Puget Sound Naval Shipyard
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Puget Sound Naval Shipyard (PSNS) is a United States Navy shipyard covering 179 acres (0.7 km²) of property bordered on the south by Sinclair Inlet, on the west by the Bremerton Annex of Naval Base Kitsap, and on the north and east by the city of Bremerton, Washington. It is the Pacific Northwest's largest naval shore facility and one of Washington state's largest industrial installations. PSNS provides the Navy with maintenance, modernization, and technical and logistics support.
Puget Sound Naval Shipyard was established in 1891 as a Naval Station and was designated Navy Yard Puget Sound in 1901. During World War I, the Navy Yard constructed ships, including 25 subchasers, seven submarines, two minesweepers, seven sea-going tugs, and two ammunition ships, as well as 1,700 small boats. During World War II, the shipyard's primary effort was the repair of battle damage to ships of the U.S. fleet and those of its allies.
Perhaps the most visible feature of the shipyard is its huge green hammerhead crane, built in 1933. The PSNS hammerhead crane is 250 feet tall and 80 feet wide with a lifting capacity of 250 tons. It is primarily used in the overhaul and tearing apart of ships at the shipyard.
Following World War II, Navy Yard Puget Sound was designated Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. It engaged in an extensive program of modernizing carriers, including converting conventional flight decks to angle decks. During the Korean War, the shipyard was engaged in the activation of ships. In the late 1950s, it entered an era of new construction with the building of a new class of guided missile frigates. In 1965, USS Sculpin (SSN 590) became the first nuclear-powered submarine to be worked on at PSNS.
In 1990 the Navy authorized the Ship-Submarine Recycling Program (SRP) to recycle nuclear-powered ships at PSNS. Approximately 25% of the shipyard's workload involves inactivation, reactor compartment disposal, and recycling of ships. It has pioneered an environmentally safe method of deactivating and recycling nuclear-powered ships. This process places the U.S. Navy in the role of being the world's only organization to design, build, operate, and recycle nuclear-powered ships.
The shipyard also contains a large collection of retired U.S. Navy ships, including several aircraft carriers. The ships are mothballed, meaning that they are stored in case they are needed by the Navy in the future.
The shipyard was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1992.
