Kaiser's Circus

When Henry J. Kaiser's Oregon Shipbuilding Corp. sprang a production miracle and splashed a 10,500-ton Liberty ship into the water ten days after keel laying (TIME, Oct. 5), the tough, hard-hitting gangs in Kaiser's Richmond (Calif.) Shipbuilding Corp. yard No. 2 sputtered "What the hell has Oregon got that we haven't?"

To point up their deficiencies and egged on by the intense rivalry that exists among all eight of Kaiser's yards, Richmond employes hatched 250 new tricks to speed their assembly-line technique of shipbuilding. Last week they were ready to put these new ideas to test.

At 12:01 a.m. Sunday the keyed-up swing shift at Richmond got started. The first 200-ton piece of double-bottomed keel section of the Liberty ship Robert E. Peary was hoisted on to the keel blocks. After that things moved swiftly.

Tuesday morning Kaiser was in Manhattan giving a speech to the Academy of Political Science, in which he predicted that Liberty ships might be built in seven days. Just then a wire came in from Richmond telling him that the Peary was well along its way to completion. Promptly he retailed the news to a gaping audience (carefully pointing out, however, that "this is not a publicity stunt") Few minutes later he put together a scale model of a Liberty ship in seven and a half minutes.

The Peary was not built quite so fast, but on Thursday she slid into the water, 90% complete, after four days, 15 1/2 hours on the ways. Only event of the week to compare with the performance was Pacific Bridge Co.'s launching of a much smaller 4,000-ton ship in three and a third days, but only 70% complete. Both builders had indeed performed miracles. But neither Showman Kaiser nor Pacific Bridge would tell how many man-hours went into prefabrication.

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