Consolidated Steel Shipyards
Formed when Union Iron Works merged with two smaller companies in 1928, The Consolidated Steel Corporation had long been struggling to make it as a modest steel fabricator, until young executive vice president Alden Roach took a chance and was rewarded when the company was given a very lucrative Maritime Commission contract.
The Consolidated Steel Corporation was a major builder of U.S. Navy ships during World War II. The company had two ship building facilities located in Orange, Texas and Wilmington, California. These two plants were a direct result of a Maritime Commission contract awarded to Consolidated Steel Corporation in 1940.
The Consolidated Steel Corp. built a brand-new shipyard in Wilmington, California located on the Port of Los Angeles, in 1941, thanks in part to the thirteen million dollar contract awarded to them by the United States Maritime Commission. Wilmington is located equal distance between two other steel producing and ship building towns of San Pedro and Long Beach. Consolidated Steel Corp. built a brand-new shipyard in Wilmington, California located on the Port of Los Angeles, in 1941, thanks in part to the thirteen million dollar contract awarded to them by the United States Maritime Commission. The original plant was equipped with four ship ways but was later increased to eight due to the increasing war time demands. The company's plant worked as an emergency facility with its 95 acres of Wilmington mud flats. At its peak, some 12.000 welders, pipe fitters, and steel tradesmen were employed at Consolidated Steel's Wilmington shipyard.
Consolidated's Wilmington plant reached its peak in production in May of 1944 when in one two and a half hour period it launched three large ships and later launched the 500th ship in the wartime construction program. This temporary but very productive shipyard, more than 160 ships delivered in a 3-year span from 1941-1944, closed down shortly after the war due to lack of Defense Department contracts.
Consolidated Steel's larger plant located on the Sabine River and the Gulf Intra coastal Waterway in Orange, Texas was expanded in 1941 with the funding of the United States Maritime Commission. The plant had one of the most impressive ship building records during the war. During its peak construction period, the Orange, Texas shipyard employed more than 20,000 people, quite amazing considering the prewar population of the small Texas town was less than 25,000. Between May of 1941 and December of 1945, Consolidated built thirty-nine destroyers (DD), 102 Destroyer escorts (DE), 105 landing craft (LCI(L)) and 24 deck barges (DPC). A destroyer on average took forty weeks to construct but the final one, the USS Carpenter took only twenty weeks and was delivered December 28, 1945.
With these two major wartime ship building facilities, Consolidate Steel became one of the top producers of warships. Many experts feel production would have been even great had there been a larger supply of tradesmen. With a large percentage of the trained craftsmen heading to war, the company had a hard time finding enough men to fill their needs. More than 32,000 welders, riggers, joiners, boiler makers, and pipe fitters were in demand at the two facilities. In Orange, Texas, Consolidated headed to nearby Beaumont to find laborers. With gas rationing making it hard for anyone to drive the 60 miles to Orange, Consolidated decided to procure a train to carry the several thousand workers to the plant. The company also faced a critical emergency when it came to housing the 20,000 employees in a small Texas town not well suited for the sudden increase in population.
For the duration of the war most of Consolidated's 20,000 employees at the Orange, Texas shipyard stayed in tents or shacks thrown together in small huddles around town. The company also found cheaper ways of building the structures in the yard including using the cheaply acquired asbestos the later would be linked to several cases of mesothelioma in the area. It is reported that nearly half of Consolidated's workforce never stepped foot on either plant. Consolidated Steel used many individual contractors to deliver preassemble parts to their facilities. Train tracks were a convenient way to have large pre-made parts delivered straight to the hulls. Since both plants were located on both major railways and waterways, logistics of delivery of both pre-construction and completed vessels was never really an issue for Consolidated.
Consolidated closed both of its ship building plants shortly after the war, and the land they both rested on has been turned over to the United States Navy. For decades after WWII both the Orange, Texas and Wilmington, California shipyards were used by the Navy as a place to store out of commission vessels. Additional piers were built for this purpose and little remains today of two very important ship building yards. A few piers and ramps can still be seen and a few out dated war machines are berthed in the waters, but Consolidated Steel has long since stopped building ships at either location. Consolidated Steel's shipyards remain in the news today pending the outcome of several lawsuits over the company's use of asbestos and its correlation to the outbreak of mesothelioma cases.
- Early Detection of Mesothelioma Crucial
2008-04-28 13:30:11
When Brandon Benoit suffered a football injury last year, he never dreamed that getting treated for that injury could change his life—and perhaps save it. When Benoit was treated for his injuries ... [read more] - Could Caffeine Help Treat Mesothelioma?
2008-04-24 16:46:33
A mesothelioma research group has discovered that treatment with anti-cancer drug Pemetrexed may be more effective if patients are treated with caffeine before r ... [read more] - Mesothelioma Researchers to Receive Innovator Award
2008-04-24 16:44:14
The Kirk A. and Dorothy P. Landon Foundation, in conjunction with the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), has created two new funding opportunities for scientists working on cancer resear ... [read more]
