The Brooklyn Daily Eagle from Brooklyn, New York • Page 52

BROOKLYN NAVY YARD renewal of the award, symbol of continued excellence. A sure indication of the speed and efficiency with which the Navy Yard was to work throughout the war came with the launching of the U. S. S. Iowa on Aug.

27, 1942. The largest and most powerful battleship ever built up to that time, weighing 45,000 tons and capable of firing farther and faster than any other ship afloat, the Iowa went down the ways seven whole months ahead of schedule. She represented two years of unceasing labor and maximum co-opeiation among personnel. In May, 1945, two major aircraft carriers were launched within a week. The U.

S. S. Kearsarge went down the ways six days after the dry-dock launching of the U. S. S.

Franklin D. Roosevelt. During World War II the Brooklyn Navy Yard grew to be the largest and greatest navy yard in the world. Here were built aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers and other war vessels that conquered the navies and air forces of our enemies and made America the new mistress of the seas. Mistress, too, of the skies above.

Here were repaired, refitted and sent back into action countless ships of our own and of our Allied navies that had been bombed and torpedoed while taking part in the invasion of Normandy and the Pacific islands. Since Pearl Harbor the Brooklyn Navy Yard has built 17 ships, including two huge battleships, five aircraft carriers, eight LSTs and two floating workshops. When submarine warfare was at its height the yard had as many as 67 ships under repair at one time. During 1944 alone the yard made repairs and alterations on 1,539 ships, as compared with 869 in the previous year and 345 in 1942. Besides this there was a staggering amount of work supervised outside by the yard's Field Production Division.

This huge task, during a three-year period, involved the conversion and alteration of 11,138 transport and patrol vessels and the assembling of 3,581 landing craft. In addition, the division made tens of thousands of service calls. Seven Months Ahead of Time At the peak of its activity nearly 75,000 men and women were employed by the Yard and the monthly payroll ran between $15,000,000 and $16,000,000. The manpower requirements for the Navy Yard's wartime production schedule rose from 2,479,830 man-days in 1942 to 6,591,203 man-days in 1944. Demands in the early part of 1945 were even greater.

Brooklyn Navy Yard was the first navy yard in the country to win the navy emblematic of excellence in wartime production. Not long thereafter it became the first naval establishment to win a Staging Area BROOKLYN.