Electric boat between the wars

Sea Power, Aug 1997 by Caldwell, Nathaniel French Jr

The post-Cold War challenges to the U.S. shipbuilding industry-although daunting-have been relatively manageable when compared to the situation facing the industry in earlier postwar periods. In World War II, concerned about the postwar maritime industrial base, the Navy Department and the U.S. Maritime Commission authorized Harvard University's Graduate School of Business Administration "to undertake a comprehensive review of the shipbuilding and shipping industries of the United States and to develop therefrom recommendations on the use and disposition of ships and shipyards at the end of World War II"

Published by the Government Printing Office in 1945, the Harvard report, The Use and Disposition of Ships and Shipyards at the End of World War II, described the maritime industry's struggles in the years from just after World War I into the mid1930s. The excerpt below describes how Electric Boat maintained its organization through the inter-war period. Electric Boat Co., Groton, Conn.-During the period from 1920 to 1925 this company's Groton plant was used for pioneering work in the building of diesel engines. No submarine construction was carried on there until 1925, when Brazil ordered a few submarines. Submarines built under this company's patents during the First World War, and prior to 1925, were produced at other yards, chiefly the Quincy yard of Bethlehem Steel Co. No new contracts were received from the United States Navy [during] the years 1919 to 1931. From 1925 to 1935, the company survived mostly on royalties received from foreign licenses for the basic patents on the Holland-style submarine.

For a few years after the First World War a subsidiary company in Bayonne, N.J., contributed earnings from the production of cabin cruisers and yachts.

In order to maintain an organization the company engaged in the production of many unrelated articles, such as textile machinery, special metalworking machines, metal novelties, and the repair of locomotives and railroad cars. In spite of the income from licenses and boatbuilding, the company actually operated at a loss for the 11-year period from 1925 through 1935. It took three years to develop and build the first submarine, which was ordered in 1931, and the production of this ship resulted in a loss. Conditions at Electric Boat in the inter-war years mirrored those at the other major U.S. private-sector yards until the early 1930s, whenwith naval building rates disastrously low-not only were the U.S. maritime and shipbuilding industries in serious trouble, so was the Navy. By 1934, U.S. Navy fleet tonnage was almost 500,000 tons below the 1,262,000 tons allowed under the Washington and London naval treaties of 1922 and 1930.

Calling attention to the deteriorating strength of the U.S. Navy, Secretary of the Navy Claude A. Swanson stated: "We can no longer afford to lead in disarmament by example. Other powers have not followed our example, with the result that the United States now finds its relative naval strength seriously impaired."

In 1934, reversing an isolationist policy of naval disarmament, President Franklin D. Roosevelt urged Congress to restore the U.S. Navy to full "treaty" strength. Congress responded by passing the VinsonTrammell Act, which increased the congressionally authorized strength of the U.S. Navy to the Washington and London treaty totals. In 1936, Japan withdrew from the naval treaty regime, and later naval expansion acts passed by Congress in 1938 and 1940 increased the U.S. Navy's authorized strength to 3,049,480 tons. By 1940, the order books of the major private-sector shipyards were full once again.