1.
USS Noble (APA-218)
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USS Noble was a Haskell-class attack transport which saw service with the US Navy in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. She was later transferred to the Spanish Navy in the 1964 under a mutual assistance agreement,2, Richmond, California, as a modified Victory ship, completed by the Kaiser Shipyard at Richmond, launched 18 October 1944, sponsored by Mrs. Maxine C. Jones, acquired by the Navy 27 November 1944, and commissioned the same day, Commander, later Rear Admiral, nobles primary mission was to transport to a combat area the men and some of the material necessary for an assault on an enemy shore. Her main armament, her group, was designed to deliver her troops and cargo to the beach in a planned. After discharging troops and equipment, she could evacuate casualties or prisoners of war, in January 1945, Noble steamed westward to participate in the Okinawa campaign. Upon termination of the war, she assisted in the delivery of released allied prisoners of war from Korea to the Philippines and she also participated in Operation Magic Carpet, returning servicemen from the Pacific to the United States. Noble was attached to the US Atlantic Fleet from 1946 through 1949, operating out of Norfolk, Noble returned to San Diego 13 September 1949, and was undergoing overhaul at Mare Island Naval Shipyard, San Francisco, when war broke out in Korea in June 1950. In August, she steamed to Korea to participate in the September Inchon amphibious assault, thereafter, she assisted in the transport of US and foreign troops and equipment to and from the Korean combat zone. In July 1953, she participated in Operation Big Switch, moving Communist North Korean prisoners from Koje Do to Inchon pursuant to the armistice agreement, subsequent to the Korean War, Noble conducted training operations in both the eastern and western Pacific areas. In 1955, she assisted in the evacuation of Chinese civilians, at the outset of the Cuban Missile Crisis 27 October 1962, Noble embarked 1,400 Marines with their equipment and steamed for the Caribbean in company with other Pacific Fleet amphibious units. She returned to San Diego in December, then deployed to WestPac in March 1963 for a tour with the 7th Fleet Amphibious Ready Group, Noble returned to San Diego in December 1963, and conducted upkeep and training operations until she decommissioned 1 July 1964. She then entered the Mare Island Naval Shipyard for preparation for transfer to Spain under the Mutual Assistance Program, the transfer ceremony took place 19 December, at San Francisco. Renamed attack transport Aragón, by the Spanish Navy, the ship served until being laid up and she was sold for scrap in 1987. ^Noble Noble County, Indiana, was named for Noah Noble, citations Photo gallery of USS Noble at NavSource Naval History
2.
California Shipbuilding Corporation
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California Shipbuilding Corporation built 467 Liberty and Victory ships during World War II, including Haskell-class attack transports. California Shipbuilding Corporation was often referred to as Calship, the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships sometimes refers to this shipyard as California Shipbuilding Co. but Co appears to be an error. The Calship shipyard was created at Terminal Island in Los Angeles, California, bechtel Co. was given sponsorship and executive direction of Calship. As of 1940, Los Angeles shipyards had not built a ship in 20 years. By late 1941 though, shipbuilding had become the second largest manufacturing industry in the Los Angeles area, Calship was created from scratch and began production of Liberty Ships in May 1941. In the early 1940s, contracts from the U. S. Department of Maritime Commission, the yard was located on 175 acres on the north side of Terminal Island, north of Dock Street, near present-day berths 210-213. It initially had 8 ways, and later increased this to 14,40,000 men and women worked under the military contract to construction of 467 vessels over 5 years. The combination of ships were known as the Liberty Fleet. These cargo ships were designed for construction with lower costs for them. Thirteen months after commencing production, the broke the record by delivering 15 Liberty Ships in June 1942. It delivered 111 ships in 1942, more than any other yard in the United States, in June 1943, it broke the record again by delivering 20 ships for the month, and yet again in December 1943, delivering 23 ships. Large Navy contracts developed shipbuilding in California, as a result of that, many workers migrated to the work area. Many shipyards sprang up from San Francisco to San Diego, at the peak of shipbuilding in California were involved 282000 persons. Shipbuilding became an efficient wartime industry. The building of vessels and the number of jobs in the shipbuilding peaked in mid-1943, the Kaiser Steel plant in Fontana, California was completed in August 1943, which enabled further production increases at Calship. Between September 27,1941 and September 27,1945, the yard launched 467 ships, the Calship yard was known as the city built on invisible stilts. It was situated on ground, and was built on artificial earth supported by 57,000 piles driven into the mud. Shipbuilding commenced before the docks were even completed
3.
Kaiser Shipyards
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Henry John Kaiser was an American industrialist who became known as the father of modern American shipbuilding. He established the Kaiser Shipyards, which built Liberty ships during World War II, after which he formed Kaiser Aluminum, Kaiser organized Kaiser Permanente health care for his workers and their families. He led Kaiser-Frazer followed by Kaiser Motors, automobile companies known for the safety of their designs, Kaiser was involved in large construction projects such as civic centers and dams, and invested in real estate. With his wealth, he established the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit, non-partisan, Kaiser was born on May 9,1882, in Sprout Brook, New York, the son of Franz and Anna Marie Kaiser, ethnic German immigrants. Kaisers first job was as a boy in an Utica, New York. He worked as an apprentice photographer early in life, and was running the studio in Lake Placid by the age of twenty. He used his savings to move to Washington state on the west coast of the United States in 1906, where he started a construction company that fulfilled government contracts. Kaiser met his wife, Bess Fosburgh, the daughter of a Virginia lumberman. They married on April 8,1907, and had two children, Edgar Kaiser, Sr and Henry Kaiser, Jr, in 1914 Kaiser founded a paving company, Henry J. Kaiser Co. Ltd. one of the first to use heavy construction machinery. His firm expanded significantly in 1927 when it received a contract to build roads in Camagüey Province. In 1931 his firm was one of the contractors in building the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. Henry Kaiser was an advocate of bringing American aid to those suffering from Nazi aggression in Europe. S. Still fretted over preserving its isolationism, many leading industrialists, such as Henry Ford, were pro-Fascist and adamantly against the US entering that conflict until December 7,1941. These ships became known as Liberty ships and were supplemented in the mid-war by improved. He became world-renowned when his teams built a ship in four days, the previous record had been 10 days for the Liberty ship Joseph M. Teal. A visit to a Ford assembly plant by one of his associates led to the decision to use welding instead of riveting for shipbuilding. Welding was advantageous in that it took less strength and it was easier to teach thousands of employees, mostly unskilled laborers, Kaiser adopted the use of subassemblies in ship construction, formerly, hundreds of laborers crowded together to complete a ship. Though this practice had been tried on the East Coast and in Britain, other Kaiser Shipyards were located in Ryan Point on the Columbia River in Washington state and on Swan Island in Portland, Oregon
4.
Gilliam-class attack transport
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The Gilliam-class attack transport was a class of attack transport built for service with the US Navy in World War II. Like all the transports, the Gilliam-class was heavily armed with antiaircraft weaponry to protect itself. The Gilliam-class utilized the Maritime Commission s Type S4-SE2-BD1 hull, all 32 vessels of the class were built under MARCOM contracts by the Consolidated Steel Corporation of Wilmington, California. The first of the ships, the USS Gilliam, rolled off the Wilmington ways on 28 March 1944 and was commissioned on 1 August 1944, the rest rapidly followed, a new Gilliam-class vessel rolling of the shipways at an average of roughly one per week until April 1945. As they arrived late in the war, Gilliam-class ships did not get much chance to see combat. Regardless, all of them spent a part of their time on troop transport, cargo. At the end of the war, the US Navy found itself with far more ships than it required in peacetime, some of these ships were dispensed with in Operation Crossroads, the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in the summer of 1946. These tests were designed to assess the effects of nuclear detonations on shipping, for the purpose, the Navy collected somewhere between 70 and 90 unwanted ships to use as targets, some captured from the enemy and some of the Navys own. Since the Gilliam-class had a transport and cargo capacity to many of the other attack transport classes. 17 of the Gilliam-class were duly selected to act as targets in the tests, in the event, one - USS Appling - was reprieved, so exactly half of the class 32 ships were designated as targets. A few were found to have escaped the radioactive fallout and were taken back to the United States. These survivors, along with the rest of the class, were decommissioned in late 1946-early 1947, the sole exception was the USS Burleson, which although decommissioned along with the remainder of the class, remained in use with the Navy as a training ship until 1 September 1968. Other than this one vessel, it appears the entire class of ships saw barely more than two years service of any description before being scrapped, see the individual ship entries at DANFS Online. Information on those vessels missing at this site can be found at Navsource Online, an alternative reference for dates and basic information is the Attack Transport Index page of Navsource Online
5.
Attack transport
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Attack transport is a United States Navy ship classification for a variant of ocean-going troopship adapted to transporting invasion forces ashore. Unlike standard troopships – often drafted from commercial shipping fleets – that rely on either a quay or tenders and they are not to be confused with landing ships, which beach themselves to bring their troops directly ashore, or their general British equivalent, the Landing ship, infantry. A total of 388 APA and AKA attack transports were built for service in World War II in at least fifteen classes, depending on class they were armed with one or two 5-inch guns and a variety of 40 mm and 20 mm anti-aircraft weapons. Some of these were outfitted with heavy boat davits and other arrangements to enable them to handle landing craft] for amphibious assault operations. In 1942, when the AP number series had extended beyond 100. Therefore, the new classification of attack transport was created and numbers assigned to fifty-eight APs then in commission or under construction, the actual reclassification of these ships was not implemented until February 1943, by which time two ships that had APA numbers assigned had been lost. Another two transports sunk in 1942, USS George F. Elliott and USS Leedstown, were configured as attack transports. In addition, as part of the 1950s modernization of the Navys amphibious force with faster ships, as a result, only attack transport ships were assigned for the assault, without support from any companion attack cargo ships. This created extreme logistics burdens for the force because it resulted in considerable overloading of the transports with both men and equipment. To compound problems, these forces were not able to assemble or train together before executing the Aleutian invasion on 11 May 1943, lack of equipment and training subsequently resulted in confusion during the landings on Attu. By the end of the 1950s, it was clear that boats would soon be superseded by amphibious tractors and helicopters for landing assault troops. These could not be supported by attack transports in the numbers required, by 1969, when the surviving attack transports were redesignated LPA, only a few remained in commissioned service. The last of these were decommissioned in 1980 and sold abroad, the APA/LPA designation may, therefore, now be safely considered extinct. Nearly identical ships used to transport vehicles, supplies and landing craft, Landing Ship Infantry This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. APA/LPA -- Attack Transports by the US Naval Historical Center
6.
Westinghouse Electric Corporation
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The Westinghouse Electric Corporation was an American manufacturing company. It was founded on January 8,1886, as Westinghouse Electric Company and later renamed Westinghouse Electric Corporation by inventor, George Westinghouse had previously founded the Westinghouse Air Brake Company. The corporation purchased CBS broadcasting company in 1995 and became CBS Corporation in 1997, Westinghouse Electric was founded by George Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1886. The firm became active in developing electric infrastructure throughout the United States, in addition to George Westinghouse, early engineers working for the company included Frank Conrad, Benjamin Garver Lamme, Oliver B. Shallenberger, William Stanley, Nikola Tesla, Stephen Timoshenko and Vladimir Zworykin, early on Westinghouse was a rival to Thomas Edisons electric company. In 1892 Edison was merged with Westinghouses chief AC rival, the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, making even bigger competitor, Westinghouse changed its name to Westinghouse Electric Corporation in 1945. Westinghouse purchased CBS in 1995 and became CBS Corporation in 1997, in 1998, CBS established a brand licensing subsidiary Westinghouse Licensing Corporation. In 1997/1998 the Power Generation Business Unit, headquartered in Orlando, FL, was sold to Siemens AG, a year later, CBS sold all of its nuclear power businesses to British Nuclear Fuels Limited. Soon after, BNFL gained license rights on the Westinghouse trademarks and that company was sold to Toshiba in 2007. The first commercial Westinghouse steam turbine generator, a 1,500 kW unit. The machine, nicknamed Mary-Ann, was the first steam turbine generator to be installed by a utility to generate electricity in the US. George Westinghouse had based his original steam turbine design on designs licensed from the English inventor Charles Parsons. or were built overseas under Westinghouse license. Major Westinghouse licensees or joint venture partners included Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan and Harbin Turbine Co. Westinghouse boasted 50,000 employees by 1900, and established a formal research and development department in 1906. While the company was expanding, it would experience internal financial difficulties, during the Panic of 1907, the Board of Directors forced George Westinghouse to take a six-month leave of absence. Westinghouse officially retired in 1909 and died years later in 1914. Under new leadership, Westinghouse Electric diversified its business activities in electrical technology and it acquired the Copeman Electric Stove Company in 1914 and Pittsburgh High Voltage Insulator Company in 1921. Westinghouse also moved into broadcasting by establishing Pittsburghs KDKA, the first commercial radio station. Westinghouse expanded into the business, establishing the Westinghouse Elevator Company in 1928
7.
Joshua Hendy Iron Works
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The Joshua Hendy Iron Works was an American engineering company that existed from the 1850s to the late 1940s. It was at one time a leader in mining technology and its equipment was used to build the Panama Canal. The company was named for its founder Joshua Hendy, born in Cornwall, England in 1822, Hendy at the age of 13 migrated with two brothers to South Carolina in the United States. Hendy built Californias first redwood lumber mill, the Benicia Sawmill, in 1856, he established the Joshua Hendy Iron Works in San Francisco to supply equipment to Gold Rush placer miners. The Hendy plant supplied various equipment to the mining industry, Hendy giant hydraulic crushers were used to excavate the Panama Canal. After Joshua Hendy died in 1891, management of the company was taken over by his nephews Samuel, in 1906 a fire devastated the original San Francisco factory, and the company was re-established in Sunnyvale, California after the local government enticed the company with free land. During World War I, the Hendy plant gained its first experience building marine engines by supplying 11 triple expansion engines for cargo ships built by Western Pipe & Steel. Each engine weighed about 137 tons and stood 24½ feet high, although the first marine engines built by Hendy, they proved to be reliable, with most providing many years of service. Essentially the same engine was used for production of US Liberty ship engines in World War II. In the early 1920s, Hendys hydraulic mining equipment was used in the regrading of Seattle, with the onset of the Great Depression however, and hampered by indifferent management, the Hendy Iron Works - like many other heavy equipment manufacturers of the era - fell on hard times. The company adapted by finding new markets, for example by contracting for the building of giant gates and valves for the schemes of the Hoover, Boulder. During this period it also produced equipment as diverse as crawler tractors, freight car wheel pullers, parts for internal combustion engines, some of the ornate street lamps built by the company can still be seen in San Franciscos Chinatown district today. By the late 1930s the company was in difficulties and had shrunk to a shadow of its former self. The company was in the process of being taken over by the Bank of California in 1940 when businessman Charles E. Moore, with the support of the Six Companies. By 1942, with the US governments wartime Emergency Shipbuilding Program getting underway, the company was then contracted to build 118 triple expansion steam engines for the Liberty ships. As the war progressed and the shipbuilding program continued to expand. Moore responded by streamlining production at the Joshua Hendy plant and he introduced more advanced assembly line techniques, standardizing on more production parts and enabling less skilled workers to accomplish tasks formerly carried out by skilled machinists. By 1943, the company had reduced the required to manufacture a marine steam engine from 4,500 hours to 1,800 hours
8.
Allis-Chalmers
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Allis-Chalmers was a U. S. manufacturer of machinery for various industries. It was reorganized in 1912 as the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company, in the 1980s and 1990s a series of divestitures transformed the firm and eventually dissolved it. Its successors today are Allis-Chalmers Energy and AGCO, author-photographer Randy Leffingwell aptly summarized the firms origins and character. He observed that it grew by acquiring and consolidating the innovations of various firms and building upon them. Financial successes and failures brought them together, former marketing executive Walter M. Buescher said that Allis-Chalmers was a conglomerate before the word was coined. Edward P. Allis was an entrepreneur who in 1860 bought a bankrupt firm at an auction, the Reliance Works of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Decker & Seville were millwrights who made equipment for flour milling, under Alliss management, the firm was reinvigorated and began producing steam engines and other mill equipment just at the time that many sawmills and flour mills were converting to steam power. Although the financial panic of 1873 caught Edward Allis overextended and forced him into bankruptcy, his own reputation saved him and reorganization came quickly, forming the Edward P. Allis Company. Allis died in 1889, but under his sons and the principals, the firm continued to prosper. Thomas Chalmers was a Scottish immigrant to America who came to the U. S. about 1842, by 1844 he was at Chicago, Illinois and had found work with P. W. Gates, whose foundry and blacksmithing shops produced plows, wagons, and flour-milling equipment. The Gates firm built the first steam-operated sawmill in the country at a time when Chicago was the producer of milled lumber in the country. In 1872, Thomas Chalmers founded the Fraser & Chalmers firm to manufacture mining machinery, boilers, by 1880 steam engines were part of the product line and by 1890, the firm had become one of the worlds largest manufacturers of mining equipment. Thomas Chalmerss son, William James Chalmers, was president of the company from circa 1890 to 1901, meanwhile, the Gates Iron Works, with Chalmers family involvement, had become a manufacturer of crushers, pulverizers, and other rock and cement milling equipment. Another Scottish immigrant family, the Dickson family, came to Canada, by 1852, they had organized a small machine shop and foundry in Scranton, Pennsylvania. In 1856 Thomas Dickson became its president, and in 1862 the firm incorporated as the Dickson Manufacturing Company, by 1900 they were building boilers, steam engines, locomotives, internal combustion engines, blowers, and air compressors. By 1901 the principals of the Edward P. Allis, Fraser & Chalmers, edwin Reynolds believed Allis could control the industrial engine business. In May 1901 the Allis-Chalmers Company was formed and it acquired Dicksons industrial engine business. Dicksons locomotive business was rolled into the new consolidation, the American Locomotive Company
