fOn Mon, 09 Jun 2014 18:22:36 +0100, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 09/06/14 18:15, charles wrote:
In article sting.com,
Jabba wrote:
Jethro_uk scribbled...


On Mon, 09 Jun 2014 15:20:49 +0100, Tim Streater wrote:

Navy ships take quite a while to build, although the Yanks got the
business of building merchant ships during WW2 down to production line
rates

By all accounts they weren't very good though ....


Tell that to -

"...John Fredriksen, John Theodoracopoulos, Aristotle Onassis, Stavros
Niarchos, Stavros George Livanos, the Goulandris brothers, and the
Andreadis, Tsavliris, Achille Lauro, Grimaldi and Bottiglieri families
were known to have started their fleets by buying Liberty ships..."

The fundamental problem with the Liberty Ships was that the steel used went
brittle in the sub-zero temperatures of the North Atlantic in the winter.
As they were all welded, for speed of construction and crack went right
through the ship - many sank for, at the time, unexplained reasons.
Operate them in warmer waters and I'm sure they were fine.

they fixed the problem in due course

I don't know if this is right, but I saw that one problem arose from
automated welding with the welding rod on a reel. With manual welding the
weld runs for the length of the rod then stops; with the automated process
the weld is very long and when it starts to unzip it keeps going.
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway