November 26, 2025 • 36 mins
William Keim joined the U.S. Merchant Marine in 1943 at the age of 17. He was called to active duty when he turned 18 years old that same year. For the next two years, he served as an oilerman on Liberty Ships in both the Atlantic and the Pacific theaters, transporting critical supplies and evading constant enemy efforts to sink their ships.
In this edition of Veterans Chronicles, Keim tells all about the Liberty Ships and his role in keeping the engines running smoothly. He details the constant threat of German U-Boats in the North Atlantic, what the American vessels did to avoid getting sunk, and the horror of witnessing other ships getting hit without being able to help the souls on board.
He also explains what it was like for the ships to be strafed by German planes and also be the targets of buzz bombs while in port on Christmas 1944.
Finally, Keim shares what it was like for the U.S. Merchant Marine veterans to receive the Congressional Gold Medal and long overdue recognition for their service.
In this edition of Veterans Chronicles, Keim tells all about the Liberty Ships and his role in keeping the engines running smoothly. He details the constant threat of German U-Boats in the North Atlantic, what the American vessels did to avoid getting sunk, and the horror of witnessing other ships getting hit without being able to help the souls on board.
He also explains what it was like for the ships to be strafed by German planes and also be the targets of buzz bombs while in port on Christmas 1944.
Finally, Keim shares what it was like for the U.S. Merchant Marine veterans to receive the Congressional Gold Medal and long overdue recognition for their service.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
this edition is William Kaim. He's a US Merchant Marine
veteran of World War Two, serving as an oiler man
on liberty ships in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters.
Bill Kim was born and raised in Saint Louis, Missouri.
He was still in the middle of his teenage years
(00:32):
when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December seventh, nineteen
forty one, which of course brought the United States into
World War Two.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I remember it pretty much as we were on a picnic,
and frankly, no one knew where Pearl Harbor was, but
we knew we had been attacked and bombed by the Japanese.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
When President Roosevelt and Congress declared war, did you think,
even though you were too young to go to war then,
that you would probably go to war?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
No? I think I probably thought I wouldn't. My family said, oh,
you won't have to go, you're too young.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Why did you join the Merchant Marine.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I didn't want to be drafted into the army. I
tried once to join the Air Force to become a pilot.
When they had a program that it said you didn't
have to be a college graduate, but I couldn't make
(01:39):
it because of my heart pulse rate. So then I
thought of someone told me about the merchant Marine. It
sounded pretty interesting.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
A lot of Americans don't know much about the merchant marine,
so how would you describe it?
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Well, I find out that so many people in this country.
You're correct, they don't know anything about the merchant Marine.
And part of that was responsible by the Maritime Commission,
who didn't let this country know the terrible sinking and
(02:20):
problems we were having with the German nazi U boats.
Prime Minister of England said that was his worst fear
that the Germans would be successful in their boycott. That's
just that they kept it secret for the most part.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
So how would you describe what the merchant marine is
and what it does?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
The man who was in charge of all the Merchant
Marine was an Admiral Land and he described the war
effort in this country three ways. One is the the
German the soldiers on land. The second was the manufacturing
(03:08):
ability of this country, which was unbelievable. And the third
was the means of delivering this manufacturing products, which was
the Merchant Marine, and the first two units were accomplished pretty well.
The third unit they if you want to describe it,
(03:34):
it was the Battle of the North Atlantic, and it
took place over almost five years. It it cost the
Allies and the American people UH over fifteen hundred ships,
(03:55):
and the loss in manpower was almost eighty five thousand men.
And this wasn't Americans that we included Americans and British
and Norwegian and all the men's sailing ships prior to
the time we got involved. But once we got involved,
(04:20):
it became an altogether different situation.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
How did the Merchant Marine coordinate with the other branches?
I assume you brought cargo to the army, to the
Marine Corps, to the Navy, perhaps, is that right?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
We had no control over that. They called for so
many men to crew liberty ship, and they needed so
many oilers and so many firemen and so many cooks
and that sort of thing. That we had no idea
what our cargo was going to be, nor did we
(04:59):
know where we were going. A liberty ship was a
manufacturing marvel in this country. They built two nine hundred ships.
Liberty ships were identical with the one exception Some of
(05:21):
the ships in the Pacific, because of the greater distance,
had turbine engines instead of reciprocating steam engines. But the
steam engines were actually designed in the eighteen hundreds. They
were an engineering marvel and the Liberty ships of being
(05:48):
all identical. They could build parts of the Liberty ships
all up and down the East coast and carry them
to the shipyards and weld them in place, and a
totally new concept on building ships. Riveting was not it
(06:10):
was the old fashioned way. Welding was the new way.
And then in the Libery ships you could move from
one ship to another and you knew exactly how the
engine was set up and where the forecasts were for
for you to have your quarters. They were all the same,
(06:35):
and that was a that was a real benefit to
any of the crewmen. They didn't have to become acquainted
with the ship and the citiosyncrasies. It was a Liberty ship,
and by god, it was a little bit like a
(06:56):
little bit like some of your airplane bombers where they
were built. They built almost like Model A forwards. They
were so simple, and they built thousands of B fifty two's,
and they built thousands of liberty ships. Liberty ship were
(07:18):
carried at a capacity of ten thousand tons, and ten
thousand tons is a body equivalent to five hundred semi trucks.
So when you see a truckload going down the highway,
you have to realize that it took five hundred of
(07:40):
those truckloads in one liberty ship. They would carry, for instance,
two thousand jeeps on a liberty ship, but they wouldn't
carry that many of one kind on a ship, but
the capacity was great.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
What was the length of a liberty ship or the width?
Speaker 2 (08:06):
The length was four hundred and fifty feet and the
width was about sixty sixty five feet.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
How big of a crew did they.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Have, approximately, I'd say forty eight to fifty.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Did you ever haul personnel as well or was it
mainly supplies?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Well? Liberty ships and victory ships, the ones with the
faster engines were oftentimes converted into troop ships. As a
matter of fact, the last ship I sailed in wartime
was Liberty was a victory ship converted into a troop ship,
(08:51):
and we picked up about fifteen hundred men in Manila,
and we were halfway from Manila to San Francisco when
the captain announced that the Japanese had surrendered, So we
(09:13):
carried both.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
What did your training consist of in.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
The engine room? And it was really limited to training
to the steam engine to keep it going and boilers
to fire the boilers at a safety level. We had
no training as far as marching and military training. If
(09:42):
learning how to shoot the things that most other servicemen
was part of their training, you have to remember that
all the soldiers were trained to seek out the enemy.
The military was trained to avoid the enemy at all costs.
(10:07):
That was our job.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
And in terms of making the boiler's work, making the
engines work, what were the keys to.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
That simplicity the end. The steam engine was actually designed
in the eighteen hundreds, and it was a three cylinder engine,
and the principle was so simple that the engines could
(10:37):
run and run and run. If the bearings started to
go bad halfway across the ocean, there was nothing you
could do about it. You couldn't stop the engine, so
you just listened to the pounding of a bad bearing
until you got to a port, but it didn't stop
the engine. The engine was actually three cylinder and the
(11:03):
first cylinder was about twenty four inches in diameter, and
the steam entered that chamber at about three hundred and
fifty pounds per square inch, and it exhausted the steam
into the second cylinder, which was about forty inches in diameter,
(11:26):
but the steam pressure had dropped to two hundred and
fifty pounds, and that exhausted into the third cylinder, which
was about fifty or maybe sixty inches in diameter, and
the steam pressure was about twenty five pounds. And the
(11:50):
upshot was that all three cylinders generated the same amount
of pressure per square inch. They did that by making
the cylinders different sizes, but they were all the same.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
That's Bill Kim. He's a US merchant marine veteran of
World War Two, serving in both the Atlantic and the Pacific.
Still ahead dealing with German U boats, strafing and other attacks.
But up next, mister Kaym tells us more about how
he took care of the Liberty Ship's engines. I'm Greg
Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.
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Speaker 1 (13:31):
This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
this addition is William Kim. He's a US merchant marine
veteran of World War Two, serving in both the Atlantic
and the Pacific. The Liberty ships carried supplies to American
forces throughout the world. But for those supplies to actually
get there, the ships needed to get there, and that
(13:52):
meant well running engines. Mister Kim explains his job as
an oiler man in keeping those engines humming along well.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
They carried two boilers on the liberty ships and they
were fed pure water. They're not allowed to use sea
water or anything else. And they were called fire tube boilers,
which meant that the water going through the heating chamber
(14:25):
was exposed to fire rather than a Scotch boiler which
was full of water and took a long time to
heat up. The job for the fireman was it took
(14:51):
a little training, but he was They were made to
do several things. One of them is to maintain steam pressure.
Two was to not cause any smoke, which was which
could be seen for thirty to fifty miles, so the
(15:13):
old slogan of a smoking stack invites attacked, which was
always true with boilers. The other thing was they had
to maintained the proper water level. And if you can
visualize a man sitting for four hours looking at water
(15:40):
levels in a ship that is rocking back and forth
and according to the rough seas, so you don't really
know exactly where the water level is in there. You're
guessing by trying to extrapolate the little things that carry
(16:00):
the water. I never sailed as a fireman. My job
was an oiler and when last I finished as a
junior engineer, part of my job was to take over
any one of the positions in the engine room when
(16:25):
a man that was hired for that job couldn't perform
due to injury or illness.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
So tell me, as an oiler man, how you would
maintain the engines by hand.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
It was surprising. We always had oil cans and it
was that simple. Like I mentioned, there was such a
simple engine we had. The most unimaginative part was in
a shaft alley where we had a sixteen inch solid
(17:07):
steel line from the engine to the screw, and so
it was about two hundred feet long, and every thirty
feet or so was a pillow block bearing the total
weight of the of the screw. And we had to
(17:30):
go through that tunnel every half hour or so to
make sure the bearings were not too hot and being
burned up, and the bearings on the ship, on the
engine itself you wound up. The engine was turning at
(17:52):
about seventy five revolutions per minute, and you had to
learn how to take your hand into the crank shaft
and get a reading on the oil on the edge
of your fingers if the oil was turning brown or
was it clean? And if it was turning brown, then
(18:15):
you need to oil more, take more lubricant. But putting
your hand in there was the trick. And by the
time the ship reached England or so, there were fifteen
(18:35):
or twenty oil cans down in the crank case it
got knocked out of your.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Hand because of the pistons or the bearings.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Wow, Well you still got all your fingers, so you
must have been pretty good.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Now you mentioned that you traveled across the ocean and convoys.
How many ships to a convoy on average?
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Actually that varied. They were. To be considered a convoy,
you had to have, I'm sure between thirty and fifty ships,
and the number of ships depended quite a bit on
what kind of protection you had. Usually, uh, one or
(19:21):
two destroyers and a couple of destroyer escorts and maybe
a seagoing tug because one you couldn't hit a submarine
very well, especially with those sized vessels, because it the
(19:44):
seeds are too rough. And the other part is that
all they the German submarines are not going to surface
unless they absolutely ran out of oxygen. So you were
mostly fighting the German submarines with depth charges. Even the
(20:13):
radar and sonar equipment that some of the Navy ships
had was so primitive compared to what they have today.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
That's Bill Kim, he's a US merchant Marine veteran of
World War Two. Still to come how the liberty ships
dealt with German U boats, attacks from the air and more.
I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is
Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition
(20:44):
is William Kime. He's a US merchant Marine veteran of
World War Two. Navigating the Atlantic and the Pacific was
challenging enough during the war, but there were far greater dangers,
starting with German U boats or submarines in the North Atlantic.
Kim explains the challenge unge of avoiding a strike from
the U boats.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
It was scary and the worst part was if you
were an oiler or fireman or water tender, you had
to go below four hours and then off eight then
four more and when you went below you had to
(21:23):
realize that you were about forty feet below the water
level of the sea and in the center of the ship,
so that you were sitting on a perfect target for
the U boats. If they were able to launch a
torpedo properly and hit the liberty ships amidships, there was
(21:47):
no way you could get out, So that was the
scary part of that. One of the other thing too,
is we could hear the depth charges and we could
actually feel the compression of the ship when the depth
charges were being set off, and we were saying not
(22:10):
so close.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
So because you were down in the bottom of the ship,
were you ever up high enough to see another liberty
ship get torpedoed?
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yes? Yeah. On a forty ship convoy, you could expect
to lose five, six, seven ships and you were You
had to realize that every time you saw an explosion
and a ship in flames, there were fifty men who
(22:48):
were going to die. The water was so cold that
even if you were able to launch lifeboats or life
raft or something, it really wouldn't do you any good.
That's why they the loss perception was so high.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
And other ships I read were not allowed to pick
up people who needed to be rescued because they could
become a target.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Right, you couldn't slow down. And when ships you have
to remember when they got forty ships all sailing in
the same direction, and then every so often they zigzag
and it's all predetermined. Before they leave Nova Scotia, you
(23:40):
know what when they're going to make a change in direction,
and they do that even at night, which would help
to throw the U boat off their direction. But you
have to be so careful that you don't have collisions.
(24:03):
Everybody is running totally blacked out. In the daytime, you
have the visibility, but you want to keep that as
limited as possible.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
What kind of armament did the liberty ships have?
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Oh, they had a six inch gun aft, a three
inch rifle forward, and four machine guns. That was the
extent of it. And when once we got a navy
(24:43):
arm guard, they knew how to shoot, they knew how
to aim. Then each one of the positions had merchant
marine assigned to them as well. On machine guns, it
was always to bring more ammunition, and on the rifle
(25:09):
and the cannons, it was the same thing.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
You also dealt with strafing from enemy planes. Correct.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Right. One of the trips we had, there were twelve
ships going up the English Channel and they were in
a straight line, and we got strafing by German bombers
who were coming back from a bombing run in England,
(25:37):
and they had dropped their bombs, but they had all
their machine gun or twenty millimeters or whatever caliber they
were in their machine guns, and since the ships were
in a straight line, that made it simple for the
bombers to hit the targets. So we had the scout
(26:00):
are in the English Channel as quickly as we could,
and of the twelve ships, five of them had to
turn back, either either they had engine trouble or too
many men injured or something we don't know, but seven
(26:21):
of us continued on.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Now, you served in both the Atlantic and the Pacific,
and two different times you were in the Pacific, right.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Well, yes, I spent all the time in sheep Said
Bay learning steam engines. And the first time we were
sent out to a job, they sent us to San
(26:51):
Francisco on a train five days and the first ship
I got was a diesel and I didn't know a
thing in the world about diesel engines. That we were
trained on steam engines, not diesel, but they figured they
(27:13):
could convince me to be able to do some good
on there. And that was when we ran from San
Francisco to Pearl Harbor and from there to Midway, and
we took food and ammunition and medical supplies to the
(27:36):
garrison on Midway. We made that trip five times before
I got off and went back east.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
And then late in the war you went back to
the Pacific.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Right when the war ended in Germany, then I went
back to the Pacific.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
At that time, you were bringing supplies all the way
to the Philippines, was it.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Well, actually, yes, we did carry some supplies to Manila,
but we actually went there to pick up troops, and
we had somewhere between twelve and fifteen hundred Army troops
that had served their time in the islands, and we
(28:24):
were taking them home to San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
So was the war already over.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Halfway back and we were under wartime conditions. And then
halfway back, the captain announced that the Japanese had surrendered,
but that we were still going to continue on in
wartime conditions in case there were submarines out there that
(28:51):
hadn't heard the news, or submarines out there. They really
didn't care. They take one last shot. So we still zigzagged,
and we had all the lights out, and we had
all the conditions that we had under wartime.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Were Japanese subs as big of a problem as the
German subs?
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Oh lord, no, No, the Japanese subs, the two were
mostly on the the Far East area. The German subs
were mostly in the North Atlantic. And they estimate that
the Germans had seven hundred submarines, of which four hundred
(29:43):
were in the North Atlantic. So you have four hundred
submarines in an area far less than the South Pacific.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
What's the worst weather you ever encountered?
Speaker 2 (30:00):
You know, it's funny, but the worst weather it is
the best weather in the North Atlantic. As bad as
the weather is, it makes it more difficult for the
Nazi submarines to find us or to hit us. So
(30:22):
we liked the tough weather. I don't think that I
ever encountered something that scared me about the weather, as
far as the hurricanes and that sort of thing. We
liked the bad weather.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Well, we've talked about the submarines, We've talked about the strafing.
You also dealt with buzz bombs, and rockets right.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Yes, absolutely, and that happened when we were in port Antwerp.
It was a good example. It It was difficult to
get in Antwerp and we were all maybe the first
group of ships that went in there s the seven ships.
(31:12):
The entrance into Antwerp was mined, so you had to
be so careful about not setting off the mines. But
they were on Christmas Day in nineteen forty four, the
Germans sent one uh buzz bomb every minute, and you
(31:36):
didn't know in Antwerp whether it was gonna drop in
the city or go on to England and drop over there.
Just when you heard the buzz bomb, you had to
stop your conversation and wait until you see whether it
goes on or whether it stops. If the engine stops,
(31:59):
it's coming down.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Just a couple of questions before we let you go, sir,
I have to ask you about the gooneybirds.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
The goony birds were on Midway. The interesting thing about
it was that they didn't know anything about construction or
buildings or the runways. I mean they were the little
island or too little islands actually out in the Pacific.
(32:29):
The Midway was about fifteen hundred miles it's coming northeast
of Hawaii, and it was all by itself out there
and was a landing refueling station for something airlines. Anyway,
(32:54):
they didn't know anything about buildings, and the guy if
they sat on a nest, the some of the marines
there would take the egg away and put a beer
can in and the gooneybirds would sit on that. They
(33:17):
acted dumb because everything was new to him. They'd fly
right into a building.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Finally, sir, two final questions. What are you most proud
of from your service?
Speaker 2 (33:30):
I think most proud of the fact that myself and
other crewmen did what we were asked to do, whether
it was go run to Mermansk, whether it was through
the Straits of Gibraltar, whether it was in the roiling
(33:53):
North Atlantic, whatever, whatever our country needed, that's what we did.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
What did it mean to you for the Merchant Mariners
to receive the Congressional Gold Medal?
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Well, I think that. I think that was terrific and
it took it took a lot of work by members
of the Merchant Marine to convince Congress to do something
like that because we felt that we lost a lot
of the gi Bill of Rights and things like that.
(34:31):
But we're very proud of that, and that is the
highest award that Congress can give, so it's a big medal,
but we like it.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Finally, sir, what does it mean to you to have
us record your story and share it with the current
generation and future generations?
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Well, I think is terrific. If I didn't like it,
I wouldn't be here. But I think it's terrific because
you know, I gave a number of talks all the
way from employee insurance companies down to fifth grade school children,
and it was amazing how little the people knew about
(35:23):
the part the Merchant Marine played in the war, and
mainly because the Battle of the North Atlantic was the longest,
deadliest battle of the war and nobody ever heard of it.
So to be able to talk to people about that,
(35:45):
I think made them conscious of the part the Merchant
Marine played. That's really what I like to do.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
That's William Kyme. He's a US Merchant Marine veteran of
World War Two, serving in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters.
We served as an oilerman aboard liberty ships. I'm Greg
Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus,
(36:21):
and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of
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(36:42):
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Thanks again for listening, and please join us next time
for Veterans Chronicles
Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
this edition is William Kaim. He's a US Merchant Marine
veteran of World War Two, serving as an oiler man
on liberty ships in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters.
Bill Kim was born and raised in Saint Louis, Missouri.
He was still in the middle of his teenage years
(00:32):
when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December seventh, nineteen
forty one, which of course brought the United States into
World War Two.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I remember it pretty much as we were on a picnic,
and frankly, no one knew where Pearl Harbor was, but
we knew we had been attacked and bombed by the Japanese.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
When President Roosevelt and Congress declared war, did you think,
even though you were too young to go to war then,
that you would probably go to war?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
No? I think I probably thought I wouldn't. My family said, oh,
you won't have to go, you're too young.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Why did you join the Merchant Marine.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
I didn't want to be drafted into the army. I
tried once to join the Air Force to become a pilot.
When they had a program that it said you didn't
have to be a college graduate, but I couldn't make
(01:39):
it because of my heart pulse rate. So then I
thought of someone told me about the merchant Marine. It
sounded pretty interesting.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
A lot of Americans don't know much about the merchant marine,
so how would you describe it?
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Well, I find out that so many people in this country.
You're correct, they don't know anything about the merchant Marine.
And part of that was responsible by the Maritime Commission,
who didn't let this country know the terrible sinking and
(02:20):
problems we were having with the German nazi U boats.
Prime Minister of England said that was his worst fear
that the Germans would be successful in their boycott. That's
just that they kept it secret for the most part.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
So how would you describe what the merchant marine is
and what it does?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
The man who was in charge of all the Merchant
Marine was an Admiral Land and he described the war
effort in this country three ways. One is the the
German the soldiers on land. The second was the manufacturing
(03:08):
ability of this country, which was unbelievable. And the third
was the means of delivering this manufacturing products, which was
the Merchant Marine, and the first two units were accomplished pretty well.
The third unit they if you want to describe it,
(03:34):
it was the Battle of the North Atlantic, and it
took place over almost five years. It it cost the
Allies and the American people UH over fifteen hundred ships,
(03:55):
and the loss in manpower was almost eighty five thousand men.
And this wasn't Americans that we included Americans and British
and Norwegian and all the men's sailing ships prior to
the time we got involved. But once we got involved,
(04:20):
it became an altogether different situation.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
How did the Merchant Marine coordinate with the other branches?
I assume you brought cargo to the army, to the
Marine Corps, to the Navy, perhaps, is that right?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
We had no control over that. They called for so
many men to crew liberty ship, and they needed so
many oilers and so many firemen and so many cooks
and that sort of thing. That we had no idea
what our cargo was going to be, nor did we
(04:59):
know where we were going. A liberty ship was a
manufacturing marvel in this country. They built two nine hundred ships.
Liberty ships were identical with the one exception Some of
(05:21):
the ships in the Pacific, because of the greater distance,
had turbine engines instead of reciprocating steam engines. But the
steam engines were actually designed in the eighteen hundreds. They
were an engineering marvel and the Liberty ships of being
(05:48):
all identical. They could build parts of the Liberty ships
all up and down the East coast and carry them
to the shipyards and weld them in place, and a
totally new concept on building ships. Riveting was not it
(06:10):
was the old fashioned way. Welding was the new way.
And then in the Libery ships you could move from
one ship to another and you knew exactly how the
engine was set up and where the forecasts were for
for you to have your quarters. They were all the same,
(06:35):
and that was a that was a real benefit to
any of the crewmen. They didn't have to become acquainted
with the ship and the citiosyncrasies. It was a Liberty ship,
and by god, it was a little bit like a
(06:56):
little bit like some of your airplane bombers where they
were built. They built almost like Model A forwards. They
were so simple, and they built thousands of B fifty two's,
and they built thousands of liberty ships. Liberty ship were
(07:18):
carried at a capacity of ten thousand tons, and ten
thousand tons is a body equivalent to five hundred semi trucks.
So when you see a truckload going down the highway,
you have to realize that it took five hundred of
(07:40):
those truckloads in one liberty ship. They would carry, for instance,
two thousand jeeps on a liberty ship, but they wouldn't
carry that many of one kind on a ship, but
the capacity was great.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
What was the length of a liberty ship or the width?
Speaker 2 (08:06):
The length was four hundred and fifty feet and the
width was about sixty sixty five feet.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
How big of a crew did they.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Have, approximately, I'd say forty eight to fifty.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Did you ever haul personnel as well or was it
mainly supplies?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Well? Liberty ships and victory ships, the ones with the
faster engines were oftentimes converted into troop ships. As a
matter of fact, the last ship I sailed in wartime
was Liberty was a victory ship converted into a troop ship,
(08:51):
and we picked up about fifteen hundred men in Manila,
and we were halfway from Manila to San Francisco when
the captain announced that the Japanese had surrendered, So we
(09:13):
carried both.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
What did your training consist of in.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
The engine room? And it was really limited to training
to the steam engine to keep it going and boilers
to fire the boilers at a safety level. We had
no training as far as marching and military training. If
(09:42):
learning how to shoot the things that most other servicemen
was part of their training, you have to remember that
all the soldiers were trained to seek out the enemy.
The military was trained to avoid the enemy at all costs.
(10:07):
That was our job.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
And in terms of making the boiler's work, making the
engines work, what were the keys to.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
That simplicity the end. The steam engine was actually designed
in the eighteen hundreds, and it was a three cylinder engine,
and the principle was so simple that the engines could
(10:37):
run and run and run. If the bearings started to
go bad halfway across the ocean, there was nothing you
could do about it. You couldn't stop the engine, so
you just listened to the pounding of a bad bearing
until you got to a port, but it didn't stop
the engine. The engine was actually three cylinder and the
(11:03):
first cylinder was about twenty four inches in diameter, and
the steam entered that chamber at about three hundred and
fifty pounds per square inch, and it exhausted the steam
into the second cylinder, which was about forty inches in diameter,
(11:26):
but the steam pressure had dropped to two hundred and
fifty pounds, and that exhausted into the third cylinder, which
was about fifty or maybe sixty inches in diameter, and
the steam pressure was about twenty five pounds. And the
(11:50):
upshot was that all three cylinders generated the same amount
of pressure per square inch. They did that by making
the cylinders different sizes, but they were all the same.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
That's Bill Kim. He's a US merchant marine veteran of
World War Two, serving in both the Atlantic and the Pacific.
Still ahead dealing with German U boats, strafing and other attacks.
But up next, mister Kaym tells us more about how
he took care of the Liberty Ship's engines. I'm Greg
Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
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Speaker 1 (13:31):
This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in
this addition is William Kim. He's a US merchant marine
veteran of World War Two, serving in both the Atlantic
and the Pacific. The Liberty ships carried supplies to American
forces throughout the world. But for those supplies to actually
get there, the ships needed to get there, and that
(13:52):
meant well running engines. Mister Kim explains his job as
an oiler man in keeping those engines humming along well.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
They carried two boilers on the liberty ships and they
were fed pure water. They're not allowed to use sea
water or anything else. And they were called fire tube boilers,
which meant that the water going through the heating chamber
(14:25):
was exposed to fire rather than a Scotch boiler which
was full of water and took a long time to
heat up. The job for the fireman was it took
(14:51):
a little training, but he was They were made to
do several things. One of them is to maintain steam pressure.
Two was to not cause any smoke, which was which
could be seen for thirty to fifty miles, so the
(15:13):
old slogan of a smoking stack invites attacked, which was
always true with boilers. The other thing was they had
to maintained the proper water level. And if you can
visualize a man sitting for four hours looking at water
(15:40):
levels in a ship that is rocking back and forth
and according to the rough seas, so you don't really
know exactly where the water level is in there. You're
guessing by trying to extrapolate the little things that carry
(16:00):
the water. I never sailed as a fireman. My job
was an oiler and when last I finished as a
junior engineer, part of my job was to take over
any one of the positions in the engine room when
(16:25):
a man that was hired for that job couldn't perform
due to injury or illness.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
So tell me, as an oiler man, how you would
maintain the engines by hand.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
It was surprising. We always had oil cans and it
was that simple. Like I mentioned, there was such a
simple engine we had. The most unimaginative part was in
a shaft alley where we had a sixteen inch solid
(17:07):
steel line from the engine to the screw, and so
it was about two hundred feet long, and every thirty
feet or so was a pillow block bearing the total
weight of the of the screw. And we had to
(17:30):
go through that tunnel every half hour or so to
make sure the bearings were not too hot and being
burned up, and the bearings on the ship, on the
engine itself you wound up. The engine was turning at
(17:52):
about seventy five revolutions per minute, and you had to
learn how to take your hand into the crank shaft
and get a reading on the oil on the edge
of your fingers if the oil was turning brown or
was it clean? And if it was turning brown, then
(18:15):
you need to oil more, take more lubricant. But putting
your hand in there was the trick. And by the
time the ship reached England or so, there were fifteen
(18:35):
or twenty oil cans down in the crank case it
got knocked out of your.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Hand because of the pistons or the bearings.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
Wow, Well you still got all your fingers, so you
must have been pretty good.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Now you mentioned that you traveled across the ocean and convoys.
How many ships to a convoy on average?
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Actually that varied. They were. To be considered a convoy,
you had to have, I'm sure between thirty and fifty ships,
and the number of ships depended quite a bit on
what kind of protection you had. Usually, uh, one or
(19:21):
two destroyers and a couple of destroyer escorts and maybe
a seagoing tug because one you couldn't hit a submarine
very well, especially with those sized vessels, because it the
(19:44):
seeds are too rough. And the other part is that
all they the German submarines are not going to surface
unless they absolutely ran out of oxygen. So you were
mostly fighting the German submarines with depth charges. Even the
(20:13):
radar and sonar equipment that some of the Navy ships
had was so primitive compared to what they have today.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
That's Bill Kim, he's a US merchant Marine veteran of
World War Two. Still to come how the liberty ships
dealt with German U boats, attacks from the air and more.
I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is
Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition
(20:44):
is William Kime. He's a US merchant Marine veteran of
World War Two. Navigating the Atlantic and the Pacific was
challenging enough during the war, but there were far greater dangers,
starting with German U boats or submarines in the North Atlantic.
Kim explains the challenge unge of avoiding a strike from
the U boats.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
It was scary and the worst part was if you
were an oiler or fireman or water tender, you had
to go below four hours and then off eight then
four more and when you went below you had to
(21:23):
realize that you were about forty feet below the water
level of the sea and in the center of the ship,
so that you were sitting on a perfect target for
the U boats. If they were able to launch a
torpedo properly and hit the liberty ships amidships, there was
(21:47):
no way you could get out, So that was the
scary part of that. One of the other thing too,
is we could hear the depth charges and we could
actually feel the compression of the ship when the depth
charges were being set off, and we were saying not
(22:10):
so close.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
So because you were down in the bottom of the ship,
were you ever up high enough to see another liberty
ship get torpedoed?
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yes? Yeah. On a forty ship convoy, you could expect
to lose five, six, seven ships and you were You
had to realize that every time you saw an explosion
and a ship in flames, there were fifty men who
(22:48):
were going to die. The water was so cold that
even if you were able to launch lifeboats or life
raft or something, it really wouldn't do you any good.
That's why they the loss perception was so high.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
And other ships I read were not allowed to pick
up people who needed to be rescued because they could
become a target.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Right, you couldn't slow down. And when ships you have
to remember when they got forty ships all sailing in
the same direction, and then every so often they zigzag
and it's all predetermined. Before they leave Nova Scotia, you
(23:40):
know what when they're going to make a change in direction,
and they do that even at night, which would help
to throw the U boat off their direction. But you
have to be so careful that you don't have collisions.
(24:03):
Everybody is running totally blacked out. In the daytime, you
have the visibility, but you want to keep that as
limited as possible.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
What kind of armament did the liberty ships have?
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Oh, they had a six inch gun aft, a three
inch rifle forward, and four machine guns. That was the
extent of it. And when once we got a navy
(24:43):
arm guard, they knew how to shoot, they knew how
to aim. Then each one of the positions had merchant
marine assigned to them as well. On machine guns, it
was always to bring more ammunition, and on the rifle
(25:09):
and the cannons, it was the same thing.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
You also dealt with strafing from enemy planes. Correct.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Right. One of the trips we had, there were twelve
ships going up the English Channel and they were in
a straight line, and we got strafing by German bombers
who were coming back from a bombing run in England,
(25:37):
and they had dropped their bombs, but they had all
their machine gun or twenty millimeters or whatever caliber they
were in their machine guns, and since the ships were
in a straight line, that made it simple for the
bombers to hit the targets. So we had the scout
(26:00):
are in the English Channel as quickly as we could,
and of the twelve ships, five of them had to
turn back, either either they had engine trouble or too
many men injured or something we don't know, but seven
(26:21):
of us continued on.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Now, you served in both the Atlantic and the Pacific,
and two different times you were in the Pacific, right.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
Well, yes, I spent all the time in sheep Said
Bay learning steam engines. And the first time we were
sent out to a job, they sent us to San
(26:51):
Francisco on a train five days and the first ship
I got was a diesel and I didn't know a
thing in the world about diesel engines. That we were
trained on steam engines, not diesel, but they figured they
(27:13):
could convince me to be able to do some good
on there. And that was when we ran from San
Francisco to Pearl Harbor and from there to Midway, and
we took food and ammunition and medical supplies to the
(27:36):
garrison on Midway. We made that trip five times before
I got off and went back east.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
And then late in the war you went back to
the Pacific.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Right when the war ended in Germany, then I went
back to the Pacific.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
At that time, you were bringing supplies all the way
to the Philippines, was it.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Well, actually, yes, we did carry some supplies to Manila,
but we actually went there to pick up troops, and
we had somewhere between twelve and fifteen hundred Army troops
that had served their time in the islands, and we
(28:24):
were taking them home to San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
So was the war already over.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Halfway back and we were under wartime conditions. And then
halfway back, the captain announced that the Japanese had surrendered,
but that we were still going to continue on in
wartime conditions in case there were submarines out there that
(28:51):
hadn't heard the news, or submarines out there. They really
didn't care. They take one last shot. So we still zigzagged,
and we had all the lights out, and we had
all the conditions that we had under wartime.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Were Japanese subs as big of a problem as the
German subs?
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Oh lord, no, No, the Japanese subs, the two were
mostly on the the Far East area. The German subs
were mostly in the North Atlantic. And they estimate that
the Germans had seven hundred submarines, of which four hundred
(29:43):
were in the North Atlantic. So you have four hundred
submarines in an area far less than the South Pacific.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
What's the worst weather you ever encountered?
Speaker 2 (30:00):
You know, it's funny, but the worst weather it is
the best weather in the North Atlantic. As bad as
the weather is, it makes it more difficult for the
Nazi submarines to find us or to hit us. So
(30:22):
we liked the tough weather. I don't think that I
ever encountered something that scared me about the weather, as
far as the hurricanes and that sort of thing. We
liked the bad weather.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Well, we've talked about the submarines, We've talked about the strafing.
You also dealt with buzz bombs, and rockets right.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Yes, absolutely, and that happened when we were in port Antwerp.
It was a good example. It It was difficult to
get in Antwerp and we were all maybe the first
group of ships that went in there s the seven ships.
(31:12):
The entrance into Antwerp was mined, so you had to
be so careful about not setting off the mines. But
they were on Christmas Day in nineteen forty four, the
Germans sent one uh buzz bomb every minute, and you
(31:36):
didn't know in Antwerp whether it was gonna drop in
the city or go on to England and drop over there.
Just when you heard the buzz bomb, you had to
stop your conversation and wait until you see whether it
goes on or whether it stops. If the engine stops,
(31:59):
it's coming down.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Just a couple of questions before we let you go, sir,
I have to ask you about the gooneybirds.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
The goony birds were on Midway. The interesting thing about
it was that they didn't know anything about construction or
buildings or the runways. I mean they were the little
island or too little islands actually out in the Pacific.
(32:29):
The Midway was about fifteen hundred miles it's coming northeast
of Hawaii, and it was all by itself out there
and was a landing refueling station for something airlines. Anyway,
(32:54):
they didn't know anything about buildings, and the guy if
they sat on a nest, the some of the marines
there would take the egg away and put a beer
can in and the gooneybirds would sit on that. They
(33:17):
acted dumb because everything was new to him. They'd fly
right into a building.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Finally, sir, two final questions. What are you most proud
of from your service?
Speaker 2 (33:30):
I think most proud of the fact that myself and
other crewmen did what we were asked to do, whether
it was go run to Mermansk, whether it was through
the Straits of Gibraltar, whether it was in the roiling
(33:53):
North Atlantic, whatever, whatever our country needed, that's what we did.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
What did it mean to you for the Merchant Mariners
to receive the Congressional Gold Medal?
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Well, I think that. I think that was terrific and
it took it took a lot of work by members
of the Merchant Marine to convince Congress to do something
like that because we felt that we lost a lot
of the gi Bill of Rights and things like that.
(34:31):
But we're very proud of that, and that is the
highest award that Congress can give, so it's a big medal,
but we like it.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Finally, sir, what does it mean to you to have
us record your story and share it with the current
generation and future generations?
Speaker 2 (34:59):
Well, I think is terrific. If I didn't like it,
I wouldn't be here. But I think it's terrific because
you know, I gave a number of talks all the
way from employee insurance companies down to fifth grade school children,
and it was amazing how little the people knew about
(35:23):
the part the Merchant Marine played in the war, and
mainly because the Battle of the North Atlantic was the longest,
deadliest battle of the war and nobody ever heard of it.
So to be able to talk to people about that,
(35:45):
I think made them conscious of the part the Merchant
Marine played. That's really what I like to do.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
That's William Kyme. He's a US Merchant Marine veteran of
World War Two, serving in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters.
We served as an oilerman aboard liberty ships. I'm Greg
Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus,
(36:21):
and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of
the American Veterans Center. For more information, please visit American
Veteranscenter dot org. You can also follow the American Veterans
Center on Facebook and on Twitter We're at AVC update.
Subscribe to the American Veterans Center YouTube channel for full
(36:42):
oral histories and special features, and of course, please subscribe
to the Veterans Chronicles podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
Thanks again for listening, and please join us next time
for Veterans Chronicles
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