Long Range Shipbuilding Program - History - During The Early Years of WWII

During The Early Years of WWII

Since war appeared to be drawing closer by the year, the Long Range Program grew in importance and in 1940 was accelerated to deliver more of the 500 planned ships sooner than originally scheduled. The fall of France in May 1940 was a watershed for the Commission and the Long Range Program for when Germany was able to move its U-Boat bases to the Brittany coast of France, the Battle of the Atlantic turned drastically against Great Britain's attempts to keep her supply lines open. With losses of merchant vessels far exceeding the ability to replace then in UK shipyards, the British Merchant Shipping Mission arrived in North America with the intention of ordering replacement cargo vessels in the U.S. and Canada. Permission to do so in the U.S. was sought and granted by the Maritime Commission for the U.K. to fund the construction of two new shipyards in South Portland, Maine and Richmond, California and for each to build 30 vessels to UK design. This was the genesis of the Emergency Shipbuilding program which would soon eclipse the Long Range Program in both scope and scale.

Although it was clear that the Emergency Program would be much larger than the Long Range Program, the Commissioners led by Admiral Emory S. Land fought to ensure that the smaller program not be allowed to whither to nothing. All five members of the Maritime Commission realized that the war would come to an end someday and the Liberty ships would not be capable of fulfilling what would be required of the postwar U.S. Merchant fleet. Although by mid 1941 ships were no longer being ordered by commercial operators, ships of the standard designs continued to be ordered by the Commission. As shipbuilding accelerated in 1941 with more ships being ordered for both the Long Range and Emergency Programs, by March 1942 the oversight of shipbuilding was decentralized by the Maritime Commission into four regional offices, one on each of the three seacoasts and the last for the Great Lakes region. With this move the Long Range Program was combined with the Emergency Program for the duration as both programs were supervised as one by the individual Regional offices.