimore, Maryland.