World War II Shipyards by the Bay

Images of America: California

by Nicholas A. Veronico

In the dark, frenzied years of World War II, the San Francisco Bay Area was the geographic center of a $6.3 billion West Coast shipbuilding industry. Stretching from the Golden Gate to Vallejo to Sunnyvale, 14 Bay Area yards launched many of the ships that helped save the free world. Basalt Rock of Napa, Bethlehem Steel of San Francisco and Alameda, Hunters Point and Mare Island Naval Shipyards, Joshua Hendy Iron Works of Sunnyvale, Marinship of Sausalito, Permanente Metals in Richmond, and Western Pipe and Steel in South San Francisco are names that still conjure memories for many locals of one of the most impassioned war efforts in human history. Offering new opportunities for African Americans and women, recruiters searched the nation for workers who relocated here by the thousands. These motivated men and women delivered Liberty cargo ships like the SS Robert E. Peary, built in seven and a half days, a shipbuilding record that stands to this day.

Genres: Nonfiction

128 pages, Paperback

First published February 14, 2007

About the author

"I research and write for my personal enjoyment and educational enrichment. I am honored and humbled by the people I meet who so generously give of their time and share their stories for my projects."
-- Nicholas A. Veronico

Author Nicholas A. Veronico comes from a family of pilots, both his mother and father held private tickets, and his brother is a commercial pilot who flies for a major airline.

Veronico got his start in aviation journalism as a freelance journalist in 1984, then joined Pacific Flyer Aviation Newspapers. He then went on to serve as editor of In Flight USA, contributed extensively to FlyPast magazine, and in 1994 joined Airliners: The World's Airline Magazine. On a freelance basis, he has contributed to Air Classics, EAA Warbirds, Warbirds Worldwide, Airliner World, Classic Wings, and many others. His career path lead to the high-tech industry where he worked for an embedded systems-on-a-chip magazine, Silicon Strategies. Subsequently, he served as editor of "Gridpoints, the quarterly publication of the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division," which covered NASA's scientific achievements in computational physics using high performance computers. He now works as a science and technology journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In addition to working in the magazine field, Veronico has collaborated with a number of today's best historians and authors and has written more than 30 books on a wide range of aviation and military topics, and local history subjects. He also served as the lead scriptwriter for Scrapping Aircraft Giants, a TV documentary by Daurg Productions and shown on The Discovery Channel. His homepage is www.pacaeropress.com.

Recently, the Military Writer's Society of America (www.militarywriters.com) recognized Veronico's history of the U.S. Navy Blue Angels flight demonstration team and his book on military aircraft storage (AMARG) with distinguished book awards.

Reviews

[Thaths · Rating 3 out of 5]

Does a decent job of setting the stage for the massive shipbuilding that took place in the Bay Area during WWII. I wish the book had more text about what shipbuilding used to look like before the war, and how the scaling happened during the War. The book has lots of photos (it is, after all, part of the Images of America series). I wish it had some more text.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

the pictures are fantastic and there is a section of picts showing bow art (think nose art for ships). but nothing on the explosion and mutiny.