amUSIngArtifacts

*Post written by Mona Meyer, Archives and Special Collections Metadata Librarian

In the first half of the 20^th century, Evansville was a bit of a sleepy southern town, suffering, as did the rest of the country, from the lingering Depression.  December 7, 1941 changed that dynamic completely as Evansvillians geared up for war.  “Vanderburgh County firms would, by March 1944, receive more than $600 million in defense contracts, more than any southern Indiana county.  One study in 1981 indicated that forty-eight Evansville businesses did some sort of war work.”[i]  Perhaps the most visible and best known of these was the building of LSTs at the Evansville Shipyard.

Before we talk about the shipyard, what is an LST? The Landing Ship, Tank, or LST, was designed to land up to twenty tanks on a beach.  It did so by dropping a ramp onto the beach through a set of bow doors after the ship was deliberately grounded. The design dated to November 1941, when a British delegation to the United States asked for 200 ships and 400 craft capable of bringing tanks ashore. … An important design requirement for the LST was that it be an ocean-going vessel, capable of crossing the Atlantic. This could not be achieved with the shallow draft required for landing operations, but the problem was solved by adding two submarine-style ballast tanks. When these were filled, the LST had sufficient draft for ocean passage. The tanks could be quickly pumped out when the ship approached the landing beach, reducing the draft for the grounding operation. However, even when ballasted down, the LST had poor seakeeping. The flat-bottomed hull required for landing operations limited the ship’s speed and handling, and the LST experienced severe pounding in heavy seas. This occasionally caused the deck to develop cracks. The combination of shallow draft and broad beam also meant the ships had a very quick roll that was very uncomfortable for the crews and required cargo to be tightly secured.[i]

A less technical explanation was that “the ship’s unusual (and some consider unsightly) design allowed it to serve as a sort of Swiss Army knife of naval utility. Powerful pumps allowed it to quickly increase or decrease its buoyancy, letting the LST handle rough seas while crossing the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean. These pumps could remove this stabilizing ballast in minutes, increasing its buoyancy so greatly that its fully-loaded keel rested only three feet beneath the waterline, perfect for beach landings. This buoyancy also allowed them to take heavy punishment from enemy fire and remain afloat.”[ii]  Some sailors joked that LST stood for Large Slow Target.

Above is LST 492 landed at Omaha Beach, Normandy in 1944.  You can see how close it is to the beach, and how its cargo, in this case German prisoners of war, were loaded and offloaded through the open bow doors.  The keel for LST 492 was laid down June 25, 1942 at the Evansville Shipyard and launched October 31, 1942.  Let’s talk more about that shipyard, announced as coming on February 14, 1942.

“Walter G. Koch, an executive at International Steel Company, is credited with convincing the Navy Bureau of Ships that the big bend in the Ohio River at Evansville, Indiana, was an ideal location.  The new ships would have a draft of only six feet and could easily navigate the river, which, with its dams, was kept at a minimum stage of nine feet.”[i]  It would be built on 45 acres of unused riverfront property, roughly where Mead Johnson is today.  The shipyard was built and operated by the Missouri Valley Bridge and Iron Company, under the auspices of the Department of the Navy.

The arrival of the shipyard was met with great eagerness.  Just three days later six engineers began to design the yard.  Within another few days applications were being taken for jobs at the shipyard.  Although the land was mostly abandoned, federal condemnation hearings proceeded to clear titles for the land.  Less than a month after the big announcement men began surveying the property and stacking supplies.  Below is a map of the shipyard.

Building the shipyard was a massive undertaking.  Only after the site was cleared, excavated, and graded could “thousands of square yards of reinforced concrete…be poured for what would be the construction area—what in shipyard parlance was called the “building ways.”  Miles of pipes and wires were pre-installed under the concrete for “underground oxygen, electric, compressed air, acetylene, water, gas, and drainage lines”—there were no overhead lines in the entire yard.  Scaffolding and cranes were bult, as were a variety of offices and storerooms.  An enormous cofferdam [see later photographs] was built into the Ohio River—a concrete wall that enclosed part of the river, which was then pumped dry to allow the launching ways to be constructed down into the river.  And then four docks for outfitting were built, each of which could handle two ships.  The final cost of building the shipyard was a staggering $6.4 million.”[i] The shipyard took about 7 months to build, but even before it was complete, LSTs were being built.  It was generally accepted that four ships per month would be produced, but the Evansville Shipyard put that to shame by producing a new ship every 3-4 days.  In the end, it produced 167, more LSTs than any other shipyard.  It also produced other types of ships, for a grand total of 201 ships manufactured on the banks of the Ohio.  Their value? More than $300 million. The shipyard was virtually a small city—it operated 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and had its own hospital, cafeteria, and recreational area.  Its peak employment was 19,213; in total, over 70,00 people worked at the shipyard, making it the city’s biggest employer.[i] 

Below are some images of the construction of the cofferdam, all from EVPL Digital Archive: Evansville in WWII, with originals from the Evansville Museum.

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In these images, the LST is ready to be move from the launching way into the river.  The launching way would be greased with paraffin, and the ship would slowly slide down into the river.

This image shows a bit more of the cofferdam itself.  After the ships were launched, they moved to one of four docks where they were outfitted.

These six ships are at one of the docks for outfitting.  If you compare this photograph to MSS 181-150 seen earlier, you can see the SIGECO power plant in both, thus gaining an idea of the location of the launching way as related to the outfitting docks.

“When employees entered the plant they took their time card from the “OUT” rack, inserted it into the time clock which stamped it with the date and time, and then the employee put the time card in the “IN” rack. When leaving the plant the procedure was reversed. During the WWII operation on payday, a time-keeper in each clock alley paid each employee as they clocked out at the end of the shift. Employees were assigned to a specific clock alley according to badge number.” NOTE: this information is about a WWII ordnance plant in Wisconsin, but it is likely very similar arrangements applied to the Evansville Shipyard.

The four images below are all originally from the Evansville Museum via the EVPL Digital Archive.

The Evansville Shipyard could not have been built or operated without the contributions of International Steel.  As we saw earlier, its president, Walter G. Koch, was crucial in seeing that the shipyard came to Evansville.  Successful in this effort, he put his money where his mouth was. The image below is from the EVPL Digital Archive: Evansville in WWI

For the company, it meant switching over from manufacturing structural steel and focusing instead on building sections of ships.  According to the Sunday Courier and Press of October 25, 1942, “When International persuaded the Missouri Valley Bridge and Iron Company and its associates to move to Evansville to carry out its contracts for ocean-going ships, it also obligated itself to lend whatever assistance the shipyard might need in its operations. … As the shipyard went into production, International went along with it, and finally turned into a boat building business.”  They invested half a million dollars reconfiguring the building and managed to borrow John Smith, assistant general superintendent of the Bethlehem Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts, as a consultant to help with the process of building ships.  The demands of providing enough steel for the Evansville Shipyard were such that International ran out of space and expanded into an outside yard where the work continued for a time in the open air.[i]

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The following five photographs are courtesy of Willard Library.

International Steel contributed to the war effort in ways beyond providing for the needs of the shipyard.  It manufactured V-trestle piers and aluminum pontons for the Army Corps of Engineers, [and] also manufactured portable Bailey bridges, which were one of the most important pieces of equipment used by the Allies in World War II.  In June 1943, the first bridge built in Evansville was actually assembled for testing by army engineers outside the plant on Tennessee Street.  Thousands of these bridges, manufactured in several parts of the United States, would be erected all over Europe and the Pacific, often replacing bridges that had been damaged or destroyed by retreating Axis forces.  In September 1943, the British Royal Engineers’ Colonel P.A. Clauson addressed a war bond rally at International Steel, observing, “This bridge you are now making has proved itself an excellent bridge of great flexibility. … The Bailey Bridge is now the most important standard bridge for both American and British engineers.”[i]

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World War II ended September 2, 1945, with the surrender of Japan. Orders to the shipyard were cancelled, and by September 25 it was “declared surplus property by the navy.”  Sadly, the yard was swept by fire on January 26, 1946, and virtually nothing remains.[i]  Let’s end this blog with a few more images of LST construction at the Evansville Shipyard.  The final blog in this series will focus less on war contracts, but rather on the impact they and the war had on residents of this river city.

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The following three photographs were originally from the Evansville Museum, located through the EVPL Digital Archive: Evansville in WWII.

The Never Split Seat Company, located across from Bosse Field, manufactured toilet seats.  Every LST made in Evansville had Never Split seats—this would number in the thousands. 

Resources Consulted

Bigham, Darrel.  Evansville : The World War II Years.  Charleston, S.C. : Arcadia, c2005.  General Collection F534.E9 B54 2005

Blackford, Nathan.  “Preparing for War.”  Evansville Living Magazine.

“The Invasion of Normandy and the Evansville Shipyard.” OrangeBean Indiana, November 11, 2019.

“LST History.”  USS LST 393 Veterans Museum website.

MacLeod, James Lachlan.  Evansville in World War II.  Charleston, SC : History Press, 2015.  General Collection F534.E9 M335 2015

McCutchan, Kenneth P. et al.  Evansville at the Bend in the River: An Illustrated History.  Sun Valley, CA. : American Historical Press, c2004.  General Collection F534.E9 M38 2004

NavSource Naval History: Photographic History of the U.S. Navy.  “Tank Landing Ship (LST) Index.”

Pacific War Online Encyclopedia.  “LST Class.”

“A Piece Of Evansville History Journeys To Tri-State.” 14News, June 5, 2003.

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[1] Bigham, p. 51.

[1] Pacific

[1] Invasion

[1] McCutchan, p. 90

[1] MacLeod, p. 30

[1] Piece

[1] MacLeod, p. 35, 37

[1] MacLeod, p. 37

[1] MacLeod, p. 47-48