Churchill famously claimed that the only thing that had really frightened him during the war was the Battle of the Atlantic. Keeping open the lifeline between the US 'arsenal of democracy' and the UK was essential to preparations for the invasion of Europe and in the final analysis, this came down to building merchant ships faster than German U-boats could sink them.

Crucial to this achievement was the 'Liberty ship', a simple freighter that could be built rapidly, combined with the untapped industrial potential of the USA that could build them in vast numbers. Undoubtedly the most important individual in the rapid expansion of U.S. wartime shipyard capacity was Henry Kaiser, a man with no previous shipbuilding experience but an entrepreneur of vision and drive. This book tells the story of how he established huge new yards using novel mass-production techniques in the most surprising location - Oregon, one of the least industrially developed areas of the US and one without an existing pool of skilled labour to draw on.

It was not just the yards that were revolutionary, as the Kaiser companies provided housing, health and welfare benefits that attracted workers from all over the country, including women recruited into an industrial workplace for the first time. This well-motivated workforce turned the Kaiser yards into the most efficient shipbuilders in the country. In total Kaiser's Oregon yards built over 450 'Liberties' and the follow-on 'Victory ships' - including one built in the record time of 10 days - as well as around 150 tankers, some 50 escort carriers and countless amphibious warfare ships. Curiously, this truly remarkable achievement, of huge significance to the eventual Allied victory, has been consigned to the footnotes of history, but is fully documented and celebrated for the first time in this book.

About the Author: PETER MARSH was born in Greenwich, right at the heart of Britain's maritime heritage, and was soon smitten with a love of small boats and sailing. For a while he combined a career in teaching with time spent boat-building, offshore racing and voyaging under sail, but a chance visit to the United States convinced him to sell his boat and emigrate. After travelling widely, he eventually settled in Portland and returned to a sailing life, exploring large parts of the Pacific Northwest in a boat he built himself. These adventures gave him the raw material for articles in regional boating magazines, his first published works. Success in this field led him into a career as a freelance journalist and he widened his scope to cover all aspects of local maritime interest from fishing to commercial shipping.

In the course of this work he became friends with Larry Barber, the retired marine editor of the local newspaper, The Oregonian, and on Barber's death in 1996 he inherited his substantial archive of papers and photographs. It took some time to realise the value of what he had been given, but a visit to the D-Day beaches in Normandy led him to look more closely at Barber's wartime material. Slowly it became evident that the diaries and pictures recorded in unique detail the largely overlooked story of Oregon's massive contribution to the World War II shipbuilding effort. Peter has spent the last five years sorting, collating and editing the material, while also researching the background, and this book is the result.