Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "Mae West and the 445th Bombardment Group" video.

@1pcfred That's more than a little hyperbolic. A grand total of three Liberty ships out of the 2,710 built were lost due to breakup caused by brittle fracturing. Nine ships of other classes suffered the same fate. The problem was the type of steel and cold water temperatures, not the welding. Once some reinforcement was added around hatches and some hull plating. the problem went away. Only a little over 200 Liberty ships were sunk from all causes during WWII, a loss rate of about 9%, and one of the safest merchant ships ever used in combat.
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@1pcfred I can see you're a real expert on things naval. Firstly, the 9% rate was for ships sunk, not number of men killed. The number of merchant sailors lost from all causes in WWII was between 8,000 and 12,000 while about 1,500 ships of all types were lost due to all causes. There were about 14,800 ships in the merchant fleet by 1944. As you can see, the average number of sailors lost per lost hull was about 8 at the highest estimate, and that from an average crew of 38 to 50. If we were losing 10% of every crew that left port we would have rapidly lost the war. The 9% rate was hulls lost from all causes, including submarine and aircraft attacks, not men lost. These were ships that, in first three years of the war, spent a lot of their time either under attack or damaged by enemy action. About 30% of merchant sailors killed due to enemy action were killed without their ships sinking. By comparison, the casualty rate among WWI merchantmen was over 20%, and that was from virtually no aircraft attacks and much less efficient and deadly submarine attacks. Better antisubmarine warfare and convoy techniques in WWII saved a lot of merchantmen that would have been lost in WWI. Merchant sailors face risk every day from things like weather, grounding, and collisions, yet men still go down to the sea in ships. Luckily, you don't have to do that if you don't want to.
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