Newport News Shipbuilding

Aerial view of the Newport News shipyard in 1994. Visible in the drydocks are USS Long Beach and USNS Gilliland

Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS), a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries, is the sole designer, builder, and refueler of aircraft carriers and one of two providers of submarines for the United States Navy. Founded as the Chesapeake Dry Dock and Construction Co. in 1886, Newport News Shipbuilding has built more than 800 ships, including both naval and commercial ships. Located in the city of Newport News, its facilities span more than 550 acres (2.2 km2).

The shipyard is a major employer, not only for the lower Virginia Peninsula, but also portions of Hampton Roads south of the James River and the harbor, portions of the Middle Peninsula region, and even some northeastern counties of North Carolina.

The shipyard is building two Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers: USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79), and USS Enterprise (CVN-80).

In 2013, Newport News Shipbuilding began the deactivation of the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, USS Enterprise (CVN-65), which it also built.

Newport News Shipbuilding also performs refueling and complex overhaul (RCOH) work on Nimitz-class aircraft carriers. This is a four-year vessel renewal program that not only involves refueling of the vessel's nuclear reactors but also includes modernization work. The yard has completed RCOH for five Nimitz-class carriers (USS Nimitz, USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, USS Carl Vinson, USS Theodore Roosevelt and USS Abraham Lincoln). As of November 2017 this work was underway for the sixth Nimitz-class vessel, USS George Washington.

History

An 1899 advertisement for the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company

Industrialist Collis P. Huntington (1821–1900) provided crucial funding to complete the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad (C&O) from Richmond, Virginia, to the Ohio River in the early 1870s. Although originally built for general commerce, this C&O rail link to the midwest was soon also being used to transport bituminous coal from the previously isolated coalfields, adjacent to the New River and the Kanawha River in West Virginia. In 1881, the Peninsula Extension of the C&O was built from Richmond down the Virginia Peninsula to reach a new coal pier on Hampton Roads in Warwick County near the small unincorporated community of Newport News Point. However, building the railroad and coal pier was only the first part of Huntington's dreams for Newport News.[citation needed]

The shipyard's early years

Old Dominion Line steamship Monroe launch 1902
Main Gate, 37th St. and Washington Ave.

In 1886, Huntington built a shipyard to repair ships servicing this transportation hub. In 1891 Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company delivered its first ship, the tugboat Dorothy. By 1897 NNS had built three warships for the US Navy: USS Nashville, Wilmington and Helena.[citation needed]

When Collis died in 1900, his nephew Henry E. Huntington inherited much of his uncle's fortune. He also married Collis' widow Arabella Huntington, and assumed Collis' leadership role with Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company. Under Henry Huntington's leadership, growth continued.[citation needed]

In 1906 the revolutionary HMS Dreadnought launched a great naval race worldwide. Between 1907 and 1923, Newport News built six of the US Navy's total of 22 dreadnoughtsUSS Delaware, Texas, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Maryland and West Virginia. All but the first were in active service in World War II. In 1907 President Theodore Roosevelt sent the Great White Fleet on its round-the-world voyage. NNS had built seven of its 16 battleships.[citation needed]

In 1914 NNS built SS Medina for the Mallory Steamship Company; as MV Doulos she was until 2009 the world's oldest active ocean-faring passenger ship.[citation needed]

Newport News and the shipyard

The shipyard's railroad system

In the early years, leaders of the Newport News community and those of the shipyard were virtually interchangeable. Shipyard president Walter A. Post served from March 9, 1911, to February 12, 1912, when he died. Earlier, he had come to the area as one of the builders of the C&O Railway's terminals, and had served as the first mayor of Newport News after it became an independent city in 1896. It was on March 14, 1914, that Albert Lloyd Hopkins, a young New Yorker trained in engineering, succeeded Post as president of the company. In May 1915 while traveling to England on shipyard business aboard RMS Lusitania, Hopkins died when that ship was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat off Queenstown on the Irish coast. His assistant, Frederic Gauntlett, was also on board, but was able to swim to safety. Homer Lenoir Ferguson was company vice president when Hopkins died, and assumed the presidency the following August. He saw the company through both world wars, became a noted community leader, and was a co-founder of the Mariners' Museum with Archer Huntington. He served until July 31, 1946, after World War II had ended on both the European and Pacific fronts.[citation needed]

Hilton Village

Just northwest of the shipyard, Hilton Village, one of the first planned communities in the country, was built by the federal government to house shipyard workers in 1918. The planners met with the wives of shipyard workers. Based on their input 14 house plans were designed for the projected 500 English-village-style homes. After the war, in 1922, Henry Huntington acquired it from the government, and helped facilitate the sale of the homes to shipyard employees and other local residents. Three streets there were named after Post, Hopkins, and Ferguson.

Navy orders during and after World War I

The Lusitania incident was among the events that brought the United States into World War I. Between 1918 and 1920 NNS delivered 25 destroyers, and after the war it began building aircraft carriers. USS Ranger was delivered in 1934, and NNS went on to build Yorktown and Enterprise.[citation needed]

Ocean liners

After World War I NNS completed a major reconditioning and refurbishment of the ocean liner SS Leviathan. Before the war she had been the German liner Vaterland, but the start of hostilities found her laid up in New York Harbor and she had been seized by the US Government in 1917 and converted into a troopship. War duty and age meant that all wiring, plumbing, and interior layouts were stripped and redesigned while her hull was strengthened and her boilers converted from coal to oil while being refurbished. Virtually a new ship emerged from NNS in 1923, and SS Leviathan became the flagship of United States Lines.[citation needed]

In 1927 NNS launched the world's first significant turbo-electric ocean liner: Panama Pacific Line's 17,833 GRT SS California. At the time she was also the largest merchant ship yet built in the United States, although she was a modest size compared with the biggest European liners of her era. NNS launched California's sister ships Virginia in 1928 and Pennsylvania in 1929. NNS followed them by launching two even larger turbo-electric liners for Dollar Steamship Company: the 21,936 GRT SS President Hoover in 1930, followed by her sister President Coolidge in 1931. SS America was launched in 1939 and entered service with United States lines shortly before World War II but soon returned to the shipyard for conversion to a troopship, USS West Point.[citation needed]

Navy orders before and during World War II

The newly built USS Birmingham is launched from the Newport News yards in 1942

By 1940 the Navy had ordered a battleship, seven more aircraft carriers and four cruisers. During World War II, NNS built ships as part of the U.S. government's Emergency Shipbuilding Program, and swiftly filled requests for "Liberty ships" that were needed during the war. It founded the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company, an emergency yard on the banks of the Cape Fear River and launched its first Liberty ship before the end of 1941, building 243 ships in all, including 186 Libertys. For its contributions during the war, the Navy awarded the company its "E" pennant for excellence in shipbuilding. NNS ranked 23rd among United States corporations in the value of wartime production contracts.

Post-war ships

In the post-war years NNS built the passenger liner SS United States, which set a transatlantic speed record that still stands today. In 1954 NNS, Westinghouse and the US Navy developed and built a prototype nuclear reactor for a carrier propulsion system. NNS designed USS Enterprise in 1960. In 1959 NNS launched its first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Robert E. Lee.[citation needed]

In the 1970s, NNS launched two of the largest tankers ever built in the western hemisphere and also constructed three liquefied natural gas carriers – at over 390,000 deadweight tons, the largest ever built in the United States. NNS and Westinghouse Electric Company jointly formed Offshore Power Systems to build floating nuclear power plants for Public Service Electric and Gas Company.

In the 1980s, NNS produced a variety of Navy products, including Nimitz-class nuclear aircraft carriers and Los Angeles-class nuclear attack submarines. Since 1999 the shipyard has only produced warships for the Navy.

Submarine building problems

In 2007, the US Navy found that workers had used the incorrect metal to fuse together pipes and joints on submarines under construction and this could have eventually led to cracking and leaks. In 2009 it was found that bolts and fasteners in weapons-handling systems on four Navy submarines, New Mexico, North Carolina, Missouri, and California, were installed incorrectly, delaying the launching of the boats while the problems were corrected.

Mergers, realignment, and spin-off

In 1968, Newport News merged with Tenneco Corporation. In 1996, Tenneco initiated a spinoff of Newport News into an independent company (Newport News Shipbuilding). In 2001, General Dynamics made a second bid to purchase the company after a failed bid in 1999. Such a merger would have eliminated competition for the production of Virginia-class submarines, which have only been made by Newport News and GD subsidiary Electric Boat. Northrop Grumman matched GD with a similar bid, and following a Department of Justice anti-trust lawsuit to block GD's bid, GD called off their bid. Now as the sole bidder, Northrop Grumman purchased the company for $2.6 billion and renamed it "Northrop Grumman Newport News". This division was merged with Northrop Grumman Ship Systems in 2008 and given the name "Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding". Three years later, the company was spun off as Huntington Ingalls Industries, Inc., which trades under the symbol HII on the New York Stock Exchange.[citation needed]

Presidents

Ships built

Launch Date Yard No. Ship Class and type Operator Notes Ref
1891 Dorothy Shipyard's first vessel, delivered in 1891, on display in yard.
March 24, 1898 Kearsarge Kearsarge-class battleship United States Navy
March 24, 1898 Kentucky Kearsarge-class battleship United States Navy
October 4, 1898 Illinois Illinois-class battleship United States Navy
November 10, 1900 Arkansas Arkansas-class monitor United States Navy One of the last monitors built for the United States Navy
April 18, 1903 West Virginia Pennsylvania-class cruiser United States Navy
September 12, 1903 Maryland Pennsylvania-class cruiser United States Navy
April 6, 1904 Virginia Virginia-class battleship United States Navy
April 3, 1905 Binghampton ferryboat New York Harbor Last surviving steam ferry built to serve New York Harbor when dismantled in 2017.
October 6, 1906 North Carolina Tennessee-class cruiser United States Navy
December 15, 1906 Montana Tennessee-class cruiser United States Navy
March 9, 1907 Minnesota Connecticut-class battleship United States Navy
1908 Georgia Oil tanker M.V. Dutch Tanker & Oil Company
February 6, 1909 Delaware Delaware-class battleship United States Navy
1910 J. A. Chanslor Oil tanker Associated Oil Company
May 18, 1912 Texas New York-class battleship United States Navy Only surviving dreadnought battleship
September 14, 1912 Proteus Proteus-class collier United States Navy
April 26, 1913 Nereus Proteus-class collier United States Navy
August 22, 1914 176 Medina Cargo ship Mallory Steamship Company Oldest passenger vessel at time of retirement in 2009.
March 16, 1915 Pennsylvania Pennsylvania-class battleship United States Navy
January 25, 1917 Mississippi New Mexico-class battleship United States Navy
March 30, 1918 Lamberton Wickes-class destroyer United States Navy
April 5, 1918 Montgomery Wickes-class destroyer United States Navy
April 5, 1918 Radford Wickes-class destroyer United States Navy
May 11, 1918 Breese Wickes-class destroyer United States Navy
November 29, 1918 Gamble Wickes-class destroyer United States Navy
February 15, 1919 Ramsay Wickes-class destroyer United States Navy
February 14, 1920 Abel P. Upshur Clemson-class destroyer United States Navy
March 20, 1920 Maryland Colorado-class battleship United States Navy
November 19, 1920 West Virginia Colorado-class battleship United States Navy
October 1, 1927 315 California Ocean liner Panama Pacific Line Turbo-electric
1928 Virginia Ocean liner Panama Pacific Line
October 10, 1928 328 Pennsylvania Ocean liner Panama Pacific Line
September 7, 1929 Houston Northampton-class cruiser United States Navy
February 1, 1930 Augusta Northampton-class cruiser United States Navy
December 9, 1930 339 President Hoover Ocean liner Dollar Steamship Lines
February 21, 1931 340 President Coolidge Ocean liner Dollar Steamship Lines
August 15, 1931 Peten Cargo liner United Fruit Company
1931 Talamanca Cargo liner United Fruit Company
1932 Chiriqui Cargo liner United Fruit Company
February 25, 1933 Ranger Ranger-class aircraft carrier United States Navy First purpose-built aircraft carrier of the United States Navy
April 4, 1936 Yorktown Yorktown-class aircraft carrier United States Navy
October 3, 1936 Enterprise Yorktown-class aircraft carrier United States Navy
December 3, 1936 Boise Brooklyn-class cruiser United States Navy
December 8, 1938 Mustin Sims-class destroyer United States Navy
December 8, 1938 Russell Sims-class destroyer United States Navy
August 31, 1939 America Ocean liner United States Lines
December 14, 1940 Hornet Yorktown-class aircraft carrier United States Navy
November 21, 1941 Indiana South Dakota-class battleship United States Navy
July 31, 1942 Essex Essex-class aircraft carrier United States Navy
April 15, 1943 Yorktown Essex-class aircraft carrier United States Navy
April 26, 1943 Intrepid Essex-class aircraft carrier United States Navy
August 30, 1943 Hornet Essex-class aircraft carrier United States Navy Preserved as the USS Hornet Museum in Alameda, California.
October 14, 1943 Franklin Essex-class aircraft carrier United States Navy
February 7, 1944 Ticonderoga Essex-class aircraft carrier United States Navy
June 28, 1944 Randolph Essex-class aircraft carrier United States Navy
December 14, 1944 Boxer Essex-class aircraft carrier United States Navy
March 20, 1945 Midway Midway-class aircraft carrier United States Navy
August 23, 1945 Leyte Essex-class aircraft carrier United States Navy
April 2, 1946 Coral Sea Midway-class aircraft carrier United States Navy
March 6, 1948 Newport News Des Moines-class heavy cruiser United States Navy
June 23, 1951 United States Ocean liner United States Lines Holder of the Blue Riband.
December 11, 1954 Forrestal Forrestal-class aircraft carrier United States Navy
September 29, 1956 Ranger Forrestal-class aircraft carrier United States Navy
December 18, 1959 Robert E. Lee George Washington-class submarine United States Navy
March 16, 1960 Shark Skipjack-class submarine United States Navy Yard's first nuclear-powered submarine.
September 24, 1960 Enterprise Enterprise-class aircraft carrier United States Navy World's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
September 16, 1961 Empire State VI Troopship United States Maritime Administration
February 1, 1964 America Kitty Hawk-class aircraft carrier United States Navy
May 27, 1967 John F. Kennedy John F. Kennedy-class aircraft carrier United States Navy
May 13, 1972 Nimitz Nimitz-class aircraft carrier United States Navy Nuclear-powered.
December 14, 1974 Virginia Virginia-class cruiser United States Navy Nuclear-powered.
August 9, 1975 Texas Virginia-class cruiser United States Navy Nuclear-powered.
October 11, 1975 Dwight D. Eisenhower Nimitz-class aircraft carrier United States Navy Nuclear-powered.
July 31, 1976 Mississippi Virginia-class cruiser United States Navy Nuclear-powered
October 21, 1978 Arkansas Virginia-class cruiser United States Navy Nuclear-powered
March 15, 1980 Carl Vinson Nimitz-class aircraft carrier United States Navy Nuclear-powered
October 27, 1984 Theodore Roosevelt Nimitz-class aircraft carrier United States Navy Nuclear-powered
February 13, 1988 Abraham Lincoln Nimitz-class aircraft carrier United States Navy Nuclear-powered
July 21, 1990 George Washington Nimitz-class aircraft carrier United States Navy Nuclear-powered
November 13, 1993 John C. Stennis Nimitz-class aircraft carrier United States Navy Nuclear-powered
September 7, 1996 Harry S. Truman Nimitz-class aircraft carrier United States Navy Nuclear-powered
March 4, 2001 Ronald Reagan Nimitz-class aircraft carrier United States Navy Nuclear-powered
October 9, 2006 George H.W. Bush Nimitz-class aircraft carrier United States Navy Nuclear-powered
October 11, 2013 Gerald R. Ford Ford-class aircraft carrier United States Navy Nuclear-powered
October 29, 2019 John F. Kennedy Ford-class aircraft carrier United States Navy Nuclear-powered

Other ships built at the Newport News yard include:[citation needed]

Gallery

Ships rebuilt

  • SS Jacona, the first sea-going electric power plant for emergencies[citation needed]
  • Sea Witch, wrecked ship that was salvaged and her still-operational stern and machinery spaces rebuilt and used in the construction of a new chemical tanker, the Chemical Discoverer, later renamed Chemical Pioneer[citation needed]

World War II Shipbuilding Facilities

Shipway Width Length Type Date
2 76 feet (23 m) 628 feet (191 m) Inclined Slipway
3 76 feet (23 m) 628 feet (191 m) Inclined Slipway
4 76 feet (23 m) 628 feet (191 m) Inclined Slipway
5 76 feet (23 m) 628 feet (191 m) Inclined Slipway
6 96 feet (29 m) 628 feet (191 m) Inclined Slipway
7 76 feet (23 m) 628 feet (191 m) Inclined Slipway
8 111 feet (34 m) 1,000 feet (300 m) Semi-submerged Inclined Slipway 1919
9 111 feet (34 m) 1,000 feet (300 m) Semi-submerged Inclined Slipway 1919
10 128 feet (39 m) 960 feet (290 m) Graving Dock 1941
11 140 feet (43 m) 1,100 feet (340 m) Graving Dock 1941

36°59′31″N 76°26′42″W / 36.99208°N 76.44507°W / 36.99208; -76.44507


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