This was at one time, the largest floating dry dock in the world. When they towed it through the Panama Canal they had to bring it on it's side because it was too wide to fit through.
anything new going on with it ??? and look at poor little Henry marine services out of business ... we will partner up if anyone want to pay to remove it....
That yahoo from Nashville that paid Bender for it spent the past two days trying to sweet-talk me into helping him out with it. told him that he can't afford me.
That pdf link in chat took nearly forever to download, had to let it run overnight and I'm not sure it all came down. Not all of it is legible, but looks more than a bit interesting on how they set it on edge. Thanx, I'll squint and read it next rainy day. The motivation behind asking the question about the ten section dock is that my father was to be the CO on what turned out to be the last of the class when it was deployed to the pacific to support the fleet on the run up to invading Japan. They were configured with propulsion on every other section intended to tow the unpowered sections in matched pairs thru Panama and across the Pacific to some advance naval base and hopscotch forward as needed. Longer story short, an unpowered section was undergoing flood down testing at the builder's yard when the VJ Day whistles blew and the yard birds scattered with the sea valves still open. Pop and a boiler tender were on one wing, the yard birds on the other. Pop handled the sea valves on his side, the boiler tender swam over to the other and shut those valves before losing the section under test. Or that's how the story was told to me.
Damn, I thought this was a post about not drinking. Glad to see that this post did not turn into a major negative.
I was unable to find a reference to the self propelled 10 section dock. However, here is an un-self propelled version that was in service in the Pacific at the end of the war. http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/28/2801.htm Given that the one Pop told me about wasn't even commissioned at VJ day, there's a good chance it never went into service and was sold or scrapped.
