In November 1942, workers at the Permanente Metals yard in Richmond, California, built the Liberty ship SS Robert E. Peary in 4 days, 15 hours and 29 minutes from keel to launch. The yard usually took about 50 days to build a Liberty ship.
The record was a propaganda effort. It was meant to show that the United States could build ships faster than they could be sunk. Henry Kaiser preferred to call it an “incentive ship,” not a “stunt ship.”