General Dynamics Electric Boat
General Dynamics/Electric Boat (usually abbreviated as Electric Boat, and referred to as "EB" or "The Boat Company" by its employees), a division of General Dynamics Corporation, has been the primary builder of submarines for the United States Navy for well over 100 years.
The company's main facilities are a shipyard in Groton, Connecticut and a hull-fabrication and outfitting facility in Quonset Point, Rhode Island.
The company was founded in 1899 by Isaac Rice as the Electric Boat Company in order to build to completion John Philip Holland's submersible designs which were developed at Lewis Nixon's Crescent Shipyard, located in Elizabeth, New Jersey, USA. During World War I, the company and its subsidiaries built 85 submarines and 722 submarine chasers for the U.S. Navy. After the war the Navy did not order another submarine until 1934. In World War II, 74 submarines were launched.
The firm renamed itself to General Dynamics Corporation in 1952, and when Convair was acquired the next year, the holding company assumed the "General Dynamics" name, with the submarine building operation retaining the "Electric Boat" name. These changes in names can be confusing to some - while ambiguous to others... but make no mistake about this, as Electric Boat is the founding unit and parent company to General Dynamics - not the other way around. Electric Boat is now a subsidiary of General Dynamics. [1] Eventually, the submarine division relabeled itself as "General Dynamics Electric Boat."
Electric Boat built the first nuclear submarine, USS Nautilus, which was launched in 1954, and the first ballistic-missile submarine, George Washington, in 1959, amongst others. Submarines of the Ohio-, Los Angeles-, Seawolf- and Virginia-class submarines were also constructed by Electric Boat.
In 2002, Electric Boat conducted preservation work on Nautilus, preparing her for her berth at the U.S. Navy Submarine Force Museum and Library in Groton, Connecticut, where she now resides as a museum. Electric Boat's first submarine, The USS Holland (SS-1) was unfortunately scrapped for one hundred dollars during the great depression of the early thirties.
Electric Boat was at a time in the business of performing overhaul and repair work on fast attack class boats. Ships that were already built would return to Electric Boats Graving Docks for needed repairs. Now most of the work done in the ship yard is focused on the new construction of Virginia Class submarines.
References
- ^ "General Dynamics Corporation". U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission. Retrieved 2006-03-31.
- The Defender: The Story of General Dynamics, by Roger Franklin. Published by Harper and Row 1986. More accurate version of "just who" actually founded this company.
- International Directory of Company Histories Volume 86 under General Dynamics/Electric Boat Corporation, July 2007; pp. 136-139. Published by St James Press/Thomson Gale Group.
- Who Built Those Subs? Naval History Magazine, Oct. 1998 125th Anniversary issue, pp. 31-34. Written by Richard Knowles Morris PhD. Published by The United States Naval Institute, Annapolis, Md. Copyrighted 1998.
* The Klaxon, The U.S. Navy's official submarine force newsletter, April 1992. Published by the Nautilus Memorial Force Library and Museum in Groton/New London, CT.
- "The Ups and Downs of Electric Boat" John D. Alden, United States Naval Institute, Proceedings Magazine, July 1, 1999, p.64.