McNair Paper Number 50, Chapter 12, August 1996

Two products, aircraft and ships, demanded the most investment in people, materials, and infrastructure, and both were equally key to the grand strategy. The production story for both is spectacular. In 1941, the United States completed 1,906 ships, and in 1944, 40,265.(Note 1) The central tenet of the grand strategy was that the United States should be the "Arsenal of Democracy." But producing the munitions would have been useless if the United States could not move its armaments to its allies. Merchant-shipping production, therefore, was as critical an aspect of the production program as any other, especially given Germany's attempt to starve American allies with the use of surface raiders, airplanes, and submarines. So critical is this aspect of the war production story that in Donald Nelson's memoir, he failed to mention aircraft carriers and battleships at all, and concentrated overwhelmingly on building merchant ships and landing craft and, to a lesser degree, destroyer escorts. In the last half of 1943, the United States was completing 160 merchant ships per month, and in December that year 208 merchant ships were completed, for a total dead-weight tonnage of 2,044,239 tons. In July 1942, it took 105 days to construct a Liberty Ship; less than 1 year later it was just over 50 days; and before the end of the war, it was 40 days from laying the keel to delivery. In World War I, a ship two-thirds the size of a Liberty Ship took 10 months to build. (Note 2)

Of course, more than cargo ships were built. From 1 July 1940 to 31 July 1945, the United States built 64,500 landing craft, and that number was still insufficient. Some 6,500 other naval vessels were also built. Navy firepower during the war increased ten fold. (Note 3) The United States built 10 battleships during the war (8 of them 35,000 tons or more), 17 large aircraft carriers (able to carry 100 aircraft and displacing more than 27,000 tons), more than 80 smaller carriers (able to carry from 21 to 45 aircraft), 49 cruisers, and 368 destroyers. (Note 4)

No country produced as many warships, cargo ships, airplanes, tanks, trucks, jeeps (650,000 of these "faithful as a dog, as strong as a mule, and as agile as a goat" quarter-ton carrying vehicles), (Note 5) rifles, etc. Where the Allies in 1941 produced about as many munitions as the Axis in mid-1941, by the end of 1944 the allied output of combat munitions was three times greater than that of their enemies. Over the war the allied output was 80 percent greater than the total for the Axis, and most of that increase came from the United States. (Note 6)