Liberty ship cargo questions

Pictures of Liberty ships show an incredible plethora of things on the deck; while many times it is just big ole' boxes, many times it is not, and in some cases it does seem like it is just a hopeless jumble. Although my Dad served on Victory ships, he said that whether the deck cargo was "neat and tidy" or not depended on what kind of mood the stevedores were in, and not on what the directions from the shipping agent or the military were - if they felt like piling a bunch of jeeps on as deck cargo, and filling up the nooks and crannies with crates of whatnot, that was what happened, and very little anyone could do about it - what counted was emptying out the warehouses and quays and filling up the ships.

About the largest aircraft I can recall seeing as deck cargo (without digging through my reference photos) is a Lockheed Hudson, with outer wing panels and stabilizers removed. I need to find that one with the tugboat jammed across the aft hatches ... I have no idea if the Liberty ship made it across OK or not, but I'm sure there were some stability problems with that load.

they were freightered to the uk as most aircraft didn't have the legs to go the distance & you would have to to overhaul the engines after the flight there.

Another thing about aircraft as deck cargo: were they really something that a Liberty would be carrying?  There are a lot of 1/350 carrier planes, but they would most likely be ferried on carriers.  Others with longer range were just flown to the theaters via ferry routes. I've seen pictures of P-40s, P-38s, P-47s, P-39s and Hudsons on deck.  

Also, to be really accurate, cargos were more or less homogeneous. In other words, you might see all aircraft ( all the same type!) or all tanks, or all trucks, but not all of them mixed together.  Actually the most common deck cargo was a plain wooden mass of something covered with tarps.  Boring!   But accurate.

One thing about aircraft as deck cargo - if you do that, you have to remember that they were almost always wrapped up or protected in some way, props were almost always removed, and things like outer wing panels and stabilizers were frequently removed as well, to both reduce the size of the package and because those were vulnerable bits. For instance, these 1/700 P-40s on the aft cargo hatches of a Liberty ship are minus props and stabilizers, and some have extra "canvas covers" over the engines for additional protection:

Lots of 1/350th WWII aircraft out there...Trumpy makes some pretty good ones at around $10.00 for 10 A/C

Ray

Thanks guys. This is exactly what I was looking for.

Elco Boats, and large wooden crates.

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

While WEM service is good, they are not the sole supplier; L'Arsenal even has a US branch!

http://www.larsenal-usa.com/store/

Get really radical and stick a tugboat across the aft hatches. I kid you not ... I have the photo somewhere from when I did my Liberty ship build. But as bondoman said, WEM makes some awfully nice stuff. I was under the impression all the Skywave/Pitroad stuff was 1/700, my preferred scale.

L'Arsenal makes a nice set of 6x6 trucks.

https://www.whiteensignmodels.com/c/LArsenal/265/2/

Buying from WEM is a little expensive right now because of the $$ :(, but I like those guys.

Whatever you do, please no rows of Shermans across the hatch covers!

Look forward to your build. Might get mine back out.