Warship Builders: An Industrial History of U.S. Naval Shipbuilding 1922–1945 (Studies in Naval History and Sea Power)

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About Warship Builders: An Industrial History Of

Product Description Warship Builders is the first scholarly study of the U.S. naval shipbuilding industry from the early 1920s to the end of World War II, when American shipyards produced the world's largest fleet that helped defeat the Axis powers in all corners of the globe. A colossal endeavor that absorbed billions and employed virtual armies of skilled workers, naval construction mobilized the nation's leading industrial enterprises in the shipbuilding, engineering, and steel industries to deliver warships whose technical complexity dwarfed that of any other weapons platform. Based on systematic comparisons with British, Japanese, and German naval construction, Thomas Heinrich pinpoints the distinct features of American shipbuilding methods, technology development, and management practices that enabled U.S. yards to vastly outproduce their foreign counterparts. Throughout the book, comparative analyses reveal differences and similarities in American, British, Japanese, and German naval construction. Heinrich shows that U.S. and German shipyards introduced electric arc welding and prefabrication methods to a far greater extent than their British and Japanese counterparts between the wars, laying the groundwork for their impressive production records in World War II. While the American and Japanese navies relied heavily on government-owned navy yards, the British and German navies had most of their combatants built in corporately-owned yards, contradicting the widespread notion that only U.S. industrial mobilization depended on private enterprise. Lastly, the U.S. government's investments into shipbuilding facilities in both private and government-owned shipyards dwarfed the sums British, Japanese, and German counterparts expended. This enabled American builders to deliver a vast fleet that played a pivotal role in global naval combat. Review "Warship Builders is a valuable addition to the historiography of WWII and is a rare industrial history. It will be essential to anyone interested in how the USA, Britain, Japan and Germany developed the capabilities they required to fight WWII. It is recommended … as it provides a new lens through which to see the ear at sea during WWII." --Australian Naval Institute"Warship Builders will be interesting to business people, and it is invaluable to anyone connected to Navy and civilian shipyards, ship repair facilities, Navy Supply Corps, Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command -- as well as WWII history buffs." --Navy Reads"Thomas Heinrich enlightens readers unfamiliar with World War II combat boat design and construction with the amazing story of how flexibility, creativity, and initiative were essential to victor." --ARGunners"Warship Builders is a highly readable and enjoyable look into an area where few military historians have tread. With skill, specialization, and experience equal to that he argues was necessary in the shipyards, Heinrich arms the reader with the knowledge required to better comprehend and appreciate America's warship building miracle in World War II." --The Journal of Military History"A necessary starting point for a study of the US Navy's shipbuilding resources during the World War II era." --Warship International--Winner of the John Lyman Book Award in the category of "U.S. Naval History.""This book is a comprehensive look at shipyards including their management and labor, the roles of the U.S. Navy and government support programs, the impact of new technologies, and details of how certain building programs were achieved.... Warship Builders includes well-chosen photographs, excellent diagrams, and useful graphs. The text is jargon-free and covers a wide span of topics in a clear manner. This is an admirable book that describes the scale of U.S. naval shipbuilding, how it was achieved and how it compared to parallel efforts in Britain, Japan, and Germany." --The Northern Mariner / Le marin du nord"This well-researched and documented book ex