Trump has made it quite clear that when he talks about bringing industry back to America he’s not talking about the garment industry and such, but the heavy stuff, and it’s quite clear to others like Cdr Salamander as to why, The Maritime Industrial Base Won’t Rebuild Itself:
There are currently 154 active shipyards in the US, spread across 29 states. That’s an impressive figure, except when you realize only ten are engaged in building large-scale vessels, and only four do any shipbuilding for the U.S. Navy.
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Chinese shipyards have 200 times the capacity of US yards. Some are building as many as 13 ships at once, with naval and commercial vessels coming down the slips at the same time.
As recently as 2023 that reality had not yet penetrated the minds of the US Navy planners.
Salamander quotes another analyst of the Navy – Shyam Sankar – who suggests that radical thinking could actually mean a return to a past that seems to have been forgotten:
But the most effective approach might be to reinvent the entire enterprise. Doing so will require us to take a lesson out of the history books, and look carefully at how master builder Henry Kaiser managed to upend the entire shipbuilding industry during the Second World War.
It’s a shame that I can’t find online the specific part of an episode of Alastair Cooke’s America called The Arsenal, (and bloody YouTube won’t allow me to upload a segment, even though entire episodes are there). In the episode he talked about Kaiser’s approach to building ships in WWII, because it sounds identical to Shyam Sankar’s recommendations.
As Cooke described, Kaiser knew so little about ships that he talked about the “front and back” of them, to the horror of traditionalists, and to whom none other than Roosevelt replied that “I don’t care what he calls them, provided he delivers”. Kaiser did, using workers who knew even less about ship building than he did: “Plate A1 would be welded to A2 and S13 to S14”. Only one in two hundred had ever been in a shipyard.
Lesson 1: Stop thinking like you are building ships.
Lesson 2: Rethink processes and materials from the hull up.
Lesson 3: Stop worrying about workforce, just hire and train whoever is willing to show up.
The first Liberty Ship took 245 days to build: in about a year Kaiser had that down to 4 days!
Shipyards are just part of the problem, as shown by this chart:
But they’re a good start, assuming the Pentagon blob doesn’t get in the way., as he describes in another article, The US Navy is Sleepwalking into Defeat, starting with this written testimony to Congress from Admiral James Kilby, USN, Acting Chief of Naval Operations:
Contested Logistics: The current strategic environment demands a naval logistics enterprise capable of assuring readiness and sustainment at speed and scale for the Joint Force. Navy is modernizing our logistics enterprise to be more agile, resilient, and capable of sustaining combat effectiveness in contested environments against peer adversaries. To address the challenges of refueling, rearming, and resupplying inside weapons engagement zones, we are investing in next generation logistics ships to augment the current combat logistics force and in new capabilities such as rearming at sea.”
It sounds to me like the corporate gobbledegook I’ve been dealing with all my adult life. Salamander also thinks that as he fisks the statement:
FFS. The “current?” Shipmate, this “environment” has existed since the dawn of time and we have known this in detail for the over two centuries our Navy has sailed the waters of the Pacific. We do not have an “enterprise” anything. Stop using that word.
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We have to stop talking like this. This is not how the confident, clearheaded, honest, and determined speak. This is the patronizing language of corporatism, denial, entitlement, and decline…… We need new leaders selected under different criteria to prepare our Navy for what is needed.
The fisking itself is pretty funny, although it’s clear that he’s pissed off with the state of the US Navy’s leadership.
Clearly, America has a long way to before it can get to launching “six identical copies of the USS We Built This Yesterday” and the general feeling regarding China is that they’re not going to give America the time to do so. They too have studied what happened to Japan’s Navy in WWII.
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See Also:
Mr Hegseth Has His Work Cut Out For Him
Tactical Weakness and Strategic Mistakes
More Expert Wrongness, Military version: Missile Defence and the F-35
“The U.S. military is in a state of managed decline”
Will America lose its next war?
Production & Logistics
You Can’t go to War With Your Factory
The Aussie AUKUS Subs Will Be Late!
Hey Siri, how did the US win World War 2?
A new military world? (the B-21)
The Death Whine Of Weapon Systems That Are Big, Expensive and Few
No Minister 
The liberty ships were amazing. Sure they weren’t without fault, but just showed what could happen when you just aim to produce something specifically for a purpose and don’t let committees get in the way.
And yes, it showed the industrial might of the USA when it dedicated itself to a task.
(I do admit to being slightly disappointed that after seeing the title that this article wasn’t about Iron Maiden)
Up the Irons!
The 4 day Liberty ship was a PR stunt, they normally took a couple of weeks.
They were a British design and originally were to be powered by diesel engines. However, the yanks were all “Steam Queens” and their Sun Doxfords were terrible. So they used triple expansion engines which were simple and cheap and quick to build.
There were also the C 3s and they put a flat top on these and used them as “Woolworth Carriers” and the T 2 tankers.
Turbines were considered but were more expensive and harder to produce – though the succesors to the Liberties, the Victory ships were powered by steam turbines.
The other inovation of the liberties was their all welded hulls.
What wasn’t known at the outset was that the welds became brittle at below 4 c and cracked leading to some ships breaking up in the winter North Atlantic.
They were also known to capsize when in ballast.
All these problems were resolved and liberties were still plying the worlds oceans until well into the seventies
Saw some in the late 70’s and the Russians still operated them
They were replaced by the SD 14 and Freedom Mk 1 amd Mk 2.
I was Mate Master of a Freedom Mk 2 and they were a damn good ship.
That goes to the heart of this post – while the SD 14s were built in Sunderland the Freedoms were built in Japan
The SD 14s were quite successful and were also built under licence in Greece, Argentina and a few other places.
Today over half the worlds merchant ships are built in China while the great shipyards of yesteryear, Harland and Wolff, Swan Hunter, John Brown etc are more or less derelict.
Actually whats left of Harland and Wolff has just been purchased by a State owned Spanish company, Navantia.
Sigh!!!!!