Mare Island construction ways

[Ed Kirk]

Nice photo, Mare Island. I have walked past these launching ways many times. Too bad shipyard was closed.

[Ed Kirk]

Subic Sue - Might make a good project.

[CC Clarke]

After closing MINSY, I was in the Vallejo area and stopped by to take some pics of my old stomping grounds. The Controlled Industrial Area is no longer isolated from the rest of the shipyard and is open to all.









With the closure of MINSY, the destruction of Vallejo was complete. A once-nice, bustling little town that employed thousands at MINSY is now a ghetto, thanks to the politicians who sold out their constituents by kicking the Navy out of the Bay Area. We need naval shipyards now more than ever.

[Albacore 569]

Mare Island NSY photography department recording construction and retrofits is famous and world renown to me. When the Base closed, I was there for the closure. Adm Demars who replaced Adm Rickover Navy's nuclear propulsion gave such a great speech and thanked everyone that worked at the shipyard. "you did good!" I was a bit teary eyed.

Most or all Mare Island photos are now in the Washington Naval Yard archives, or the National Archives in San Bruno near the San Francisco or the San Francisco Maritime Museum in that order in quantities of photos.

When Marshal Clark and I visited the SF Maritime Museum archives room long ago I was Sub Committee Cover Editor and they had at the SFMM a large collection of original glass negatives in 8 x 10 inch!!! You can't get any better for sharpness and super clarity. you could see every rivet.

Photos of USS Grampus A -3 in dry dock at Union Iron Works San Francisco, to Photos of USS Nautilus SS168 to Nuclear submarines Scamp on Mare Island Launching ways. I still have the original prints in my files, and I could post some here if anyone is interested in seeing.

Mare Island's last Job was refueling retrofitting the USS Los Angeles SSN 688.

The yard is seeing more activity again doing overhauls of the large Coast Guard Cutters from government island near Alameda. This a quiet build up due to increased Chinese Nayal activity.

[Albacore 569]

some images I mentioned above