1952 T2 tanker fracture off Cape Cod

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.

Seven- or eight-year-old T2 tanker broke completely in two off Cape Cod in 1952; most of the crew survived. Tom references the Hollywood adaptation *The Finest Hours*.

The Navy was very concerned about this. Hollywood was excited about this in more recent times — The Finest Hours, about the Coast Guard. In 1952 one of these — actually it wasn't one of the Liberty ships, it was a T2 tanker. When we talk about the Liberty ships, the oil tankers were T2 tankers and the Liberty ships were classed together. One of these tankers that was only seven or eight years old, off Cape Cod in 1952, broke in two. The people were stuck on half a ship. It completely broke in two, and nearly everyone survived — you can watch the movie. It's a true story of what happened to these ships. The Navy was concerned, so they commissioned this report that's going around.

Not developed; T2 tankers are mentioned only to clarify that the 4,694-vessel figure is not all Liberty ships.

If you look at the data: 4,694 welded steel merchant vessels were built by the Maritime Commission. These were not all Liberty ships, some were T1 and T2 tankers. 970 suffered casualties involving fractures. By casualty I mean a metal casualty, not a person casualty — though some of them probably suffered the other type too. 24 sustained a complete fracture of the strength deck, one vessel sustained a complete fracture at the bottom, eight vessels were lost, four broken in two, and four were abandoned after fracture occurred. 26 lives were lost in these structural failures.