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Maine Man: 1940

December 1940. "War boom in a New England industrial town. Portrait of a shipyard worker. Bath, Maine." Photo by Jack Delano for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.

December 1940. "War boom in a New England industrial town. Portrait of a shipyard worker. Bath, Maine." Photo by Jack Delano for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.

 

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Current Bath Shipyard Build

The USS Carl M. Levin (DDG 120) is an Arleigh Burke-class Flight IIA guided missile destroyer, the 70th overall for the class.

No mo' Battleships

The last USN battleships were constructed during WWII. Several have served active duty since the mid-40's but no new BB's have been built, nor are they likely to. They simply cost too much in dollars and sailors and the need for very large ships of that size are not needed for anything other than shore bombardment (which worked nicely during the conflict in the Mideast) but are a very small part of our defense needs now. Even during WWII the aircraft carrier replaced the battleship as an offensive weapon.

Not Battleships

The USS Carl M. Levin (DDG 120) is a United States Navy Arleigh Burke-class Flight IIA guided missile destroyer, the 70th overall for the class. Haven't built and battleships since WWII.

Down a Peg or Two

Not to sink GlenJay's battleship, but the USS Carl Levin is a destroyer, not battleship.

According to world authority on naval warships Milton Bradley:

Battleships [BB] are 4-peggers
Destroyers [DDG] are 2-peggers (were 3-peggers in the original version).

GlenJay, Thanks for the info. Here's a link:
https://news.usni.org/2023/01/30/bath-irons-works-delivers-destroyer-car...

Not a Battleship

But an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. Arleigh Burke was Chief of Naval operations in the 1950's. As a "Tin Can Sailor" at that time, I was privileged to salute him when he inspected our ship the USS Power DD839.

Potatoes Again??

That look on his face is priceless --

[He seems to be in a bar. - Dave]

I hope he had a decent place to live

As we already seen with Mr. and Mrs. Leslie Bryant and by whoever lived in these trailers, and are about to see by whoever lived in this shack, housing in Bath, Maine in 1940 was hard to come by.

Head start (and still going)

U.S. entry into World War II was a year away, but Bath Iron Works had been building destroyers and destroyer-minelayers since 1934. It completed 83 of them by the end of the war with, at peak, a launch every 17 days. It tells us something about the magnitude of America’s industrial accomplishment that the Bath Works ranked 50th in wartime production contracts.

Bath Iron Works has been in business since 1884, and is now owned by General Dynamics. It is still building battleships: the USS Carl M. Levin was delivered to the Navy on 26 January 2023 and will be commissioned in June.

Response to responses: make that "battle ships"? "ships for battles"? "destroyers of other ships in battles"?

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