The Wilmington morning star., 1945-01-11

Among the items eliminated were
the installation of equipment for
radio, radar, armament and boats
The reduction in work for t h e
Quitting trades had now become
SO substantial that, in an effort to
avoid further slump in the work
OF the Quitting trades, We en-
deavored to arrange for two more
vessels, or total of fourteen YES
sells, to be completed here, but ar
engagements by the Navy Depart
ment had gone SO far that thew
could not agree to the change. This
is covered in a memorandum dated
April 6, 1914 from Mr.. w. c. Park
to the Maritime Commissin in
which it was explained that with
out the two additional vessels,
there would be decided gaps in our
labor load during the conversion
period and that such gaps would
retard progress during the periods
following. The Plumbers, Electri-
clans and Steam Engineering de-
tpartments would be the most af-
sected. n
= S. At the time Of delivery of the
first finished ship, the point was
reached when actual labor require
ments could be, checked against
the estimated, but it again began
to look as if the estimate was too
high since the work appeared to
be going all right and the chances
appeared good, for meeting the
schedule with the number of EN-
ployees on roll at that time, but it
was not yet felt safe to change the
estimates on the ES-27os until the
picture became clearer. After COM
pIeting four of these vessels on
schedule it was fairly certain that
we could safely cut our estimates.
substantially, but about this time
the Navy Department started talk
ing about making S o m e major
changes which would involve con-
siderable extra work, so out esti-
mate was revised to 1850 (see
ES-270 of October 2, 1944 at the
end. Of the next six months, or
about 1900 over our enrolment, SO
that we would be covered if the
changes took place. " ss
6. The way the change over
actually affected the Yard was as
follows:
The change over period was
April, May and June of 1914. The
keel of the last c. was laid on
March Is, 1914 and it was launch
ed May rs, 1914, with delivery on
July 3, 1914. The keel for the first
AKA was laid April l, 1914.
Previous to starting the AKA pro-
gram, employment in the steel
trades w s fairly well stabilized,
but it started dropping about May
l, 1914, because there was not quite
as much volume of steel work on
the AKA program as on the pre-
vious c. program. Employment in
the Quitting departments started
dropping about the same time, due
to two reasons. The first reason
was that the last few CTS were
not entierly completed here b u t
were turned over, with the work
done up to certain point, to other
agencies for conversion to oth,r
purposes. This hurried the reduc-
ton in force which otherwise would
not have taken place quite so soon.
The second reason for the slack
spell in the Quitting trades was
that it was necessary to schedule
three unfinished AKA vessels be-
fore the first vessel to be complet-
ed here and then two more unfin-
ished vessels before the second fin
isned one; the Quitting trades had
very little work on the unfinished
vessels. The reason for the sche-
dule being that way was on ac-
count of inability to get Quitting
materials for the finished vessels
any earlier. This caused a sharp
reduction sin the Quitting force,
starting about May l and extend
ing through June. The number ter
minated for lack of work during
this period amounted to 1872.