| Back | arranged for a specially fitted flat car, having passenger wheels, to be spotted at the forge plant at Birdsboro, Pennsylvania. The shafting was loaded on this car. Arrangements were made to hook the car onto a passenger train and route it as a passenger express shipment via St. Louis to Orange where it arrived four days prior to launching. But the AULICK was launched on time. | Next | ||||||
The story of this performance would cover many details, particularly when it is taken into consideration that there were no skilled mechanics in this area at the time the contract was awarded, and all of the workmen had to be trained in ship construction. It might be well to mention that those vessels were completed through the perseverance of all hands, both contractor and Navy. |
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While those ships were under construction there was much shifting in the length of the work week. First, the contractor was working five 8-hour days; then six 8-hour days and finally three 8-hour shifts six days a week. After a brief period of three-shift operation, the lack of supervisory personnel forced the contractor to change his work week to two 10-hour shifts, Monday through Friday, and two 8-hour shifts on Saturday. This last work week continued through the entire war, since it was found that in this area the personnel was used to long work days. |
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The destroyers were built during the period in which many basic changes were being made. These changes added materially to the difficulties of the contractor and the Supervisor in their training of personnel. It was rather difficult, after teaching men first to do a job to throw them into utter confusion by telling them that the job they had been trained to do was either changed or no longer required. This was particularly true regarding the armament and electronic installations of the vessels. However, the willingness on the part of the contractor to make each vessel as effective a fighting unit as possible and still deliver on schedule, except for items of military necessity, made the job of coordination much easier. In this connection, it is felt that a great deal of the high, cooperative spirit on the part of the contractor was due to the efforts of the Vice-President in charge of the Orange operations, Captain H. B. Hird, USN (Ret.). Captain Hird had only one desire and that was to get the ships into the fighting zones as fast as possible with the maximum equipment to do their job. The earnestness of the contractor was not only borne out by the launching of the USS AULICK (DD569) on time, but was also shown by the fact that the first six destroyers, DD569-574, were constructed with solid shafting instead of hollow shafting. It would have been impossible to have delivered these ships with the specified shafting unless at least seventy-five days' time had been sacrificed to bore the shafting. It is well to remember that while these ships were being built, the destroyer escort program was started and, actually, the last six destroyers of this contract were being delivered concurrently with the destroyer escorts. |
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The destroyer contract, NOd-1512, provided for completion of the first vessel on 9 July 1943 and the completion of the last vessel on 24 November 1944. It is interesting to note here that the first vessel was delivered on 27 October 1942, approximately eight and one-half months in advance of her contract date, and the last vessel of the contract was delivered on 31 July 1943, approximately sixteen months ahead of schedule. |
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