The
Star
of Oregon, Oregon Ship's first delivery.The launching ceremony was
much more elaborate than would become normal later, when ships were being
delivered on a daily basis.
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The
Star
of Oregon, Oregon Ship's first delivery.The launching ceremony was
much more elaborate than would become normal later, when ships were being
delivered on a daily basis.
The
Robert
E. Peary. Launched in November 1942 at Kaiser Permanent'es #2 Yard
in Richomnd, CA, only four days and fifteen hours after keel laying began,
it was the fastest launch of the war. Permanente's average construction
time was almost 50 days. The construction of the Robert E. Peary
was a propaganda effort designed to show that the USMC could always produce
ships faster than they could be destroyed. In fact it could not, because
there was neither enough steel nor sufficient capacity to manufacture engines
at this pace. J.G. Bunker (The Ugly Ducklings of World War II, Naval
Institute Press, 1972) provides a detailed account of the special circumstances
under which the Robert E. Peary was built.
An
escort aircraft carrier slides into the Columbia River at the Kaiser-Vancouver
yard.The carrier was not a Libery design. Its hull was designed by the
Technical Division of the USMC under the supervision of James
L. Bates. Its flight deck was designed by the navy.kaiser delivered
fifty of them. Normally, the navy would have taken over a yard producing
navy ships, but in this case it did not. The reason, according to the offiicial
historian Frederic Lane, is that "the Navy wanted the ships but did not
want Kaiser."