I’m afraid it’s not technically true either. Bath Iron Works only
received contracts for 64 destroyers during the war (6 of which had been
transferred from Federal SS Co.) but had 12 cancelled, thus only
completing 52 destroyers (from contract to delivery).

But, if you include destroyers whose contracts were awarded to Bath
pre-war but were finished after 7 December 1941, the total number rises
to 76. If you include destroyers completed after September 1939, then
the number rises to 84.

Source: Contracts Awarded Private Shipyards for Construction of Naval
Vessels since 1 January 1934, Navy Department, Bureau of Ships, 15
January 1946

It would be interesting to find out what the specific dates are for
those 63 Japanese destroyers, maybe Bath didn’t beat them after all…

Hmm, perhaps this is a good example of why clarity of expression and
careful definition is very important in historical writing.

An example. Production tonnage of iron/steel during WW2 is often
misleading because the sources fail to declare whether it is in short
tons (2000 pounds, used in the U.S. for steel production), long tons
(2,240 pounds, common in Britain for steel and used in North America for
iron ore), or metric tons (2,204.6 pounds, used by the United Nations
for agricultural, manufacturing, and mining statistics).

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: John Snyder[SMTP:John_Snyder@bbs.macnexus.org]
> Reply To: mahan@microworks.net
> Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 1998 10:53 PM
> To: MARHST-L@POST.QUEENSU.CA; mahan@microwrks.com
> Subject: Kamikaze attack on USS LAFFEY DD724 in WWII: Bath Iron
> Works
>
>Brooks Rowlett wrote:
>SNIP
>”….from Pearl Harbor to the war’s end, 82 destroyers were built
>and delivered – about 25 percent of all destroyers built for the Navy
>during the war. During the same period, Japanes shipyards built only
>63 destroyers. The Bath Iron Works alone outproduced the Japanese
>empire.”
>SNIP
>
>That’s one of the more amazing WW2 statistics I’ve seen.
>
>John Snyder