>Sounds like we need a wartime USN construction summary by yard, a
>manner of presentation we don’t usually see…

Well, I took a quick look at an Office of Production Management Report
on Shipbuilding and the Defense Program (29 March 1941). They list the
geographical distribution of shipyards and building ways as follows
(note, the dividing line for north and south Atlantic is the
Maryland-Delaware state border):

Region Number of Yards Number of Ways
North Atlantic 16 61
South Atlantic 8 24
Great Lakes 2 4
Gulf 8 9
Pacific 17 21

Interesting that so many of the yards and ways are on the east coast
here, while so many of the war built ones took place out west. I’m sure
land availability and labor supply had a lot to do with that.

Fassett lists January 1944 Yards and Ways (when facility construction
was finished) as:

Region Yards Ways (200 feet plus)
East Coast 34 261
Great Lakes 12 60
Gulf 14 100
Pacific 28 175

BTW, that includes Navy Yards. Hmm, doesn’t include dry docks, marine
railways, graving docks, or floating dry docks…

Since most of the large naval units were produced at Navy Yards, I
imagine most of the big stuff was being built on the East coast. Be
interesting to see the actual breakdown though…

I wonder how many shipbuilding ways the Japanese had? Unlike us, they
were a bit short on sea coast to expand…

Timothy L. Francis
Historian
Naval Historical Center
email address: Francis.Timothy@nhc.navy.mil
voice: (202) 433-6802

The above remarks are my opinions, not those of the U.S. Navy or the
Department of Defense

> ———-
> From: Brooks Rowlett[SMTP:brooksar@indy.net]
> Reply To: mahan@microworks.net
> Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 1998 11:34 AM
> To: mahan@microworks.net
> Subject: Re: Bath Iron Works