Shipyard’s history a diverse one
By Karen Kaplan
Day Staff Writer
Electric Boat officials today may regard their post-World War II era, when the submarine manufacturer was building bowling equipment, aircraft and printing presses, as appropriate measures for that time.
But branching into those other markets seemed like the right thing to do during the peacetime era of the mid- to late ’40s. The Second World War was over, the economy was booming, and under the respective reigns of EB presidents Lawrence Y. Spear, O. Pomeroy Robinson Jr. and John J. Hopkins, the company was poised to take advantage of the nation’s increasing demands for goods and products of all kinds.
It didn’t take long for EB to extend its sights beyond submarines and wartime craft. Within a couple months after World War II ended in August 1945, the company was developing and making other products, a process for which it had begun planning when dozens of submarine contracts were canceled the previous year.
Commercial planes
In early 1946, the company still had six submarines under construction. But by this time, it was also designing and producing commercial and military airplanes; cabin cruisers and motor yachts; wood products; electric motors; offset printing presses; truck bodies; steel trawlers; die-stamping machines and castings. The company also had a commercial ship repair shop.
In perhaps the most far-flung of all its endeavors from defense manufacturing, EB was producing the Electric Pin Boy, which picked up felled bowling pins from the end of a bowling alley and reset them - all in 12 seconds.
With the war over and the nation’s optimism at an all-time high, the perceived need for submarines and other defense products was subsiding, says Neil Ruenzel, the shipyard’s spokesman. People wanted to spend money, and EB was prepared to make things that people wanted to buy.
“There had been a long, pent-up demand for automobiles, home appliances, clothes, housing, from the pre-war Depression era to (World War II) victory,” Ruenzel says.
“The great surges in technology that enabled us to defeat global enemies was converted into making goods and services and products to make our lives better. During World War II, you couldn’t buy a car. People wanted cars afterwards. Bomber plants turned into commercial aircraft manufacturers. The market flourished.”
Canadair Limited
In the months following the end of the war, EB acquired Canadair Limited of Montreal in early 1947, thus becoming one of the nation’s first providers of non-stop, transcontinental flights from Montreal to London.
EB’s ELCO division in Bayonne, N.J., stopped making defense patrol boats and turned to a more commercial application: pleasure boats. “At the Bayonne plant, production lines, streamlined to make the most of advanced boat-building techniques developed for the famous ELCO PTs, are now turning out ELCO pleasure craft in four models,” reads Electric Boat’s 1946 annual report, sounding almost like a boater’s magazine. “(They) range from compact sport cruisers to luxurious motor yachts… The new ELCO boats feature several notable and exclusive advancements which have evoked widespread interest in yachting circles.”
And EB’s Elcowood, also in New Jersey, made wooden automobile bodies, especially for station wagons.
“The extensive experience and marked success of the ELCO Naval Division in processing and shaping laminated woods of extraordinary strength have led to the postwar development and production of Elcowood,” trumpets the 1946 report. “Extensive research work is being carried on in the development of Elcowood station wagon bodies.”
The Bayonne, N.J., plant was also home to EB’s Electro Dynamic division, which produced electric motors. Post-war, the motors were in great demand for use in air conditioners and refrigerators, the report says.
In Groton, EB had a half-dozen commercial operations, among them the offset press, fishing boats, ship repair, molded castings and sheet metal parts manufacturing.
The offset press was a major accomplishment at the time, according to the company’s ’46 report to shareholders.
“The E.B.Co. Willard Offset Press is the culmination of 12 years of research and mechanical development by its inventors,” the report says. “… The scores of inquiries received to date prove the keen interest which this phase of the company’s postwar production program has aroused among potential users of the press.”
Another Groton operation was the making of commercial truck bodies. EB established the division in 1945, shortly after the war ended. In that year alone, the operation produced almost 1,000 Armorlite van panel truck bodies.
EB’s machine shops produced scores of different automatic machines, among them precision-built die-stamping machines, plastic molding presses, sheet metal shears, bottle filling machines, washing and rinsing machines, package filling machines and labeling machines. The commercial possibilities were nearly endless. Similarly, the company had two foundries in Groton, which were hard at work during wartime but during this peacetime honeymoon era could produce practically any kind of casting, both ferrous and non-ferrous.
Still another new operation at EB’s Groton shipyard was its ship repair division, which also converted one-time military vessels for commercial and leisure use.
This honeymoon era of postwar diversification lasted well under a half-decade, however. By 1948, EB was firmly refocusing on its core defense business, and by 1949, had secured a submarine order backlog of nearly $30 million. By 1950, the offset press was the only commercial product mentioned in EB’s annual report. By 1951, a single paragraph was devoted to discussing commercial work in the company’s annual report.
In the early 1990s, after a considerable bit of outside prodding, EB decided once again to consider non-defense work, and won a bid to develop processing tanks for the Massachusetts Water Resource Authority.
The company lost big money on the project, says Ruenzel, and the next time the bid came around, it lost that, too. EB’s work force was, perhaps, too skilled - and too perfectionist.
“There was a tendency to overbuild,” Ruenzel explains. “There was no such thing as ‘good enough.’ … The (submarine) work (here) has to sustain the life of a U.S. sailor for 30 years, and we overengineered.”
But it’s in EB’s best interest to remain exactly what it is: a leading national submarine manufacturer, says Ruenzel.
“Our structure is here to do one thing
- build submarines, and that’s why the U.S. government wants us,” Ruenzel
says. “Because we design and build the best submarines in the world.”