Liberty ships and SS Schenectady / SS Manhattan brittle fracture

The canonical case for "welds create continuous crack paths whereas rivets stop cracks at plate boundaries." 4,694 ships built; 1,442 reported casualties; more than one fracture per ship on average. Schenectady cracked in harbor; SS Manhattan cracked at sea. Used to launch the post-WWII brittle-fracture research history (Weck/British Welding Institute, Pellini/NRL, Cohen-Averbach/MIT).

To continue with the ship analogy: in World War Two they had a huge shipbuilding program called Liberty ships. Anybody know anything about Liberty ships? [Tom holds up a report.] Here's the report issued in July 1946 on the design and methods of construction of welded steel merchant vessels. Just like in 1917 when Comfort Adams was asked to head a committee to build ships to get the boys over there — as you remember the song from 1917, "Over there, the Yanks are coming" — the Yanks had to go not only to Europe but all over the Pacific, and so they built Liberty ships. They called them Liberty ships and T1 tankers.