Failure

Shipbuilding was way short of its goal. To turn out 8,000,000 tons by the end of the year, yards should long since have been turning out two ships a day, should very soon be delivering three a day--close to a million tons a month. The Maritime Commission announced last week that the number of cargo vessels delivered during April was 36--less than half the required million tons.

A year ago that now-piddling total would have seemed fantastic to U.S. shipbuilders. But this was 1942, year of need. Some yards broke records. Some yards expanded like mushrooms overnight. Some builders bettered the Commission's 105-day schedule for building Liberty Ships. Bethlehem-Fairfield Yard at Baltimore announced a 75-day goal. The West Coast's hurry-up man, Henry J. Kaiser, entrepreneur, builder of dams, and now of ships, claimed a record of 81 days at iris Portland, Ore. shipyard.

Not even this was good enough.

Criticism was sharp and hot against the men responsible for the program: Rear Admiral Emory S. Land, shipping tsar and his sidekick Rear Admiral Howard L. Vickery in the Maritime Commission. Critics inside the Administration gave up sniping, got down to the objective of getting leathery, salty "Jerry" Land out. They leveled three withering charges against the whole U.S. shipbuilding program: there was no real central control; there was a dismal lack of coordination; there had been an all-around failure to anticipate needs. They even had a candidate to take Jerry Land's place: the West Coast's hurry-up man, Henry Kaiser.

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