---
title: Loose Lips Might Sink Ships
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/loose-lips-might-sink-ships/
description: A sinking, burning ship fills the frame under a slogan warning that idle conversation causes naval losses.
section: Collection
---

[Collection](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/)

[![Loose Lips Might Sink Ships](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/loose-lips-might-sink-ships.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/loose-lips-might-sink-ships.jpg)

# Loose Lips Might Sink Ships

A sinking, burning ship fills the frame under a slogan warning that idle conversation causes naval losses. The claim collapses the many real causes of a sinking (U-boats, weather, mechanical failure) into one attributable cause the viewer can personally control by staying silent.

- **Date:** 1942
- **Period:** [Second World War](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#era=wwii)
- **Made by:** U.S. government home-front security campaign
- **Region:** [North America](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#region=north-america)
- **Country:** [United States](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#country=united-states)
- **Medium:** [Poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#medium=poster)
- **Issuer type:** [State](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#actor=state)
- **Regime:** [Roosevelt Administration](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#regime=roosevelt-administration)
- **Leader:** [Franklin D. Roosevelt](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#leader=franklin-d-roosevelt)
- **Audience:** [Domestic public](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#audience=domestic-public)
- **Purpose:** [Warn or inform](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#purpose=warn-inform)
- **Themes:** [Security and surveillance](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#theme=security-surveillance), [Home front](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#theme=home-front), [War and the military](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#theme=war-military)
- **Event:** [World War II](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/#event=world-war-ii)
- **Techniques:** [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/)
- **Source:** Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- **Source:** [U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), via Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22Loose_lips_might_sink_ships%22_-_NARA_-_513543.jpg), retrieved September 25, 2026
- **Rights:** Public domain (U.S. government work) U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, War and Conflict Number 830 (1941-1945).

## Text on the object

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

```
LOOSE LIPS

MIGHT
Sink Ships

THIS POSTER IS PUBLISHED BY THE HOUSE OF SEAGRAM AS PART OF ITS CONTRIBUTION TO THE NATIONAL VICTORY EFFORT

SEAGRAM-DISTILLERS CORP., N.Y.C.
```

The last line (bottom right corner, in very small print) is faint in this scan; read with reasonable but not full confidence.

[← He's Watching You](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/hes-watching-you/) [This Man Is Your Friend: Chinese. He Fights for Freedom →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/this-man-is-your-friend-chinese-1942/)

## Using the same techniques

- [Der Warner (broadsheet lampoon on the Jesuits after Breitenfeld and Rain)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/der-warner-anti-jesuit-broadsheet-1632/) (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/) (Jan 12, 1793 · Fear appeal, Name-calling)
- [豬叫取胎圖 (Picture of the Pig Sect Extracting a Foetus), from Reverently Obeying the Sacred Edict: A Complete Picture Gallery to Repel Heterodoxy](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/pig-cry-taking-foetus-hunan-1891/) (1891 · Fear appeal, Name-calling). Content note: Colour woodblock caricature depicting foreign Christians as members of a 'pig' sect and showing them cutting a foetus from a woman; violence against a woman and derision of Christianity.
- [The Radical Programme, No. 4: Dismemberment of the Empire (Gladstone & Co. auction India), St Stephen's Review Presentation Cartoon](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/radical-programme-selling-india-st-stephens-review-1891/) (Oct 31, 1891 · Fear appeal, Scapegoating)
- [En posesión de su presa (In Possession of Its Prey)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/en-posesion-de-su-presa-el-diablo-1894/) (Jun 2, 1894 · Fear appeal)
- [劉永福懸賞抓拿日本奸細告示 (Liu Yongfu's notice offering rewards for capturing Japanese spies), Taiwan](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/liu-yongfu-reward-notice-japanese-spies-1895/) (1895 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Sífilis: Curación absoluta y radical en el Sanatorio para sifilíticos (Syphilis: Absolute and Radical Cure at the Sanatorium for Syphilitics)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sifilis-sanatorio-abreu-1900/) (1900 · Fear appeal)
- [時局圖 (The Situation in the Far East / Map of the Present Situation), newer version with English labels](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/situation-in-far-east-tse-tsan-tai-1900/) (1900 · Fear appeal)