Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS), a division ofHuntington Ingalls Industries, is the sole designer, builder, and refueler ofaircraft carriers and one of two providers ofsubmarines for theUnited States Navy, founded as the Chesapeake Dry Dock and Construction Co. in 1886 and located in the city ofNewport News,Virginia. Newport News Shipbuilding has built more than 800 ships, including both naval and commercial ships. Its facilities span more than 550 acres (2.2 km2).
The shipyard is a major employer for the lowerVirginia Peninsula,portions of Hampton Roads south of theJames River and the harbor, portions of theMiddle Peninsula region, and even some northeastern counties ofNorth Carolina.
The shipyard is building twoGerald R. Ford-classaircraft carriers:USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79), andUSS Enterprise (CVN-80).[1][2]
In 2013, Newport News Shipbuilding began the deactivation of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrierUSS Enterprise (CVN-65),[3] which it also built.
Newport News Shipbuilding also performs refueling and complex overhaul (RCOH) work onNimitz-class aircraft carriers. This is a four-year vessel renewal program that involves refueling the vessel's nuclear reactors and performing modernization work. The yard has completed RCOH for fiveNimitz-class carriers (USS Nimitz,USS Dwight D. Eisenhower,USS Carl Vinson,USS Theodore Roosevelt andUSS Abraham Lincoln).[4] As of November 2017, this work was underway for theNimitz-class vesselUSS George Washington.[5]
IndustrialistCollis P. Huntington (1821–1900) provided crucial funding to complete theChesapeake and Ohio Railroad (C&O) fromRichmond, Virginia, to theOhio River in the early 1870s. Although originally built for general commerce, this C&O rail link to the midwest was soon also being used to transportbituminous coal from the previously isolated coalfields, adjacent to theNew River and theKanawha River inWest Virginia. In 1881, thePeninsula Extension of the C&O was built from Richmond down theVirginia Peninsula to reach a newcoal pier onHampton Roads inWarwick County near the smallunincorporated community ofNewport News Point. However, building the railroad and coal pier was only the first part of Huntington's dreams for Newport News.[citation needed]
In 1886, Huntington built ashipyard to repair ships servicing this transportation hub. In 1891 Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company delivered its first ship, thetugboatDorothy. By 1897 NNS had built three warships for theUS Navy:USS Nashville,Wilmington andHelena.[citation needed]
When Collis died in 1900, his nephewHenry E. Huntington inherited much of his uncle's fortune. He also married Collis' widowArabella Huntington, and assumed Collis' leadership role with Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company. Under Henry Huntington's leadership, growth continued.[citation needed]
In 1906 the revolutionaryHMS Dreadnought launched a great naval race worldwide. Between 1907 and 1923, Newport News built six of theUS Navy's total of 22dreadnoughts –USS Delaware,Texas,Pennsylvania,Mississippi,Maryland andWest Virginia. All but the first were in active service inWorld War II. In 1907 PresidentTheodore Roosevelt sent theGreat White Fleet on its round-the-world voyage. NNS had built seven of its 16battleships.[citation needed]
In 1914 NNS built SSMedina for theMallory Steamship Company; asMV Doulos she was until 2009 the world's oldest active ocean-faringpassenger ship.[citation needed]
In the early years, leaders of the Newport News community and those of the shipyard were virtually interchangeable. Shipyard presidentWalter A. Post served from March 9, 1911, to February 12, 1912, when he died. Earlier, he had come to the area as one of the builders of the C&O Railway's terminals, and had served as the first mayor of Newport News after it became anindependent city in 1896. It was on March 14, 1914, that Albert Lloyd Hopkins, a young New Yorker trained in engineering, succeeded Post as president of the company. In May 1915 while traveling to England on shipyard business aboardRMS Lusitania, Hopkins died when that ship wastorpedoed and sunk by a GermanU-boat[6] offQueenstown on the Irish coast. His assistant, Frederic Gauntlett, was also on board, but was able to swim to safety.[7]Homer Lenoir Ferguson was company vice president when Hopkins died, and assumed the presidency the following August.[8] He saw the company through both world wars, became a noted community leader, and was a co-founder of theMariners' Museum with Archer Huntington. He served until July 31, 1946, afterWorld War II had ended on both the European and Pacific fronts.[citation needed]
Just northwest of the shipyard,Hilton Village, one of the first planned communities in the country, was built by the federal government to house shipyard workers in 1918. The planners met with the wives of shipyard workers. Based on their input 14 house plans were designed for the projected 500 English-village-style homes. After the war, in 1922, Henry Huntington acquired it from the government, and helped facilitate the sale of the homes to shipyard employees and other local residents. Three streets there were named after Post, Hopkins, and Ferguson.[9]
TheLusitania incident was among the events that brought the United States into World War I. Between 1918 and 1920 NNS delivered 25destroyers, and after the war it began buildingaircraft carriers.USS Ranger was delivered in 1934, and NNS went on to buildYorktown andEnterprise.[citation needed]
In 1917, the year the U.S entered World War I, the Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Company was contracted to build several ships for the U.S military. In order to fulfill this contract, the company had to hire thousands of employees from across the country. However, a large problem arose: the city of Newport News did not have the housing to support this large influx of its population. This led to the creation of Hilton Village, a neighborhood still found in Newport News, Virginia, today, that was created to house these workers.[10]
After World War I NNS completed a major reconditioning and refurbishment of theocean linerSS Leviathan. Before the war she had been the German linerVaterland, but the start of hostilities found her laid up inNew York Harbor and she had been seized by the US Government in 1917 and converted into atroopship. War duty and age meant that all wiring, plumbing, and interior layouts were stripped and redesigned while her hull was strengthened and her boilers converted from coal to oil while being refurbished. Virtually a new ship emerged from NNS in 1923, and SSLeviathan became theflagship ofUnited States Lines.[citation needed]
In 1927 NNS launched the world's first significantturbo-electric ocean liner:Panama Pacific Line's 17,833 GRTSS California.[11] At the time she was also the largest merchant ship yet built in the United States,[11] although she was a modest size compared with the biggest European liners of her era. NNS launchedCalifornia'ssister shipsVirginia in 1928 andPennsylvania in 1929. NNS followed them by launching two even larger turbo-electric liners forDollar Steamship Company: the 21,936 GRTSS President Hoover in 1930, followed by her sisterPresident Coolidge in 1931.SS America was launched in 1939 and entered service with United States lines shortly before World War II but soon returned to the shipyard for conversion to a troopship, USSWest Point.[citation needed]
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By 1940 the Navy had ordered a battleship, seven more aircraft carriers and fourcruisers. DuringWorld War II, NNS built ships as part of the U.S. government'sEmergency Shipbuilding Program, and swiftly filled requests for "Liberty ships" that were needed during the war. It founded theNorth Carolina Shipbuilding Company, an emergency yard on the banks of theCape Fear River and launched its first Liberty ship before the end of 1941, building 243 ships in all, including 186 Libertys. For its contributions during the war, the Navy awarded the company its "E" pennant for excellence in shipbuilding. NNS ranked 23rd among United States corporations in the value of wartime production contracts.[12]
In the post-war years NNS built the passenger linerSS United States, which set atransatlantic speed record that still stands today. In 1954 NNS,Westinghouse and the US Navy developed and built a prototypenuclear reactor for a carrier propulsion system. NNS designedUSS Enterprise in 1960. In 1959 NNS launched its first nuclear-poweredsubmarine,USS Robert E. Lee.[citation needed]
In the 1970s, NNS launched two of the largesttankers ever built in the western hemisphere and also constructed threeliquefied natural gas carriers – at over 390,000 deadweight tons, the largest ever built in the United States. NNS andWestinghouse Electric Company jointly formedOffshore Power Systems to build floating nuclear power plants forPublic Service Electric and Gas Company.
In the 1980s, NNS produced a variety of Navy products, includingNimitz-class nuclear aircraft carriers andLos Angeles-class nuclear attack submarines. Since 1999 the shipyard has only produced warships for the Navy.[13]
In 2007, the US Navy found that workers had used the incorrect metal to fuse together pipes and joints on submarines under construction and this could have eventually led to cracking and leaks. In 2009 it was found that bolts and fasteners in weapons-handling systems on four Navy submarines,New Mexico,North Carolina,Missouri, andCalifornia, were installed incorrectly, delaying the launching of the boats while the problems were corrected.[14]
In 1968, Newport News merged withTenneco Corporation. In 1996, Tenneco initiated a spinoff of Newport News into an independent company (Newport News Shipbuilding).[15] In 2001,General Dynamics made a second bid to purchase the company after a failed bid in 1999.[16] Such a merger would have eliminated competition for the production ofVirginia-class submarines, which have only been made by Newport News and GD subsidiaryElectric Boat. Northrop Grumman matched GD with a similar bid, and following a Department of Justice anti-trust lawsuit to block GD's bid, GD called off their bid.[17] Now as the sole bidder, Northrop Grumman purchased the company for $2.6 billion and renamed it "Northrop Grumman Newport News".[18] This division was merged withNorthrop Grumman Ship Systems in 2008 and given the name "Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding".[19] Three years later, the company wasspun off asHuntington Ingalls Industries, Inc.,[20] which trades under the symbol HII on theNew York Stock Exchange.[citation needed]
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Other ships built at the Newport News yard include:[citation needed]
| Shipway | Width | Length | Type | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 76 feet (23 m)[25] | 628 feet (191 m)[25] | Inclined Slipway | |
| 3 | 76 feet (23 m)[25] | 628 feet (191 m)[25] | Inclined Slipway | |
| 4 | 76 feet (23 m)[25] | 628 feet (191 m)[25] | Inclined Slipway | |
| 5 | 76 feet (23 m)[25] | 628 feet (191 m)[25] | Inclined Slipway | |
| 6 | 96 feet (29 m)[25] | 628 feet (191 m)[25] | Inclined Slipway | |
| 7 | 76 feet (23 m)[25] | 628 feet (191 m)[25] | Inclined Slipway | |
| 8 | 111 feet (34 m)[26] | 1,000 feet (300 m)[26] | Semi-submerged Inclined Slipway | 1919 |
| 9 | 111 feet (34 m)[26] | 1,000 feet (300 m)[26] | Semi-submerged Inclined Slipway | 1919 |
| 10 | 128 feet (39 m)[27] | 960 feet (290 m)[27] | Graving Dock | 1941 |
| 11 | 140 feet (43 m)[27] | 1,100 feet (340 m)[27] | Graving Dock | 1941 |
Abel P. Upshur (Destroyer No. 193) was laid down on 20 August 1918 at Newport News, Va., by the Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Co.; launched on 14 February 1920; sponsored by Mrs. George J. Benson, great-great niece of Secretary Upshur
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36°59′31″N76°26′42″W / 36.99208°N 76.44507°W /36.99208; -76.44507
