Permanente Metals Corp. No 2 Yard
Richmond, California
source: Sawyer & Mitchell

©
California

Built by Permanente Metals Corporation, Yard No. 2

In 1941 the management of Todd-California (later Richmond No. 1), already building a yard to construct 'Ocean' type ships, was given a contract by the Maritime Commission to construct an adjacent six-way yard to be known as Richmond No. 2 under the Richmond Shipbuilding Corporation, a subsidiary of Kaiser's Permanerite Metals Corporation. This new yard, under the same management, was therefore in line with the Commission's plans which, at that time, were not to commence new yards but to expand existing facilities. Shortly afterward, the slips were extended to nine in number and in February 1942 increased, yet again, to twelve. So, at the spacious deep-water location of Richmond (not far from Oakland, the Kaiser headquarters), four Kaiser yards totalling twenty-seven ways very quickly replaced the one original seven-way yard. By 1943 the population of Richmond had increased to over 100,000 from its 1940 figure of 23,000 and additional facilities in the town included roads and transport and a ferry service to carry workers to the yards.

The shortest time of the many different but steadily-maintained averages of Liberty deliveries from all yards was about 17 days, but some previous special efforts had sometimes cut this time to much less. At the Oregon Shipyard one vessel was launched only ten days after keel laying, and Richmond No. 2 responded with an effort that established a Liberty building record, assembling a ship in just over four days and outfitting her in another three. This was yard No. 440, the Robert E. Peary, on slip between 8 and 12 November 1942. This pace was not, of course, maintained and no effort was made so to do, but the speed of this construction did focus attention on shipyard achievements and methods and gave quite a boost to morale.

Here, a brief study of overall building times will, perhaps, put the building of these record vessels and all the other emergency shipbuilding into perspective. A vast amount of prefabrication work was carried out before the construction of any ship actually commenced on the slipway. For example, when a contract stipulated a building limit of, say, fifty days per ship, the materials involved had been undergoing prefabrication for an average of some thirty-five days prior to keel-laying, thus giving a total of some eighty-five days for complete construction. Undoubtedly the material for the record ships underwent an even greater amount of preparatory work, while all the subsequent reductions in contract times were met by greater efficiences in pre-keel work.

When, later, the military authorities called for LSTs in a hurry, half of the requirements were assigned to Kaiser-controlled yards. But objections to breaking the production flow in these major yards were upheld and a new, smaller yard (originally Richmond No. 3A, later No. 4) was built so that continuity of Liberty production at both the Richmond and the Oregon shipyards was maintained. However, military types gradually filled more and more slipways and nearly all the West Coast yards were constructing these types by mid-1944. By August of the same year no Liberty ships at all were being built on this coast and of the total production for the year, military types formed 29 per cent and Liberty ships only 32 per cent.

Richmond No. 2 turned to the production of 'Victory' ships during 1944, but their previous Liberty output had shown a very great and progressive drop in time and costs per ship. The original contracts estimated 622,300 man-hours per ship, but this figure reduced to as low as 347,500 during production and whereas the December 1942 slipway time was allowed at 30 days per ship, the figure was reduced to some 19 days.

Liberty ship output: 351 vessels at an average cost of $1,667,500 each.

USMC Numbers	Yard Numbers
Built by Richmond Shipbuilding Corporation
241-264	41-64
321-332	65-76
Built by Permanente Metals Corporation
The MCE number was used as the Yard Number

World War II Construction Records of the Permanente Metals Corp. No 2 Yard

For additional information on the merchant ship-building program at the Kaiser shipyards, including Liberty ships, see the Historic American Engineering Record - Kaiser's Richmond Shipyards with Special Emphasis on Shipyard No. 3, Richmond, CA (PDF, 253 pages, 878 Kb).

Photographs of shipbuilding at Permanente Metals Corp. shipyards

Also see World War II Shipbuilding in the San Francisco Bay Area