McNair Paper Number 50, Chapter 12, Notes, August 1996

1. U.S. Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1950 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1950), 212.

2. Donald M. Nelson, Arsenal of Democracy (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1946), 259. Nelson considered shipbuilding to be the greatest production success story. In September 1939 the United States merchant fleet comprised about 1,500 ships of 10,500,000 deadweight tons. By the time Germany surrendered the United States had built 5,200 large ocean-going vessels with a total deadweight tonnage of 53,000,000 tons (and built hundreds of smaller types of ships). All this was done while warship construction was also exploding. The Maritime Commission, responsible for civilian shipping production, fixed on the Liberty Ship as the standardized merchant ship in order to accelerate production. The United States built almost 2,700 of these 10,800-ton shipsC"the ship that won part of the war for the United Nations" (Nelson, 243-245). In World War I, the United States shipped more than half of its people, goods, munitions and materials in foreign bottoms, but in World War II 80 percent of a considerably larger total of men, munitions, supplies, food, cargo, and materials was sent in American ships [James L. Abrahamson, the American Home Front (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1983),147].

3. Wartime Production Achievements and the Reconversion Outlook (Washington, DC: War Production Board, 1945), 10-13. Again, the numbers vary considerably by source, some official documents stating that 82,000 landing craft were build during the war. In 1944, more than 27,000 landing craft were built with a tonnage of 1,512,710 tons; on 1 January 1945 there were 54,206 landing craft on hand and 1,167 warships (on 1 January 1941 there were only 322 combat ships and a year later only 347) (U.S. Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1948 [Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1948], 229). The variety of landing craft is staggering. Some were ocean- going vessels, others were designed to run from a mother ship to the shore only. Some carried cargo, some people, some both, some tanks. Regarding the latter, a Landing Ship Tank (LST) carried 13 to 20 heavy tanks, while a Landing Craft Tank (LCT) carried 3 heavy tanks. The former was ocean going, the latter was not [Jerome G. Peppers Jr., History of United States Military Logistics 1935-1985 (Huntsville: Logistics Education Foundation Publishing, 1988), 106].

4. For warship figures, see John Ellis, World War II, A Statistical Summary The Essential Facts and Figures for All the Combatants (New York: Facts on File, 1993), 293-301.

5. Peppers, 98-100.

6. Alan Milward, War, Economy and Society: 1939-1945 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979), 59.