Don't Diss the Liberty Ships

We wandered past the USS Jeremiah O'Brien today. The Liberty ships were famously underpowered (2 x 2500 hp engines), lightly armored, and more numerous than cockroaches. 2,751 of them were launched between 1941 and 1945.

I couldn't help but notice, however, that the Jeremiah O'Brien could take care of itself - it has eight antiaircraft positions, a 3" gun in the bow, and a 5" gun mounted aft. That 5" gun would give a pursuing submarine or destroyer all it wanted, especially if there were a couple of Liberty ships in convoy with overlapping fields of fire. Manned with determination, Jeremiah O'Brien could probably fight even with a destroyer escort or gunboat.

OK, you don't believe me. Let me ask you a question. What U.S. ship was the first to sink a German surface combatant in World War II? The answer is the USS Stephen Hopkins, a Liberty Ship which destroyed a German commerce raider. OK, it wasn't pretty, but you get the point.

Oddly, I have had trouble finding other instances of plucky Liberty ships defeating Axis warships in straight-up fights, but I'm sure there were some.