We looked at a tug last week that is more than a century old. This week we are looking at the engine of a Liberty Ship, built to carry materiel across the Atlantic in WW II. Turbines were preferred by then, but wartime production demands made that impractical. Turbine powered boats needed gearboxes, and that wasn't going to happen with all the factories gearing up for warships, airplanes, trucks, tanks, etc. The triple expansion engines could be built by numerous vendors, and they were all built for the Liberty Ships so they were interchangeable. They could run at 76 RPM, and pushed a boat along at 11 knots. 2710 Liberty Ships were built, and only a few are left today. Read all about them HERE.
with all that oil visible & dripping it's easy to understand why bilge fires were so feared.
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The Wiki article is a bit of a nightmare. These boats were welded, and there were many of them that developed cracks. Some sank. At 11 knots they gave the U boats plenty of time to work out their solutions...
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