page_title: Todd Pacific Shipyards, Los Angeles Division
section_title: Operating as Todd Shipyards, Los Angeles Division (1946–1977)
hierarchical_section_title: Todd Pacific Shipyards, Los Angeles Division / Operating as Todd Shipyards, Los Angeles Division (1946–1977)
caption_attribution_description: English: The U.S. Navy guided missile cruiser USS Fox (DLG-33) ready for launching at the Todd Shipyards Corporation Los Angeles Division shipyard, San Pedro, California (USA), on 21 November 1964.
context_page_description: Todd Pacific Shipyards, Los Angeles Division was a shipyard in San Pedro, Los Angeles, California. Before applying its last corporate name, the shipyard had been called Los Angeles Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company and Todd Shipyards, Los Angeles Division. Under those three names, the San Pedro yard built at least 130 ships from 1917 to 1989.
  The yard opened during the World War I shipping boom, survived bankruptcy in the Great Depression and built Auxiliary ships during World War II. The yard was seized by the Navy in late 1943 and given to Todd Shipyards to manage for the remainder of the war. The yard struggled through the post war period and surged again with commercial work in the 1960s to mid-1970s. The yard peaked again in 1983 during a Navy frigate contract, but was closed in 1989 after failing to secure a DDG-51 contract. The former site was a container terminal in 2015.
context_section_description: Todd Shipyards purchased the Los Angeles SB&DDC after World War II and began to operate this shipyard as the Todd Shipyards, Los Angeles Division beginning in November 1946. Wartime labor at the LA division peaked at around 20,000 workers.
  After the war ended the LA division turned to ship repair and conversions, and to machine work and fabrication for other industries. Business volume declined until the Korean War, but then dropped even lower after it ended in 1953. The LA division had projects in the early 1950s for Disneyland as well. They built the replica of the sternwheel riverboat Mark Twain. Todd's Hoboken, New Jersey, operation built two sternwheel riverboats for Freedomland U.S.A., a theme park in New York City that existed from 1960 to 1964. Todd's contributions to the park and the sternwheelers are documented in Freedomland U.S.A.: The Definitive History published by Theme Park Press (2019). One boat was destroyed during 2005 and the other during 2018. The LA division also constructed eight 52-foot tourist submarines and the masts, rigging, spars and sails of Sailing Ship Columbia after the Korean War. According to their long range facilities plan, Todd reported that no major ships were built in California following World War II until the state property tax structure was changed in 1958.
  Todd invested heavily into the LA division in the years following the 1958 tax changes and built a number of cargo ships for various companies. The LA division built two cruisers, England and Fox in the 1960s and seven Knox-class frigates in the late 1960s. It also converted USS Paul Revere (APA-248) and USS Ashtabula (AO-51).
  The LA division manufactured "thousands of feet of special piping for the Atomic Energy Commission." They also did work fabricating test missiles for the Polaris missile program and a base for a tracking antenna used by NASA.
  In the early 1970s, the LA division built four handysize 25,000 DWT tankers for Marine Transport Lines and four 35,000 DWT tankers for Zapata Marine, but contracts for eight 90,000 DWT tankers were cancelled in 1975 during the 1970s energy crisis and in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis.
caption: USS Fox (DLG-33) ready for launching in San Pedro, 21 November 1964.
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