This 1943 U.S. Navy training film shows all the steps involved in the stern launching of a completed ship at a shipyard. In this case the ship being shown is a U.S. Navy Fletcher class or DD445 class destroyer. Several ships of this class are shown including USS Paul Hamilton DD-590. Also shown is sister ship USS Twiggs DD-591, DD-665 USS Bryant and DD-649 USS Albert W. Grant. All of the film seems to take place at the Charleston Navy Yard.
Tragically, USS Twiggs shown in the film was sunk on 16 June 1945 by a kamikaze aircraft near Okinawa. 188 crew were rescued out of 329 officers and men.
The film shows how riggers remove keel blocks and cover blocks, and make other preparations prior to stern launching of the ship. Once the launching and christening are complete, the ship will be moved to drydock for installation of weapons / guns and propellers as well as other fittings. The Carleston Naval Shipyard (formerly known as the Charleston Navy Yard) shown was a U.S. Navy ship building and repair facility located along the west bank of the Cooper River, in North Charleston, South Carolina and part of Naval Base Charleston. The yard first produced the destroyer USS Tillman (DD-135), then began to increase production in the 1930s. A total of 21 destroyers were assembled at the naval facility.
The Fletcher class was a class of destroyers built by the United States during World War II. The class was designed in 1939, as a result of dissatisfaction with the earlier destroyer leader types of the Porter and Somers classes. Some went on to serve during the Korean War and into the Vietnam War.
The United States Navy commissioned 175 Fletcher-class destroyers between 1942 and 1944, more than any other destroyer class, and the design was generally regarded as highly successful. Fletchers had a design speed of 38 knots and an armament of five 5″ guns in single mounts with 10 21″ torpedoes in two quintuple centerline mounts. The Allen M. Sumner and Gearing classes were Fletcher derivatives.
The long-range Fletcher-class ships performed every task asked of a destroyer, from anti-submarine warfare and anti-aircraft warfare to surface action. They could cover the vast distances required by fleet actions in the Pacific. In fact, they served almost exclusively in the Pacific Theater of Operations during World War II, during which they accounted for 29 Imperial Japanese Navy submarines sunk. In a massive effort, the Fletchers were built by shipyards across the United States and, after World War II ended, 11 were sold to countries that they had been built to fight against: Italy, Germany, and Japan, as well as other countries, where they had even longer, distinguished careers. Three have been preserved as museum ships in the U.S. and one in Greece.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
