Building Battleship USS Washington BB56

Captain H. D. Lamar, Accounting Officer, and J. F. Daniels, Principal Fiscal Accountant, go over the problems of accounting and disbursing. Salaries of some 40,000 PNY employees must be calculated and disbursed, and the public bills must be entered and paid.

The payrolls are calculated, the base pay and overtime computed, and War Savings Bonds and retirement deductions are calculated on the machines in this office in the Accounting Department. Two machines will compute the entire Yard payroll each week.

The Mold Loft gets the blueprints from the Drafting Room, and here they are laid out on the floor and actual-size templates and models are made from scale drawings. In one small section of floor in the Mold Loft, shells, frames and decks for the entire battleship are laid out to dimensions.

Two Lofts men in the Mold Loft cut templates to size, using the master plan of the battleship, which is painted on the floor where they are working. These templates are later traced on the steel.

This girl sorts and delivers mail and inter-office communications. It is her job to speed the work.

Wooden models are made of the more involved mechanisms. Here woodworkers prepare a capstan.

While here in the Mold Loft builds a model hawse pipe. Models similar to these are often used to double-check difficult clearances and tolerances below decks in the ship.

The Forge Shop treats and forges steel for tools. /this particular tool, forged at 2350 degrees Fahrenheit, will cut steel even when it itself is white hot. Many machine tools and heavy-duty parts are made in the Forge.

Steel is brought into the Yard and unloaded from flat cars. Before it can be accepted for use on the battleship.

It is immersed in an acid solution which is called "pickling" This will show any imperfections of impurities in the steel.

Templates from the Mold Loft are brought down and the steel is marked up. Machining, cuts and drilling are checked and re-checked to an unbelievable perfection against the blueprints and plans.

A cutter scallop-cuts a piece of steel plate. This conserves weight but does not decrease strength.

A riveter joins two plates together by means of the scalloped and drilled steel plate.

After months of preparation, the first step in the actual construction is reached as the keel is laid by a high Navy official (Rear Admiral Luther E. Gregory C.E.C. USN Ret.), and work upon the shipway's begins. Thousands of men will work out on the shipway's, while thousands of others in the shops and offices will helps them fulfill their tasks.

Meanwhile, work still continues in the shops where small units are assembled. Here a welder welds a bulkhead.