1.
USS Polaris (AF-11)
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USS Polaris was a Type C2 Liberty fleet standard freighter and an Aldebaran-class stores ship acquired from the United States Maritime Commission by the US Navy for World War II and the Korean War. Polaris made five trips from the U. S. East Coast to Reykjavík, Iceland from June 1942 to February 1943 and she then made five voyages from the U. S. East Coast to Port of Spain, Trinidad, and San Juan, Puerto Rico, from March through September 1944 Polaris made three round-trip voyages in convoy from the east coast to Oran, Algeria, and other Mediterranean ports. In October she made another voyage to the Caribbean, on 10 November 1944 she departed New York for the Panama Canal Zone escorted by the USS Leland E. Thomas and arrived at Cristóbal, Colón 16 November 1944. Polaris then sailed to Enewetak, Saipan, Tinian, and Apra before returning to Seattle and she was underway 16 January to Pearl Harbor, Eniwetok, and Ulithi. After serving in Japanese waters and on the China coast, Polaris decommissioned 18 January 1946 and she was struck from the Naval Vessel Register 7 February 1946 and transferred to the Maritime Commission 30 June 1946. Polaris served in the Korean War with Service Squadron 1 and made six cruises to Korean waters between 29 January 1951 and 23 July 1954 and she was struck from the Naval Vessel Register 10 October 1957, and transferred to the Maritime Administration. Into 1970 she was in the National Defense Reserve Fleet berthed in Suisun Bay and this article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships
2.
Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Co.
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Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Company was a major shipbuilding company in Chester, Pennsylvania, about 15 miles south of Philadelphia on the Delaware River. Its primary product was tankers, but the company built many types of ships over its 70-year history, during World War II, it participated in the U. S. The company was developed by Sun Oil Company, and launched its first ship in 1917, under the direction of its president, John Glenn Pew, the company experienced tremendous success over the following decades. In the 1920s, it had become a large shipyard that built tankers for the Standard Oil Company and by the start of World War II, it was among the five largest shipyards. Twenty slipways were added during the war, making Sun Ship the countrys largest shipyard, at its peak, the company employed more than 40,000 workers at four shipyards, including one manned almost entirely by African Americans. Sun Shipbuilding built 281 T2 tankers during World War II, about 40% of the U. S. wartime total and it also built hospital ships, cargo ships, and escort carriers for the United States Maritime Commission. On 27 September 1941, it contributed one of the 14 Liberty ships launched on Liberty Fleet Day, Sun continued as a merchant shipbuilder after the war, but sold the South and #4 Yards for industrial development. In the 1970s, Sun built ten roll-on/roll-off ships for various operators, one of them, sailing under the name SS El Faro, was lost in a hurricane on October 1,2015, while steaming from Jacksonville, Florida, to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The company was sold to Pennsylvania Shipbuilding in 1982, and closed in 1989, the Central Yard site has been sold or leased for multiple uses, while the North Yard is now an independent cargo terminal. In 2006, a new casino, named Harrahs Philadelphia opened on the Sun Ship site and is currently in operation, Sun Shipbuilding historical site Federation of American Scientists Military Analysis Network http, //users. telenet. be/doxford-matters/sundoxford. html
3.
Western Pipe and Steel Company
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The Western Pipe and Steel Company was an American manufacturing company that is best remembered today for its construction of ships for the Maritime Commission in World War II. It also built ships for the U. S, Shipping Board in World War I and took part in the construction of the giant Grand Coulee Dam project in the 1930s. The origins of the company are somewhat obscure and it appears it was organized in Los Angeles, California around 1907 by two brothers named Talbot and possibly a partner named T. A. Hays. An early President of the company was James A. Talbot, later to make, Western Pipe & Steel quickly began to expand its operations. In 1910 it established a factory in Taft, California for the supply of pipes, Another factory was opened in Fresno in 1913. In 1915 a third new factory was established in Phoenix, Arizona to serve the agricultural, the company made its first move into San Francisco in 1910 with the purchase of a local riveted pipe manufacturer, the Francis Smith Company, whose own origins dated back to 1854. Shortly thereafter, WPS purchased land in the Richmond District of San Francisco, in 1917 Western Pipe & Steel bought out another local San Francisco company, the Schaw Batcher Pipe Works. Schaw Batcher had frontage on San Francisco Bay and had just received a contract from the U. S, Shipping Board for the building of 22 merchant ships in accordance with the Boards strategic goal of developing a naval auxiliary and merchant marine fleet. With the purchase of Schaw Batcher, Western Pipe & Steel inherited these contracts, the Shipping Boards contract with WPS called for the building of eighteen vessels of about 5,650 tons each and four larger vessels of 8,800 gross tons. The larger vessels were cancelled in 1918 but all eighteen of the smaller ships were completed. All of the vessels were of riveted construction, in accordance with the technology of the period. They had a length of 410 feet, a beam of 54 feet, a draft of 24 feet 2 inches, and they ran on oil fuel and had a speed of 11 knots and a crew of 39 to 45. Because of the shortage of water frontage, the company dredged a large rectangular launching basin, the side launching method was not ideal for ships of this size and some of the vessels suffered hull damage on launch which then had to be repaired. The company was however, to persevere with side launching for the whole of its existence, the channel and the four shipping ways were completed in only three months, and the keel of the companys very first ship, Isanti, was laid on 30 November 1917. The first eight of the ships were fitted with General Electric steam turbines with a horsepower of 2500, some of these vessels were lost at sea after foundering due to breakdown, and the rest were scrapped by 1930. The remaining 10 vessels were fitted with triple expansion engines built by Joshua Hendy, the 2,800 horsepower Joshua Hendy plant proved much more reliable, and many of the vessels powered by this engine went on to have long careers. While many of Americas First World War emergency shipyards shut down at the end of the war, the company closed its Richmond operation in 1921 and moved the plant located there to the San Francisco shipyard, which now began building barges and pipes. During this period the company is reported to have built self-propelled fuel, gasoline and water barges, the exact number is not known, but the companys hull number sequence suggests that as many as 34 such vessels may have been completed in the interwar years
4.
Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company
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The Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company was a United States shipyard, active from 1917 to 1948. It was founded during World War I to build ships for the United States Shipping Board, during World War II, it built ships as part of the U. S. The shipyard site is now part of River Terminal, a distribution facility that is partially a foreign trade zone. Federal built numerous destroyers, destroyer escorts and a handful of light cruisers as well as merchant ships during, around 570 vessels were contracted for construction by Federal SB&DD Company with about 100 not delivered fully completed due to the end of the World War II. Federal also had a yard at Port Newark during World War II that built destroyers, Federal Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company was founded July 24,1917 as a subsidiary of United States Steel Corporation to supply ships for the United States Shipping Board during World War I. The site on Kearny Point was first surveyed during the summer of 1917, the shipyard was to consist of everything needed to fully complete a ship from a facility power plant to a wood joining shop. A steel plate mill and boiler shop were to be built as well, $10 million was allocated for construction. The American Bridge Company was contracted to provide 10,000 tons of steel for the structures, gary was president of Federal in August 1917. The ship-ways were completed by the fall of 1917 with keels being laid by November 1917, Federal completed a 9,600 ton ship around six weeks before World War I ended as well as two other ships before the close of 1918. 27 ships were delivered to the Emergency Fleet Corporation in 1919, Federal accounted for 5% of the steel merchant tonnage built in 1919. By June 1921, the Federal yard at Kearny had a 535 by 161.5 feet boiler construction shop to build Scotch marine boilers, exhaust stacks, tanks, uptakes,235 boilers had been constructed from September 1919 to June 1921. Boilers constructed there were mostly 15 feet diameter or larger, at that time,250 men were able to construct three boilers a week with a single 8 hour shift each day. By November 1921, Federal had shipbuilding ways for twelve 15,000 ton vessels and had constructed a 9,000 ton floating dry dock, the dry dock was first used June 23,1921 when Transmarine corps SS Suhulco docked. The Kearny yard was 17 acres with 2,400 feet of frontage on the Hackensack River, a wet basin was located at the southern end with a 100-ton 3-legged jib crane for fitting out new ships. On Sunday night, May 18,1924, a fire destroyed the largest building at the Kearny yard causing an initially estimated $500,000 in damage, other estimates were $1.6 million or as high as several million dollars in damage. Firemen used four mobile cranes to try to extinguish fires in the pattern building, over a thousand workers were idled by the fire. The shipyard had around 5,000 workers at the time and was said to be one of the largest steel plants in the world. Fireboats and numerous firemen from around the area were called in to fight the fire spread rapidly through the wooden structures at the Kearny yard
5.
Deadweight tonnage
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Deadweight tonnage or tons deadweight is a measure of how much mass a ship is carrying or can safely carry, it does not include the weight of the ship. DWT is the sum of the weights of cargo, fuel, fresh water, ballast water, provisions, passengers, DWT is often used to specify a ships maximum permissible deadweight, although it may also denote the actual DWT of a ship not loaded to capacity. Deadweight tonnage is a measure of a weight carrying capacity. It should not be confused with displacement which includes the ships own weight, nor other volume or capacity measures such as gross tonnage or net tonnage
6.
5"/38 caliber gun
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The Mark 12 5/38 caliber gun was a US naval gun. The gun was installed into Single Purpose and Dual Purpose mounts used primarily by the US Navy, the 38 caliber barrel was a mid-length compromise between the previous United States standard 5/51 low-angle gun and 5/25 anti-aircraft gun. The increased barrel length provided greatly improved performance in both anti-aircraft and anti-surface roles compared to the 5/25 gun, however, except for the barrel length and the use of semi-fixed ammunition, the 5/38 gun was derived from the 5/25 gun. Both weapons had power ramming, which enabled rapid fire at high angles against aircraft, the 5/38 entered service on USS Farragut, commissioned in 1934. The base ring mount, which improved the rate of fire, entered service on USS Gridley. Even this advanced system required nearly 100 rounds of ammunition expenditure per aircraft kill, however, the planes were normally killed by shell fragments and not direct hits, barrage fire was used, with many guns firing in the air at the same time. Base ring mounts with integral hoists had a rate of fire of 15 rounds per minute per barrel, however. On pedestal and other mounts lacking integral hoists,12 to 15 rounds per minute was the rate of fire, useful life expectancy was 4600 effective full charges per barrel. The 5/38 cal gun was mounted on a large number of US Navy ships in the World War II era. It was backfitted to many of the World War I-era battleships during their wartime refits and it has left active US Navy service, but it is still on mothballed ships of the United States Navy reserve fleets. It is also used by a number of nations who bought or were given US Navy surplus ships, each mount carries one or two Mk 12 5/38cal Gun Assemblies. The gun assembly shown is used in single mounts, and it is the gun in twin mounts. It is loaded from the left side, the left gun in twin mounts is the mirror image of the right gun, and it is loaded from the right side. The Mk12 gun assembly weighs 3,990 lb, the major Mk12 Gun Assembly characteristics are,158 Semi-automatic During recoil, some of the recoil energy is stored in the counter-recoil system. That stored energy is used during counter-recoil to prepare the gun for the next round, the firing pin is cocked, the breech is opened, the spent powder case is ejected, and the bore is air cleaned. Hand loaded A Projectile-Man and a Powder-Man are stationed at each gun assembly and their job is to move the round, consisting of a projectile and a powder case, from the hoists to the rammer tray, and then start the ram cycle. The hydraulically driven Rammer Spade, called the Power Spade in that picture, is at the back of the Rammer Tray, if the multiple names of the Spade is confusing, look at this footnote. Vertical sliding-wedge breech block The breech block closes the chamber behind the powder case and it also holds the firing pin assembly
7.
Weapon mount
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A weapon mount is a weapon component used to affix an armament for stabilization. Weapon mounts can be broken down into two categories, static mounts and non-static mounts, a static mount is a non-portable weapon support component used on a self-propelled vehicle. A gun turret protects the crew or mechanism of a weapon, a turret is a rotating weapon platform. This can be mounted on a building or structure such as a coast artillery battery, or on an armoured fighting vehicle. Turrets may be armed with one or more guns, automatic cannons, large-calibre guns, missile launchers. It may be manned or remotely controlled, and is often armoured, a small turret, or sub-turret on a larger one, is called a cupola. The term cupola also describes rotating turrets that carry no weapons but instead are sighting devices, a finial is an extremely small sub-turret or sub-sub-turret mounted on a cupola turret. The protection provided by the turret may be against battle damage or against the weather, conditions and environment in which the weapon or its crew operate. A coaxial mount is mounted beside the primary weapon and thus points in the general direction as the main armament. The term coaxial is a misnomer as the arrangement is often actually paraxial, nearly all main battle tanks and most infantry fighting vehicles have a coaxial machine gun mounted to fire along a parallel axis to the main gun. Coaxial weapons are usually aimed by use of the gun control. It is usually used to infantry or other soft targets when the main gun collateral damage would be excessive. A fixed mount is not moveable with respect to the vehicle, the vehicle must move in order to change direction of fire. Fixed mounts are most commonly found on aircraft, and most commonly direct the forward, along the aircrafts vector of movement, so that a pilot could aim. Some minor aircraft designs used different concept of fixed mounts, as found in Schräge Musik or AC-47 Spooky, a pintle mount is a fixed mount that allows the gun to be freely traversed and/or elevated while keeping the gun in one fixed position. It is most commonly found on armoured vehicles, gunner stations on bomber aircraft, unlike a turret, a pintle has little or no armour protection. A swing mount is a mount that allows a far greater. Utilising a system of one or two articulated arms the gunner can swing the weapon through a wide arc even though the position is fixed relative to the mount
8.
3"/50 caliber gun
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For Army 3-inch gun see 3-inch M1918 gun The 3″/50 caliber gun in United States naval gun terminology indicates the gun fired a projectile 3 inches in diameter, and the barrel was 50 calibers long. Different guns of this caliber were used by the U. S. Navy and U. S. Coast Guard from 1890 through the 1990s on a variety of combatant and transport ship classes. The US Navys first 3″/50 caliber gun was a model with a projectile velocity of 2,100 feet per second. Low-angle mountings for this gun had a range of 7000 yards at the elevation of 15 degrees. The gun entered service around 1900 with the Bainbridge-class destroyers, and was fitted to Connecticut-class battleships. By World War II these guns were only on a few Coast Guard cutters. These guns fired the same 2,700 feet per second used by the following dual-purpose Marks. These were built-up guns with a tube, partial-length jacket, hoop, dual-purpose 3″/50 caliber guns first entered service in 1915 as a refit to USS Texas, and were subsequently mounted on many types of ships as the need for anti-aircraft protection was recognized. They also replaced the original low-angle 4/50 caliber guns on flush-deck Wickes and these dual-purpose guns were quick-firing, meaning that they used fixed ammunition, with powder case and projectile permanently attached, and handled as a single unit weighing 34 pounds. Maximum range was 14,600 yards at 45 degrees elevation, useful life expectancy was 4300 effective full charges per barrel. The 3/50 caliber gun Marks 17 and 18 was first used as a deck gun on R-class submarines launched in 1918-1919. At the time it was an improvement on the earlier 3/23 caliber gun, after using larger guns on many other submarines, the 3/50 caliber gun Mark 21 was specified as the standard deck gun on the Porpoise- through Gato-class submarines launched in 1935-1942. The small gun was chosen to remove the temptation to engage enemy vessels on the surface. The gun was mounted aft of the conning tower to reduce submerged drag. Wartime experience showed that larger guns were needed and this need was initially met by transferring 4/50 caliber guns from S-class submarines as they were shifted from combat to training roles from late 1942. Later, the 5/25 caliber gun, initially removed from battleships sunk or damaged in the attack on Pearl Harbor and later manufactured in a submarine version, post-war experimentation with an extended range variant was abandoned as shipboard surface-to-air missiles were developed. The United States Navy considered contemporary 5/38 caliber guns and 5″/54 caliber guns more effective against surface targets, the 3″/50 caliber gun was a semiautomatic anti-aircraft weapon with a power driven automatic loader. These monobloc 3″ guns were fitted to both single and twin mountings, the single was to be exchanged for a twin 40 mm antiaircraft gun mount and the twin for a quadruple 40 mm mount
