---
title: Don't slow up the ship!
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/dont-slow-up-the-ship-navy-1942/
description: A two-panel painting under a mock newspaper headline, 'Enemy gains in shipyard battle! Tagged by technique, with source and rights.
section: Collection
---

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3. Don't slow up the ship!

**Content note:** Painting of a uniformed soldier with a swastika armband striking shirtless forced labourers. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was)

[![Don't slow up the ship!, 1942 US poster: A two-panel painting under a mock newspaper headline, 'Enemy gains in shipyard](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/dont-slow-up-the-ship-navy-1942.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/dont-slow-up-the-ship-navy-1942.jpg)

# Don't slow up the ship!

A two-panel painting under a mock newspaper headline, 'Enemy gains in shipyard battle! As U.S. worker takes extra day off!': on the left a uniformed soldier with a swastika armband drives shirtless forced labourers, on the right an idle shipyard worker holds cards. The fear-appeal links one worker's absence to an enemy gain, and the newspaper format borrows the look of a news report.

## Propaganda techniques used in this poster

[Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/)

## Text on the object

Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked

```
The News
VOL. XLIX . . . NO. 2,714
ENEMY GAINS IN SHIPYARD BATTLE!
AS U.S. WORKER TAKES EXTRA DAY OFF!
ROMMEL TANKS RETREAT
FOE LANDS TROOPS
LEGISLATURE HELD
[illegible] YEAR RULE ENDS
MORE PRODUC[...]
[signature:] JOHN FALTER USNR
STAY ON THE JOB!
DON'T [GIVE struck through] SLOW UP THE SHIP!
[imprint:] LUTZ & SHEINKMAN, NEW YORK
[imprint:] INCENTIVE DIVISION, NAVY DEPARTMENT S-10-11M
```

[← Don't Let That Shadow Touch Them: Buy War Bonds](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/dont-let-that-shadow-touch-them-1942/) ['Don't thrash your vehicle!' (Australian vehicle-maintenance poster) →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/dont-thrash-your-vehicle-australia-1942/)

## More propaganda examples that use the same techniques

- [Miniature of Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont, Les Passages d'outremer (BnF Fr. 5594, fol. 19r)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/passages-doutremer-council-of-clermont-colombe-1474/) (France · 1474 · Testimonial, Fear appeal). Content note: Medieval religious imagery and a French text describing alleged killings and captivity of eastern Christians, as used to argue for the First Crusade; the text is shown as written.
- [Anacoana fut pendue sans raison (engraving in Le miroir de la cruelle et horrible tyrannie espagnole)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/anacoana-hanged-miroir-tyrannie-espagnole-1620/) (Dutch Republic · 1620 · Fear appeal, Name-calling). Content note: Engraving of a hanged, bare-breasted Taino woman, burning huts and people being killed by Spanish soldiers.
- [Der Warner (broadsheet lampoon on the Jesuits after Breitenfeld and Rain)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/der-warner-anti-jesuit-broadsheet-1632/) (Holy Roman Empire · 1632 · Scapegoating, Fear appeal)
- [Sans-Culottes, feeding Europe with the Bread of Liberty (James Gillray)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sans-culottes-bread-of-liberty-gillray-1793/) (Kingdom of Great Britain · Jan 12, 1793 · Fear appeal, Name-calling)
- [Proclamation de Sonthonax en créole, Cap-Français (Proclamation of Commissioner Sonthonax in Creole)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sonthonax-proclamation-creole-1793/) (France · Aug 29, 1793 · Fear appeal, Scapegoating). Content note: Colonial-era proclamation on slavery and emancipation in Saint-Domingue; speaks of slaves, whips and 'Nègues' in period terms.
- [Gazette of the United States, "The Jeffersoniad" no. VIII, 14 August 1800](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/gazette-us-jeffersoniad-1800/) (United States · Aug 14, 1800 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Tyrants Prostrate, Liberty Triumphant (pro-Polk cartoon on Dorr), 1844](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/tyrants-prostrate-liberty-triumphant-polk-1844/) (United States · 1844 · Name-calling, Fear appeal). Content note: Speech balloons contain anti-Catholic and nativist wording ('the ruins of Popery') in the mouths of the Whig figures, written by a Democratic cartoonist and shown unaltered.
- [Brolej Žemajčiaj! (Brothers Samogitians!): hand-painted broken-cross poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/brolej-zemajciaj-broken-cross-1862/) (Russian Empire · 1862 · Fear appeal, Transfer)