USS Schenectady (T2 tanker fracture)

The classic brittle fracture image. Schenectady broke in two at dry dock on the West Coast (no casualties); a separate T2 tanker in the North Atlantic broke up at sea. Coast Guard rescue off Cape Cod 1952 made into a movie. Used as the historical hinge for why energy-of-fracture matters.

In World War II we built a number of Liberty ships. Henry Kaiser — heard of Kaiser Aluminum, or Kaiser Permanente health care? Same Henry Kaiser — decided we could build ships just like we build automobiles on a mass-production line. This is from one of his shipyards in Oregon, and they built thousands of Liberty ships for World War II, and T2 tankers, which were basically the same thing. They weren't very large ships, but they built them. And they broke up in two. There's a Navy report from 1946 after the war, and the classic picture is the USS Schenectady. This was at dry dock on the West Coast — just kind of broke in two from brittle fracture, no one got hurt. This other one was in the North Atlantic in the middle of the ocean. That would be a little more traumatic.