Everyone has stress in their daily job but we’d have to guess that being the guying charge of launching a massive ship into the ocean is a special kind of stress many of us have not felt before. Huntington Ingalls Industries is the largest military ship builder in the USA and they recently completed the San Antonio class vessel known as the Portland LPD. The LPD part stands for Landing Platform Dock. Gone are the days of using the Navy for pounding the shores with massive 16-inch shells and here are the days of using it to get fighters to locations and landed on the shore in the most efficient way possible. That’s what these ships are designed to do. Since we’re not military planners around here, we’ll let the rest of you debate the merits of that. Back to the launch.
This was filmed over the course of a couple of days at the company’s shipyard in Mississippi and to see the whole process take place is fascinating. The way that the ship is moved and the steps undertaken each time it is moved is something else. Perhaps our favorite part in watching this was seeing how the tug boats initially maneuver the ship around and then assist it in docking. The rig they use to actually set the vessel in the water is pretty great as well.
Shipbuilding is an art form and a mind bogglingly complex process to try and comprehend. With things being on the scale that they are and having so many different systems like they do, it is a true testament to the human mind that we have gone from canoes to what you will see here and beyond. Hell, this thing would fit in an aircraft carrier’s back pocket and when you see the Portland and then consider that your mind will really be blown!
