Word: escorted
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...industry last week was face to face with its greatest single challenge since Pearl Harbor-an immediate and terrific expansion in escort vessel construction. To do the job requires not only a mighty effort by giant shipbuilders and steelmakers but also an almost fantastic production boost by thousands of small partsmakers of whom most U.S. citizens have never heard...
Only answer to the problem is escort ships-small subchasers (PC boats) in coastal work; fast-stepping, death-dealing destroyers and newly designed, highly efficient destroyer escorts (DEs), U.S. counterpart for Britain's corvettes, in transatlantic convoy. But the program as a whole is late. The destroyer-escort situation is worst, since only a handful have been delivered. As a result a single destroyer often convoys 15 hapless merchantmen across the Atlantic v. the ideal setup, which would be closer to one escort for every three freighters...
...Maine's crackerjack Bath Iron Works. Most PC subchaser contracts are held by inland builders like Dravo Corp. in Pittsburgh (where fighting ships are being built for the first time since the War of 1812), and Michigan's DeFoe Shipbuilding. To swing the new & vital destroyer-escort program the Navy picked Bethlehem Steel's reliable yard at Hingham, Mass., and Brown Shipbuilding, a new yard at Houston...
Besides this big engine problem the whole escort program depends on other hard-pressed suppliers. Probably the worst bottleneck is valves made by Crane, Lunkenheimer and Worthington Pump. Shafting comes from such companies as Erie Forge, Camden Forge and American Locomotive. From Cleveland's Bailey Meter Co. and Connecticut's Bristol Co. come meters and regulating devices...
...great embarrassment is shortage of escort ships-due, according to Columnist Walter Lippmann, to "lack of foresight in the Navy Department." Other causes have contributed to the shortage, notably the urgent construction of other types for military purposes. The great dispute in Washington last week was whether to cut the synthetic rubber program in order to step up production of escort vessels and other material needed in the anti-submarine campaign...