Fleets Unlimited
At Newport News the 27,000-ton carrier Ticonderoga was launched, towed off to the fitting-out dock, the ninth of the new Essex class to be launched since 1942. Ticonderoga was also one of the early 1944 guaranties by the world's most powerful navy that this year's building would outdo the spectacular record of 1943.
The Navy's total might is a military secret, hinted at occasionally by such statistics as the U.S. strength in the Marshall Islands attack: 2,000,000 tons (see p. 26). The U.S. public could get some further idea from a report made public by Under Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal of warships completed in 1943.
Last year the Navy took delivery on a total of 1,600,000 tons of combatant ships, which doubled the tonnage and more than doubled the number of warships the Navy had a year ago. Sixty-five aircraft carriers had been added to the fleet:
P: Six carriers of the Essex class.
P: Nine converted cruiser carriers (Independence class), which are flattops built on cruiser hulls, somewhat smaller than the Essex class but fast and formidable.
P: Fifty escort carriers, flattops built on cargo-ship hulls, designed for convoy work but usable in island attacks.
Among other new units finished in 1943:
P: Two 45,000-ton battleships, the Iowa and New Jersey. (Launched fortnight ago was their sister, the Missouri.)
P: Eleven cruisers; 128 destroyers; 306 destroyer escorts; 56 submarines.
Other vital statistics in Forrestal's report revealed that the 45,000-ton Iowas carry 148 antiaircraft barrels, ranging from 20 mm. up to five-inch dual purpose guns. The first of the 35,000-ton North Carolina class, commissioned in 1941 after a two-decade battleship-building holiday, carried 50-some.
Big as it is, the Navy intends to be still bigger. Said a report from Donald Nelson's WPB: "The present goal of the Navy Department for 1944 is . . . almost a 50% increase over the record-breaking fleet built in 1943."
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