Liberty ship cargo questions

Here's what appears to be a description of the class (Crater, of which their were 62);

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/images/g100000/g105493c.htm

There was another thread recently about auxiliaries. This would be a very good one. I'm sorely tempted.

And, we have a winner! At least according to wiki fwiw. Good sleuthing,amphib!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Menkar_%28AK-123%29

Bondo

I make out a K and a three digit number  on her stern. According to a book I have the Navy would have classified her as a cargo ship. Reading further I find USS Sabik AK 121 configured to carry 1000 passengers plus cargo and to have 8 LCMS and LCVPs. I see the 8 LCMs and LCVPs and a lot of extra life rafts. So I'll go with USS Sabik until someone gives me a definitive hull number. No doubt more than one ship had this configuration though.

Amphib

amphib

This ship appears to be reconfigured as an AKA as a few liberty ships were during the war.

I believe if you look closely you will see that those are LCVPs stowed in the wells of LCMs that are in turn stowed on deck. This was a common practice on the AKAs and APAs used for amphibious landings. This ship appears to be reconfigured as an AKA as a few liberty ships were during the war.

Iron Shipwrights has a good selection of 1/350 cargo: M4A3 Shermans, M7 Priests, DUKW vehicles, M109A3 Self propelled Howitzers, M923 5-ton Trucks, M35A2 2 1/2 Ton Trucks, and even M1A1 Abrams and M998 HMMWVs if you want to go all Final Countdown on us and get a little anachronistic.  I believe they come in six packs for $9.98.  Hope this helps.

Those are LCM's on the hatch covers, not LCVP's. 

Looks like TWO tugs to me.

That looks like TWO tugboats to me.

cwalker3 ... unfortunately, no, allllllllllllllll over the web. Google image search is your friend. All of these are the largest image size available, sorry. Some websites that I did cull images from:

http://www.usmm.org/index.html

http://www.liberty-ship.com/

http://www.ssjeremiahobrien.org/

http://www.navsource.org/ - look in the sections where Libertys were converted to other military uses

http://www.convoyweb.org.uk/ 

http://www.uboat.net/allies/merchants/ - for pictures of specific ships.

http://www.armed-guard.com/

Mfsob, great pics. They are much better than any that I have been able to find. Do you remember where you got them? Love the one with the tug. Do you have a larger version?

Finally got off my behind and culled through all the reference pics I gathered for my Liberty ship build. This is a sampling. Size and quality varies vastly.

As promised, the first one is the tug as deck cargo! :

Next we have the usual large wooden crates on some of the hatches, but not all. This one also has the longer booms for the torpedo nets that could be deployed along both sides:

Here we have some LCVPs as deck cargo, notice they are perpendicular to the hatches. This is also one of the few photos I found of a Liberty painted in any kind of camouflage, let alone a dazzle scheme:

Here is the Daniel Carroll with a full load of I don't know what on Hatches 2-5:

 As you can see, nothing was wasted spacewise as far as stowing deck cargo:

The John Calhoun with what looks like ... structural steel and construction supplies:?

Excellent shot of a Liberty with a full deck load of P-47s, even on the No. 1 hatch:

Not a Liberty, looks like a tanker, but here is a deck load of P-51s and P-47s, showing them protectively wrapped, with additional canvas or something like it around the engines:

 And finally we have the Peter Silvester with a full, and I mean full, load of 6x6 trucks:

Well Bondo pictures don't lie. There is an advertisement for ALCO showing 10 locomotives deck loaded on the two hatches forward of the bridge of the ship and there is the picture elsewhere in this thread showing a whole deckload of locomotives. The ALCO locos were going to France, the others supposedly were going to Murmansk. I guess they got to their destinations all right.

As for water tube vs steam tube (properly fire tube as the hot gases go through the tubes which are surrounded by water and steam) most shipboard boilers are water tube and most locomotive boilers are fire tube. There were some rare experimental locomotives with water tube boilers but they would not be the ones being shipped during WWII.

Those types of locomotives: 2-6-0 and 0-8-0 come in at a hefty 200,000 lbs or so each. Even without the tender and water, they'd be 75% of that. I have a very hard time imagining more than four as deck cargo on a trans Atlantic run in a storm.

Speaking of locomotives, in the steam era there were two basic types of boilers. Water tube or steam tube. I asked my father in law, who flew fighter bombers in WW2 abt that.

"We'd open them up to see which was which".

There was a lot more "combat" loading of LKA/AKA, since they were a bit more purpose-built to the task.

Admin versus Combat loading is some tough study, too.  You have to load the holds in combat loading on first = last out.   What is last om = first off, has to be coordinated with the commander of the land forces, too.  Oh, and you have to preserve the ship's stability through all this, too.

And also balance the loading versus the number/capacity of the landing craft you have, too.

The beachhead commander will want his armor and artillery as soon after the infantry lands as possible, too.   In WWII, you could get some balance there, for having a number of light tanks type available.

In one of those counter-intuitive things though, you need to unload the tankers and artillery ammo trucks first.  They drive slower to the rally points, so they have to start sooner.

This is even more fun in modern times with helo support.  You send the ground support & maintenance team, along with the fuel bladders before you even wake the aviators up.

It's a fascinating subject, and one that will continually challenge a person.

One of the things you will have to decide is whether your ship will be combat loaded or administrative loaded.

A combat loaded ship would be headed for an amphibious landing. The vehicles on deck would be loaded with ammunition, gas cans and the equipment needed immediately by the troops. The vehicle would have been off loaded into a landing craft and be ready to be driven as soon as it hit the beach. They would have been tied down but would not have been crated or partially disassembled.

If the ship were administratively loaded the vehicles on deck would be partially crated, partially disassembled  and otherwise prepared for a long ocean transit and to allow for as many as possible to be crammed on board. At their destination they would have been off loaded and reassembled filled with gas and otherwise been made ready to be shipped to an amphibious landing or just to be turned over to our allies who needed vehicles.

Even if the hatch opening was big enough, you'd only get one engine per hatch.  Once you land the thing you aren't going to have much luck moving it into the wings.  Longshoremen are strong, but not that strong.

As it was standard practice to carry mixed loads as to avoid the "all your eggs in one basket" risk, I'd say it was probably ammunition, bombs, and bulk cargo such as grain.  That stuff would make good ballast.

Excellent point on the hatch dimensions--I'd not thought of that.

My first thought was on just how many thousands of pounds steam locomotives run; and weights like that seem tire fire up that reflexive meta-center height calculator in my head.

Does invite speculation on what dense, bulk product was stowed below decks to distribute the lading around the CG, though.

I received this pic from a friend who said it was a Liberty headed to Russia from the Columbia River.  It may be the Columbia River, and maybe taken from the bridge at Astoria, but it isn't a Liberty, though I can't ID it as any standard freighter type.  I sent it to Frank Gerhardt who runs the excellent Maritime Commission site.   He wasn't sure what type ship it was either but opined it may be a pre-war British design.

Anyway, locomotives.

Fred

PS; There was a Liberty variant designed to carry crated aircraft.  My father served on one, the Frank O. Peterson, taking P-38s to Biak in 1945.

PPS:  Although it would probably be better to stow locomotives lower in the holds, they might not fit through the hatch openings.

Again, thanks everyone for the info and Ed for the link (some great pics there). Some good advice regarding types of cargo and how it was stowed. I've ordered some trucks, jeeps and DUKW's from Iron Shipwrights. I'm going to hold off a few weeks before I start on her as the wife and I will be going out on a cruise on her in September. I'm hoping to get lots of first hand info from the crew, not to mention a boatload of pics. But hey, please keep the advice and tips coming. And if anyone has any special requests for pics, let me know.

Go to the Library of Virginia's US Army Signal Corps/Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation (HRPE) site.    Put in search keywords such as ship,  truck,  cargo, etc.  You will see photos taken at Hampton Roads of Liberty Ships and Victory Ships being loaded.    No warship photos I've found.

http://lva1.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/F/?func=file&file_name=find-b-clas72&local_base=CLAS72\

Many personnel shots,  but some interesting detail photos are included.   Double stacked trucks,  rolling stock.    Check the backgrounds of the pictures.   Found my fathers ship on her return from the Invasion of North Africa situated behind a shot of a doctor & nurses waiting to the wounded to be offloaded

There is a video out there called Hannibal Victory that shows four locomotives being shipped to the Philippines on the main deck of a Victory ship along the sides of the hatches. In the holds were knocked down cars and the locomotive tenders.

I also have seen an advertisement for ALCO, after the war, showing 2-8-2 locomotives being shipped to France on the main deck. Two on each side of the hatch and three over the hatch on some sort of support structure. I have also seen pictures of Baldwin Locomotive Works deck loading locomotives for Portugal.

With the weight of a loco, I'd guess it would be stowed deep, and on the centerline. 

Nice, empty lightweight boxcars?  Yeah, those would lash over a hatch in a nice batch.

I'd guess the "tug" referred to would be a YTB, a necessary sort of vessel less-suited for an ocean crossing.

One thing on those trucks, especially 6x6s, they would have all the tarps and bows stowed and tied down--to prevent loss as much as to reduce the profile.  I think (just think) I remember a photo of a pair of USMC IHC 6x6 stacked as deck cargo.  If I'm remembering right, they were sans wheels and just canvas blobs lashed to a lot of dunnage.

Looks like an Alco switcher. European style buffers on the pilot beam.

EdGrune

Iron Shipwright offers Shermans, Deuce & Halfs,  Halftracks, Jeeps,  DUKW, etc on their accessory page.    Also railroad rolling stock.  The US shiiped over engines & railcars to supplement/replace the rolling stock which was destroyed. 

http://ironshipwrights.com/accessories.html

This was titled D-Day-06-06-1944-0005

In a related thought, I recall a TV episode, I think it was Navy Log, possibly “Mission to Murmansk” but maybe something else, about “pilfering” guns & ammunition from the cargo to protect the ship from air attack. (Sounds like common sense to me.)

I have seen pictures of P-38's being offloaded in England. The outer wing sections beyond the engines were remoced, of course the props as well and the aircraft were wrapped. Here are pictures of a P-47 and a P-38 that I could find. The P-38 was in Australia, and the P-47 was England. The last is on a carrier, but shows better the condition of the aircraft.

Mike T.

In the Pacific in particular, many escort carriers spent their entire war career transporting airplanes, something they were ideal for. It was a freighter hull anyways, and could move along at a nice clip.

Many have wondered how the CVE's could function, in photos they've seen with dozens of aircraft stem to stern. That's what they were doing.

I'm going to keep my O'Brien clean, but I think deck cargo makes a nice touch. Be sure to study photos as the cargo is braced, lashed and otherwise covered.

There are some photos of PT-109 aboard the Joseph Stanton on Navsource, I have one additional one posted here.

Most bombers flew, either via Iceland or across from Brazil.  Many of them were piloted by women.

Actually, many aircraft and large but light objects, like landing craft, went as deck loads on tankers.

A tugboat would be a challenge to load, but it's probably not as heavy as a locomotive, or several tanks. 

It's true that space would be filled with whatever was available, but if the ship was loading at a dock that handled airplanes, it's likely that airplanes was all they had to load.  The same would probably be true on the discharge side.

The one break bulk ship I worked on, they would fill in space between cargo in the holds by throwing in loose tires.  it's amazing how much stuff those old ships could carry, as opposed to a containership, in which every container has a lot of empty space.  Of course many containers are completely empty.