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The GENIUS Who Built A Carrier Every 13 Days — When The Navy Said Impossible !

The Blueprint Vault

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October 25, 1944. The Philippine Sea.

The largest battleship ever built — 72,000 tons, nine 18.1-inch guns — opens fire on six converted merchant hulls.

The Japanese admiral expects a massacre.

He gets something he cannot explain.

This is not a story about naval heroes or Pacific battles. This is a forensic audit of the most audacious production bet in military history — and the man the Navy laughed out of the room before he walked straight to the President.

📊 Inside this documentary:

Why the U.S. Navy rejected 50 aircraft carriers — and why Roosevelt overruled them
The photographer's apprentice who built the Hoover Dam and then rewrote shipbuilding from scratch
One ship every 13 days. The factory that made it possible
How a destroyer with no torpedoes left charged the Yamato — alone
Germany's best month: 380 Panther tanks. Kaiser's best month: aircraft carriers
Admiral King's five-word letter — the most complete reversal in U.S. military procurement history
The math that turned "Kaiser's coffins" into the backbone of two oceans

📚 Sources: U.S. Navy Historical Center, Naval History and Heritage Command, Kaiser Shipbuilding Company records, Battle off Samar after-action reports, Fleet Admiral King correspondence February 1945, USS Johnston DD-557 survivor accounts.

🔔 Subscribe for more forensic audits of the systems, decisions, and overlooked people who actually won World War II.

\#WW2 #WWII #NavalHistory #PacificWar #LeytGulf #MilitaryHistory #Documentary #ArsenalOfDemocracy #KaiserShipyards #EscortCarrier #JeepCarrier #BattleOfSamar #USSJohnston #AmericanHistory #WarProduction

20 Comments

@johnhallett3650 5 months ago

My father was John Hallett
He was General Manager at one of the three Vancouver Kaiser shipyards
My father’s boss was Edgar Kaiser, Edgar’s son who ran all the Vancouver ship yards
He started working for Kaiser from 1936 at Grand Coolie Dam.
My mother christened one of the Jeep Carriers USS Corregidor. I think it was sunk in Pacific.
He was born in 1903 and had earned a mechanical engineering degree from university of Washington in 1924.
He was 40 Years old in 1943 when he managed 10,000 plus workers at the shipyard.
Right education at right time.
He retired from Kaiser 1969 as a senior executive but knew that his years at the shipyard were what defined him.

John Hallett jr.

PS: my son, his grandson John Hallett III graduated from West Point 2001 and was an Infantry Captain who was KIA Afghanistan August 2009. Service to his nation just like his granddad.

@cascadesouthernmodeltrains7547 5 months ago

My Moms dad was in Navy boot camp on December 7 1941. On December 8th the RDCs lined up the recruits and asked them to step forward if they had any skills in the following trades. When they said machinist my grandpa stepped forward. He was just about to finish his apprenticeship when he decided to join the Navy to finish his training. They took him and the others that stepped forward for an interview. Once they found out he could help at Pearl they sent him off. He wasn’t allowed to get his seabag and was told it would arrive there eventually. By the end of the week he wasn’t allowed in Hawaii helping rebuild and repair the planes and ships. He helped build the turrets the navy mounted the Arizona’s guns on to defend the island. He eventually ended up in the Philippine Islands fixing aircraft. After the war he continued to be a machinist and a carpenter.

@michaelgorman3887 5 months ago

My father-in-law, born in 1916 was 27 when he went to war. The Philippines. Prior to the war he worked from age 13 in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. During that time, he learned all that needed to be known about explosives. Find the seam, configure the charge, make the explosion, enable everybody to keep digging the coal. His Navy job was to find unexploded devices left there by the Japanese in hopes that the Americans would be killed by them. He found them, our soldiers lived, and he lived and he was the greatest man I ever knew.

Both my wife and I were born in 1941. We have a very large family. 7 children, 25 grands and 14 Greats with one more on the way.

His spit, grit and determination were bred into his daughter, my wife. We talk about him constantly to all. Be like "Poppie," he's the direction for your life.

@Grampa609 5 months ago

My grandfather served aboard the Casablanca class USS Lunga Point, CVE 94. As part of their task group, they provided air support for the invasions of Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. They survived multiple Kamikaze attacks, and shot down 4 Japanese aircraft. On 21 Feb 1945, near Iwo Jima, a Kamikaze struck the flight deck and island structure, causing fire, minor damage, and injuries but no USN deaths. They were destroying Japanese shipping near China when Japan surrendered. They were then assigned to transport liberated allied POWs to military hospitals on Okinawa.

@stephenmosman6158 3 months ago

My Father, Clarence William Mosman served aboard CVE-31 Prince William. The ship was built by Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corp. Dad was from North Texas, Lindsay. He went to gunnery school in Purcell, Ok. He was the Cook . The crew called him (TX). Thank you for your excellent overview and connection of the various key leaders, both in the private/government sector, and on the high seas, it expanded my perspective and understanding of that amazing combined contribution in our history.

@richarddoyle6011 5 months ago

My father served on USS Petrof Bay, he was Richard Doyle. He was a steam engine operator and was on the ship until it was mothballed in Boston Harbor. He passed away at the age of 93 in September 2016. If it wasn’t for the navy’s training, courage and heroism a lot of us wouldn’t be here.

@rdtradecraft 5 months ago

William Knudsen, Hank Kaiser, and Charles Sorensen are three of the most unjustly unsung heroes of WW2. The free world owes them a debt we can never repay. A must-read for anyone who wants the real behind-the-scenes story of how the US economy was ramped up to fight WW2: Freedom's Forge. Fascinating history.

@waterworks54 4 months ago

My dad was born in 1912, went to Berkley then medical school. He had earned money for school by taking time off to work merchant marine..paying his way through school. After the pearl harbor attack he immediately joined the navy. He was assigned in the pacific fleet the entire war. I just cant remember all the ships but the last was the hospital ship The Haven. She ended up at Terminal Island in Southern California. Dad came home to us after it was done. Somewhere someone in the family has pictures he took at the surrender. He was there because by that time he was senior fleet captain and some admiral had requested him for his ship. I was born in 1954 so my older siblings know it all better than me.

@haythem9134 4 months ago

Kaiser didn’t just build ships; he built a machine that built ships. Breaking a 20-month, keel-up process into parallel, prefabricated chunks so that unskilled labor could assemble them in 13 days is the true definition of industrial warfare. The establishment always hates the disruptor until the exact moment they need them to save the war

@timothyboles6457 5 months ago

what the Kaiser Shipyards accomplished was amazing, they didn't even exist on December 7th, 1941, but build how many Liberty ships, Victory ships, Escort carriers, landing craft, and auxiliary vessels between 1942 and 1945 is mind blowing. the battle off Sumar should never be forgotten, the bravery of all the crews represents the finest of qualities

@DavidKeat-mx9bu 5 months ago

I’m a bit of a WW2 buff, and I’ve known about the role Henry Kaiser played in building Liberty ships, and even the Casablancas, for most of my life. But I had NO idea about the whole story of Henry Kaiser.

I had always assumed he ramped up shipbuilding in WW2 after a life of building ships in peacetime.

This man was providential, almost as much so as FDR and Churchill themselves.

This was possibly the best video I’ve ever seen on YouTube.

Thank you for this!

@GuttersMN 5 months ago (edited)

Get there the first with the most. That's how you win. My grandfather was a radar operator on an escort carrier, and although he didn't talk about it much, I've always considered it a point of pride that he was out there protecting convoys and saving lives

@danielb7660 5 months ago

Henry J. Kaiser was an incredibly intelligent competent Man. Those men are typically a threat to those who are not.

@eddiewade-lp3xz 5 months ago

Leyte gulf October, 1944 - Japanese turned back after being attacked by USS Johnston, USS Hoel, USS Heermann, USS Samuel B Roberts, Fletcher class destroyers, and several PT boats - See The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors and Sea of Thunder. My father was GM3/c on LST 1026 at Leyte gulf. Go NAVY.

@arkwoo 5 months ago

My father was a Marine Gunnery Sergeant and was stationed aboard the USS New Orleans during WWII. He was onboard the New Orleans during the Dec 7 Pearl Harbor attack and was present during all of the subsequent Pacific theater actions during the war.

@ReidGryphon 5 months ago

My great-uncle was a self-taught electrical "engineer" who worked at commissioning electrical equipment on Kaiser aircraft carriers. The video significantly improved my understanding of the escort carrier program and the duties these ships carried out.

@TonyPeckson 4 months ago

My father, Timoteo Santos Pecson, enlisted in the U.S. Navy at Samar in 1944. He would serve on LSTs through the remainder of WW II and later on minesweepers during the Korean War.

@reavercon 2 months ago (edited)

My wife's Grandfather Radioman 3rd class Paul Bickel served aboard CVE 68 Kalinin Bay during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. His battle station was a tertiary gun starboard aft... that morning he was in the radio shack, when the GQ alarm sounded, he waited for his releaf and then headed to his gun. Soon after a round from the Japanese shoot through the radio shack killing the man who releaved Paul.
Paul told me he also witnessed a pilot shoot and destroy a Japanese torpedo out of the water that would have hit the Kalinin Bay just below his position.

This video brought tears to my eyes and chills down my spine. Would I have had the same courage as any of these men? I pray I would have.

I searved in the Navy as an Engineman 1st class, aboard a modern version of a DE like the Roberts, FFG7 Oliver H. Perry. Had the boys of Taffy 3 had just one of those the outcome would have been the same, Japanese fleet running away. It is not the ship... it is always the courage of the crew!

@busterdee8228 5 months ago

Dad always laughed at his service. In a following wave, he landed in the Marshals, slept in a bomb crater, then was returned to Hawaii to be an instructor. He was in his late 20s when he enlisted and had been a heavy equipment mechanic, truck driver, and lumberjack. Since he had also handled explosives, his 'talents' could be used to train younger men.

@allanboyer2769 2 months ago

My grandfather and grandmother both worked in the Kaiser shipyards in Vancouver during WW2. Grandpa was a shipwright, grandma was a burner. Yes, she spent her day cutting out steel plate with an oxyacetylene torch.