Progress Report

A lot of critics of the U.S. Navy do not know what they are talking about. Wrote one of them (Pundit Walter Lippmann) last week: "Pressure will, I believe, have to be brought. . . ." Said he: "If the inquiry were pressed, it would be found that naval construction is in the hands of men who know a great deal about the ancient art of shipbuilding, but not much, if anything, about the new art of mass production." There had been inevitable mistakes, delays, confusion in the Navy's fleet-building program. But if Mr. Lippmann had pressed his inquiry he would have discovered that Navy production transcends anything dreamed of a year ago; that production records are being shattered as battleships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and the sorely needed escort ships and sub-chasers slide down the ways; that U.S. naval ' builders know a great deal about mass production; that ships are being mass-produced; that, in short, naval construction in the last five months has been phenomenal.

New Tricks. In 1938 the Navy hammered at Congress to authorize an expanded fleet, so that private yards could expand.

Congress trimmed the Navy's sails. Not until September 1940 did the Navy get the signal.

Designs were substantially frozen. Old-line yards learned new tricks--how to fabricate sections upside down in order to eliminate overhead welding. Bows and sterns of destroyers, weighing 30-40 tons apiece, were assembled in mammoth shops ashore, rolled out, lifted by giant cranes on to the ways. Chief limiting factor long since has been the ability of the rest of U.S. industry to produce raw materials and equipment fast enough to keep up with the shipyards.

Since Pearl Harbor the Navy has hidden its statistics behind censorship. But naval builders have revealed some facts:

> Little more than a year ago, only half a dozen private shipyards were busy supplementing production of the Navy's own six yards. Last week 225 private yards were at work.

> In the first five months of 1942, shipyards delivered ten times as many PC boats (deadliest enemies of the sub) as they had delivered in all 1941.

> In the first five months of 1942, more combat ships were added to the U.S. Fleet than in any twelve-month period since the President, with no encouragement from Congress and some protest, used NRA funds to launch his naval-production program in 1933.

Crates & DDs. Constructing cargo vessels (like the Liberty ship) is not comparable with naval shipbuilding. The Liberty is by comparison little more than a long steel crate pinched together at the ends.

On the other hand, the slick, sleek, swallow-swift destroyers (DDs) are necessarily shaped and molded, crammed like a clock with delicate precision parts. Cost of a modern destroyer: $7,500,000, five times the cost of a Liberty ship.

Yet naval builders could report that it was taking them only about three times as long to construct destroyers as it took Henry Kaiser's West Coast yards to slap together Liberty ships. One yard will build 21 destroyers this year--equivalent, says the Navy, to 105 Liberty ships. Prior to 1940, building time for a DD was 27-28 months. In 1942: eight months. Other samples of the speedup:

> Time required to build aircraft carriers of the Hornet and Wasp classes used to be some 45 months. Newer, bigger, better types now under construction will take less than half that time.

> Despite more complicated equipment which now must be installed to fight a modern sea and air war. heavy cruisers (CAs), which formerly required three years to build, will be turned out in about half that time.

> Not only were deadly PCs being hatched, but thousands of men to man them were being turned out. Some observers predicted that U-boats did not have much longer to hunt along the Atlantic Coast. And this week the House got a bill for a vast new $1,500,000,000 shipbuilding program--to be followed soon by an expanded aircraft-carrier program.

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