Pittsburgh shipbuilders produced 'workhorse' of the Navy
original source: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/search/s_51799.html
(sent to website by William Crawford)
By Laura Baccelli Vondas
For The Tribune-Review
Sunday, August 12, 2001
Jim Knox, 25, native of the serene Ohio River community
of Emsworth, stood on the bridge of USS LST 491, eyewitness to the reality of
war. "Operation Overlord," code words for D-Day and the invasion of
Europe, began on June 6, 1944, on a peninsula of northwestern France on the
English Channel in a region called Normandy.
"It was an awesome experience," said Knox, "to observe the great
battleships bombarding the French coast with huge explosives and then to look to
England where the sky was black with aircraft bringing the attack to the enemy
by air."
Normandy, the greatest military operation in the history of the world involved
4,000 ships and 11,000 aircraft. The day before the invasion Knox had sailed
from England crossing the channel in a convoy of 36 LSTs, landing ships for
tanks. The ships, ranging from 326 feet to 328 feet long and 50 feet wide, were
loaded to capacity with troops, tanks, jeeps and other war equipment. Originally
designed to carry tanks, the LST soon became the workhorse of the Navy carrying
all kinds of supplies, railroad cars and refugees. "We transported horses
for the French Foreign Legion," Knox said, "and sheep and goats."
LST 491 unloaded at Utah Beach, went on to Omaha Beach, unloaded the remainder
of vehicles and troops and began to pick up survivors. Returning to England,
June 8, the ship converted to a sea ambulance and hospital with seven operating
rooms, six doctors and 45 nurses. More than 14,000 wounded men were carried back
across the English Channel from the Normandy beaches. "Many lives were
saved," Knox said, "because doctors were able to treat casualties
immediately."
While transporting the wounded and dying, Knox quickly faced the brutality of
war. He remembered, "the open wounds you could see, held together with
tourniquets - all kinds of horrible stuff. Some had wounds about the face, body
wounds. Some had leg wounds. Some had shrapnel. It was just a gory mess."
Knox remains haunted by "the moaning, screaming, yelling - the pain."
D-day was not the first time Knox observed history in action. As a young
newspaper boy, he sold 12 subscriptions and won a trip to the 1933 inauguration
of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The inaugural address included Roosevelt's
famous phrase "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
Eight years later and one day after the Japanese attack on the U.S. Pacific
Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Knox sat uneasily with his classmates in Dr. Benjamin
Williams' political science course in American Diplomacy at the University of
Pittsburgh. The mood was somber, and the talk was serious. "We were all
quite blue," he said. "We were devastated as a community and as a
nation, because it was well-known that the Japanese officials were in Washington
negotiating with the secretary of state about peace in the Pacific at the time
of the Dec. 7 attack. Just about all of Europe had been conquered by (Adolf)
Hitler and the German army; the outlook for a defeat of Hitler seemed like a
formidable task."
"Well, the cards are on the table," professor Williams said. "The
winner takes all leaving the vanquished nothing but his eyes to weep with.
But," Williams added emphatically, "We will win! We will win because
we will outproduce them."
Yet 22-year-old Knox could not have imagined his personal odyssey in the war nor
the role that Pittsburgh would play in it. When he returned to civilian life
several years later, he published a book, "The Ol' Double Trouble,"
about his experiences aboard LST 491. Last year Knox wrote a pamphlet, "The
Birth of the LST," that tells the story of its impact on the city, nation
and world.
Converting the nation from peacetime production to speedy, state of emergency
wartime production was a staggering challenge and demanded a cooperative, heroic
effort. One of the most unexpected and astonishing developments of the war in
Pittsburgh was the speed and scale of the shipbuilding industry that seemed to
appear like magic on the banks of the Ohio River at Dravo Corp., Neville Island
and at the American Bridge Company Division of United States Steel Corp. in
Ambridge.
Exactly one month after Pearl Harbor, Dravo Chairman J.D. Berg and President V.B.
Edwards, received an urgent telephone call summoning them to Washington, D.C.,
for discussions with Adm. Robinson, chief, Bureau of Ships, U.S. Navy. The Navy
Department had observed the progress Dravo made in building gate vessels, sub
chasers and minesweepers, and it was interested in Dravo's innovative
manipulation of large pre-assemblies and efficient method of moving ship hulls
progressively to final position for launching. Besides an easy waterway access
to the Atlantic ocean via the Ohio, Mississippi rivers and the Gulf of Mexico,
Pittsburgh had a strategic location for shipbuilding alongside the steel mills.
Aware that Dravo was well-known for management depth, strength and ability and
for its high degree of skilled workers, the Navy Department proposed an enormous
nine-part program of wartime activity for the relatively small company.
Corporate officers considered and accepted the Navy's proposal, committing Dravo
to serve as "lead yard" in the production of a $195 million
shipbuilding program and $24 million plant expansion in Pittsburgh and at a
second, smaller plant site in Wilmington, Del.
Four other inland river builders were outfitted with special handling equipment
to use Dravo's techniques. They were American Bridge Co., Ambridge; Chicago
Bridge and Iron Co., Seneca, Ill.; Jeffersonville Boat and Machine Co.,
Jeffersonville, Ind., and Missouri Valley Bridge and Iron Co., Evanston, Ind.
They were commissioned to use Dravo's basic production line plan. Dravo also
functioned as design and procurement agent and as agent for materials and
components. The cooperative group effort of these five companies ultimately
turned out 724 LSTs - 68 percent of the Navy's entire fleet of 1,058 LSTs.
A few miles downriver at Ambridge, the American Bridge Company, then the largest
plant of its kind in the world, fabricated steel for many famous bridges and
buildings. In 1942, the plant contracted with the Navy to build LSTs, and within
nine months a swampland of 64 acres had disappeared and in its place was a
shipyard producing LSTs. American Bridge produced a total of 911 vessels between
January 1940 and August 1945. Among them were 77 destroyers, 52 destroyer
escorts and 119 LSTs.
To handle larger, heavier LSTs, Dravo's physical plant and manpower had to be
greatly expanded, shipyards had to be completely constructed and new shops
built. Ground breaking took place without fanfare 27 days after receiving the
assignment. Dravo's existing Neville Island plant was enlarged and called the
West Yard. One-half mile away, a 66-acre field was purchased and called the East
Yard. The East Yard was equipped for full-scale production, including an
outfitting dock capable of handling 10 vessels at one time and an LST assembly
line, the first of its kind. Each yard had its own launching way. Orders were
received to concentrate major effort on construction of LSTs, then the secret
weapon of the allies.
It was Prime Minister Winston Churchill who prodded his ministers of the need
for such ships after the 1940 debacle at Dunkirk when tons of badly needed
equipment were left behind because no vessels were capable of bridging the gap
between the sea and the land. A vessel designed by British engineers, while
sound in concept, was considered unsatisfactory." The U.S. Navy's Bureau of
Ships undertook the successful redesign in November 1941.
Powered by two General Motors diesel engines, LSTs could carry 2,100 tons and
had a maximum speed of 11.5 knots and a cruising speed of 8.75 knots. Typically,
LSTs were armed with 7 mm and 12 mm anti-aircraft guns. Two doors were built
into the bow that opened outward to a width of 14 feet. The lower deck could
hold 20 Sherman tanks, while lighter vehicles and troops could be carried on the
upper deck. To load and unload vehicles, an elevator and later a ramp was used.
When the LST lands at an invasion coast, a set of doors in the bow opens and a
ramp is lowered directly to the beach. LSTs gave the Allies the ability to
conduct invasions at any location that had a gradually sloped beach.
"In less than 11 months following initial discussions, a shipyard was
designed and built; a completely new vessel concept - the LST - was developed
and detailed: a reservoir of specialized workers was trained from a broad cross
section of average people; the first ship was delivered; and a pipeline of
components for subsequent vessels was filled and began spewing out the
essentials in support of the war effort," according to the corporate
history of Dravo, titled "A Company of Uncommon Enterprise."
The new government contracts swelled the work force at Dravo's Pittsburgh and
Wilmington plants from 1,500 to 26,500 men and women. Office buildings,
dispensaries, cafeterias, locker and washroom facilities and parking lots were
built. A sign over the Neville Island main gate, "We Can. We Will. We
Must!" reminded workers of the urgency of their mission.
During the peak of the war program the yards were in operation 24 hours a
day, seven days a week. At Neville Island, the increased number of employees was
so large that the Navy Department built five miles of modern four-lane highway
and an auxiliary two-lane timber bridge across the Ohio River back channel, to
get workers to and from the yards and to detour highway traffic around the
shipyard.
In 219 days, Dravo launched LST 1 into the Ohio River from the West Yard on
Sept. 7, 1942. Not only was it the first of a new, revolutionary design produced
on an assembly line, it was also the largest combat ship ever launched on inland
waters of the United States. Attached to the upper deck was a sign,
"Forward to Victory, America." Dravo continued completing one LST
every 6.1 days.
Early in April 1944, secretary of the Navy, James Forrestal, called on Dravo
management and workers to produce 15 LSTs by May 31 in preparation for what
became the Normandy invasion. Called the "hot ship" program, Dravo's
men and women worked harder, faster, longer, in overlapping shifts. They
produced 15 ships with two days to spare, or one LST every 3.5 days.
Dravo's World War II production contracts totaled nearly $1/2 billion.
Shipbuilding production alone included 20 sub chasers and minesweepers, 27 gate
vessels, 27 destroyer escorts, 46 lighters and barges, 65 LSMs and 150 LSTs.
LSTs were involved in the European and Mediterranean campaigns in Sicily,
Salerno, Anzio and in the initial invasion of Normandy where 173 LSTs were used
in the Pacific theater, LSTs took part in the Aleutians campaign, Gilbert
Island, Marshalls, Mariana, Palaus, Leyte, Mindoro, Luzon, Mindanao, Bonin
Islands, Okinawa (343 LSTs were involved in the initial landing) and
Anvil-Dragoon. A total of 40 LSTs were lost during the war to mines, explosions,
aircraft attacks, grounding, ship attacks or submarines.
Knox believes LSTs were a factor in Hitler's defeat. "The United States
entered World War II with a well-developed amphibious theory that was adopted by
all the major powers," Knox said. "The failure of Germany to develop
an adequate amphibious doctrine was a major contributory cause of Hitler's
ultimate defeat."
Knox served 3 1/2 years as an LST officer in Europe, the Mediterranean and the
Pacific Theatre. "I was given tremendous responsibility that not only
involved the war effort and government property, but people's lives." Knox
said, "Our decisions had a direct effect on their safety. We had to make
many decisions and there was no second guessing. We were too busy to be
afraid."
Laura Baccelli Vondas is a Pittsburgh free-lance writer for the
Tribune-Review.