Shipyards of the Major Powers

[phylo_roadking]

AFIAK the Audacious was the only "major" ship built on Harland and Wolf's in Belfast; this was a matter of some considerable dissatisfaction here in Northern Ireland during the war, that more haevy industrial prodution didn't come in this direction - or rather that the Northern Ireland government couldn't attract it. H&W's however also produced a large number of Flower class corvettes.

[Andreas]

There were a few more aircraft carriers according to Wikipedia:

HMS Eagle
HMS Warrior
HMCS Magnificent
HMCS Bonaventure
HMS Centaur
HMS Bulwark

Also HMS Black Prince and HMS Minotaur light cruisers.

All the best

Andreas

[JohnWinston]

Does Anyone have any information on the dimensions of the major shipyards of Germany during WWII, i.e., Bremen, Kiel, Hamburg and Wilhelmshaven? Slips, dry docks and floating dry docks would be great.

Thanks alot,

Al

[phylo_roadking]

No, the Eagle was an Audacious class carrier all right - but built at Swan Hunter on Tyneside. Warrior wasn't commissioned until 1946. Same with HMCS Magnificent...and the Bonaventure was launched in 1945...but work was cancelled and not re-started until the Canadians bought her. The Centaur was laid down in late 1944 and wasn't even launched until 1947, as work was stopped on her at the end of the war...and the Bulwark was even later, not launching until 1948.

The Minotaur was laid down in 1941, launched in 1943...but not finished until sold to the Canadians in 1944, and not commissioned until 25th May 1945. She sailed for the Pacific, but arrived too late to see any combat. The Black Prince was laid down and launched and served with the RN in the last two years of the war.

So I should have been more specific. Northern Ireland received very little of the British government's pre-war built-up and finance when English private and naval yards were minting money, except for the Audacious and the Black Prince, and no more until Criagavon went cap in hand to London for work for H&W, warning that the province's trained workforce was suffering. So of what was built here (minus the Eagle of course), NONE of those listed above are regarded as part of Nothern Ireland's contribution to WWII except the Black Prince and the carrier, as none of the rest of them saw active service, the nearest to joining the Audacious and the Black Prince being the Minotaur, commissioned as HMCS Ontario...which was at least commissioned during the war

The shipbuilders of Northern Ireland were loyal enough citizens to reckon accounts by the service the ships THEY built saw, rather than counting their loyalty by the money they made from building ships that weren't commissioned and fought during the war. A very narrowminded view of patriotism, perhaps...? Actually fighting the war?

[LWD]

Does Anyone have any information on the dimensions of the major shipyards of Germany during WWII, i.e., Bremen, Kiel, Hamburg and Wilhelmshaven? Slips, dry docks and floating dry docks would be great.
...

I think there's a post on the KM forum here on that.

[nedz]

Haze and Grey has a pretty comprehensive account of the US shipyards, and what they built
http://www.hazegray.org/shipbuilding/
This has an "international" section too, though that is less comprehensive.

[Kelvin]

US shipyard : William Cramp & Sons, Philadelphia which build battleship Retizian and protected cruiser Variag for Russia and protected cruiser Kasagi for Japan prior to Russo-Japanese war.
US shipyard : Union Ironwork, San Francisco : build protected cruiser Chitose for Japan

[Kelvin]

Regarding British shipbuilder, don't forget Thornycraft and Yarrow whose build a lot of destroyers since 1893.

[mescal]

Hello,

A little bit of "thread necromancy", but I came across this while I was digging for info on the shipyards & dockyards of the 30's.
And I found extremely useful info here !


Actually, I'm currently in the process of redesigning the fleets of the major powers of the 30's, under some Alternate History assumptions.
And I'm looking for 'slots' in the yards to have my hypothetical ships built.

So I learnt a lot here ... and since I also learnt in other places/boards/books some info not mentioned here, I will share


Note that I'm far from over, and I just focused on the BB/CV sized slips and dry docks (my criteria were more beam*lenght than tonnage or displacement).
And I also focused on those that actually built such vessels.
So it's just a first approximation ...


United States

Here is a chart of the main US east coast builders and the ships they build (listed by hull number) :

Yards_US_1.jpg

I have not gathered systematic data on the west coast shipbuilding yet, but there are at least
one BB-sized dry dock at Mare Island,
at least one at Puget Sound and
one or two at Pearl.


United Kingdom

I do not have a lot to add on the Royal Navy, except that I found that the 14 slips mentioned by Bronsky are more plausible than the 9 found in the post he quoted :

Yards_UK_1.jpg

You can add to this list two BB-sized dockyards at Portsmouth (Renown & Queen Elisabeth under reconstruction at the same time).
And 4 major dockyards, at least one of BB-size (Valiant rebuilt here) as well as a big building slip in Devonport.

However, I'm not aware whether the bases at Malta, Gibraltar and Singapore (and simonstown ?) had a true shipbuilding capacity or if they were just for repair.



France

There was one Richelieu-sized building slip in Brest, as well as one in St Nazaire.
Toulon harbor had two drydocks, which were at least Dunkerque-size and most probably could afford a Richelieu.

[Bronsky]

Wow, nice work!

However, I'm not aware whether the bases at Malta, Gibraltar and Singapore (and simonstown ?) had a true shipbuilding capacity or if they were just for repair.

Gibraltar definitely couldn't build ships, even the repair capability was a mid-war addition.

The main dockyard - still with no actual shipbuilding capability - was supposed to have been Malta. One floating drydock (the most modern of the two owned by the RN at the time) was sailed there, just in time to be sunk by a Regia Aeronautica attack on July 1940.
It was big enough to accomodate old battleships i.e. R-class and maybe Queen Elizabeths but the battlecruisers wouldn't have fit there, not to mention a KGV.

Eventually, the British built Alexandria up as their main base, but that hadn't been the prewar plan.

[Jon G.]

I concur, very nice work Mescal

Regarding the floating dock at Malta, it was sunk soon after Italy entered the war.Originally the idea had been to transfer this dock to Alexandria.

Instead, the Royal Navy's (only?) other floating dock was sent from Southampton via Gibraltar to Alexandria. This dock, known as the A.F D.5, had a maximum capacity of 31,500 tons (thus precluding eg. the inclusion of KGV-class battleships with the Mediterranean Fleet); earlier the repair ship HMS Resource had been sent to Alexandria, which also had a dry dock capable of taking Arethusa-class cruisers. Earlier - that is, before the outbreak of war - an agreement had been made with the Egyptian government regarding the construction of a larger dry dock at Alexandria, but that didn't materialize, at least not before war broke out.

Regarding your list, there were definitely more Scottish yards than John Brown's, some of them quite large too, but they were in decline already prior to the outbreak of war. Here's a potentially very useful database of Clyde-built ships of all kinds.

[mescal]

Thank you for those information.

And I have to point that I forgot the 3 Alaska-class large cruisers : CB-1 (Alaska) , CB-2 (Guam) and CB-3 (Hawai) were all built at New York Shipbuilding Corp. at Camden, NJ.
This requires 3 slips, one of which may be the one previously used for BB-57 (South Dakota).

Anyway I hope I will be able to post a corrected chart which also includes the CA, CVL and CL, at least for the USA and hopefully for the UK.

[mescal]

Hello,

The work on the Allied shipyards got sidetracked, but OTOH it enabled me to find time to work on the Axis shipyards.

You will find below similar charts for the Japan and Germany, showing where the major ships (carriers, battleships/battlecruisers and cruisers) were built or reconstructed.
This is still a work in progress and should not be considered as "definitive truth". Actually I post it here to have feeback, additions and corrections.

A few more details :
The preiods shown for the ships are between this ship is laid down and its launch, and not its commissioning, since I was here mainly interested in the number of slips and their availability.
The sequence by slip is not necessarily true, but I tried to have the organization which minimize the number of slips required (e.g. in the Japanese chart, you may swap Soryu and Nagato - I had no info. I organized it like this because I found it more consistent to have a two BBs in the same slip and Soryu in a cruiser's slip than the contrary.).
So there may well have been more shipbuilding possibilities (that is for big units, since DD-sized are anyway out of the picture) than shown here.

The light purple denotes reconstructions, and in this case I often lacked the date the ships went out of their slips.
Another problem I had was the conversions to carriers, generally lacking data on the beginning of the work.

In the "Japanese" chart, "1" stands for Zuiho and "2" for Shoho.

Yards_GER.jpg

Yards_JAP.jpg

[Mostlyharmless]

In the Japanese chart, you might wish to add some liners, especially those completed as aircraft carriers. For example, Junyo at Mitsubishi, Nagasaki, laid down 3rd March 1939 as SS Kashiwara Maru and launched on 26th June 1941 and Hiyo at Kawasaki, Kobe, laid down 30th November 1939 as SS Izumo Maru and launched on 24th June 1941. Hiyo is important because Taiho could not be laided down until the slip was clear. Similarly Taiyo, Unyo and Chuyo fill gaps at Mitsubishi Nagasaki.

[Dili]

Regarding the floating dock at Malta, it was sunk soon after Italy entered the war.Originally the idea had been to transfer this dock to Alexandria.

Any reference to its name and capacity?

Btw i can dd my contribution with Italian shipyards (construction capacity only, i don't have information about dock sizes for repair):

Trieste and Genova the biggest ones. They build also Rex and Conte di Savoia big liners.

Then minor ones: La Spezia: made Zara in 30's but then only submarines and started one of 40kt cruisers.
Livorno appear bigger than La Spezia with many cruisers made there.
Ancona with DD's and 40kt cruisers
Palermo one of 40kt cruisers not finished and some small number DD
Fiume: torpedo boats
Napoli: torpedo boats
Venezia: MAS and subchasers
Savona: MAS & VAS
Roma: i have one MAS made in Roma dunno where it was made.
Salerno: small VAS quantity
Taranto: only submarines