THE BOAT BUILDERS – A friend suggested last week that if we had records of 1942 that we write a column about the boats built in Ironton during WWII, which not many people knew much about at that time…Two very important announcements were made in March 1942…
The first was the location for the Buckeye Ordnance Works at South Point, now Nitrogen Division of Allied Chemical and the second was the Mt. Vernon Bridge Co. boat yard, erected on the river bank at the site of old Sarah Furnace, which was given little publicity, although in 1943 it had a weekly payroll of $35,000, employing 1200 men.
The boatyard was a war industry and newspapermen didn’t even speculate on the size of the plant, or the type of boats being built…It was a well-guarded industry, which, in three years, mushroomed into a $14 million business…
During three years, there were built, equipped, and tested on the river, 86 LCTs, 187 LCMs, 14 oil and sludge barges, and two inland waterway boats… “LCT” meant Landing Craft Tanks…They were big boats used by the Navy to land men and tanks on enemy shores…
They were fully equipped with engines, guns, radio, and radar before leaving Ironton…They traveled the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to the ocean in charge of the Coast Guard, which kept an endless chain of uniformed men coming to Ironton to take the boats away as soon as they were tested.
The “LCT” was 105 feet long, an all-steel, 90-ton boat, powered by a 225 hp Diesel engine, and used to run men, tanks, and supplies ashore from the fleet, perhaps 3 miles from shore…The boat yard turned out a complete LCT every six days when it was running full steam ahead…They were built in 3 floating sections – then bolted together…If one section was hit or damaged by a mine, the other sections could be salvaged…The LCM was only 50 feet long and took but one tank and a few men ashore…The smaller boats cost $28,000 while the larger boats were $85,000 each.
The two big boats, built in Ironton, named “Midway Islands” and “Lunga Point,” cost a million dollars each…In all, $14 million worth of boats were completed at the Ironton Boat Works and many took part in invasions in the Pacific…Because of the urgency and secrecy of the work, the yard was on 24-hour shifts and all were heavily guarded…Irontonians did not realize what was under construction in the city until after the Jap surrender, and the story was told…T.P. Lewis was the general manager of the yard.
The story of the yard is very timely…The Jaycees, now planning to restore Riverview Park, will never know how close that boat yard came to taking over the land from the bridge at Vernon Street, extending to Etna Street back in 1942, and that’s the story of Ironton-made boats during World War Two.
Written by Charles Collettt
Huntington Newspaper – March 11, 1966
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