Liberty ships were of course welded as far as I know and may even have been x-rayed for soundness of welds. The main reason Liberty ships sank was because of good old Adolph's U-Boats. One had to be brave to sail on a cargo ship because the convoys stopped for no survivors. Not a good thing to think over while stoking the furnaces or crewing on a Liberty ship. There are a lot of good men and big reciprocating triple expansion engines lying on the bottom of the Atlantic along with cargos needed for the war effort. The Filer and Stowell company of Milwaukee built 157 triples for Liberty and Victory ships. They had been building huge marine engines for many years before the war and I have some photos made in their factory. I think the world's navies are on the way out. I saw some footage on the History Channel last week and you wouldn't believe some of the devious new ways of eliminating ships. One is a torpedo that passed underneath a ship and detonated twice. First blast pretty well broke a destroyer in half and the second one sent a shock wave that finished the job. All this took maybe two seconds and you had a two piece ship. Let's hear it for air ships!!! Jesse the redneck Tennesseean MODEL ENGINEERING DISCUSSION LIST. To UNSUBSCRIBE from this list, send a blank email to, modeleng-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line.