Norfolk Navy Yard Administrative History, Safety and Industrial Accidents Chapter, Excerpt (1945)

Five pages (176-180) from the World War II administrative history of the Norfolk Navy Yard in Portsmouth, Virginia, the opening of Chapter XII, "Safety and Industrial Accidents." It describes how the yard's Safety Section grew from one officer and a clerk-typist in September 1939, with "no separate allocation of funds" for protective equipment, into a staffed office with shop Safety Marshals from 1942. It reports that before 1943 "little equipment was used or was available in the Yard," and that from 1942 a central tool room issued hard hats, goggles, gloves, respirators and other protective equipment free to workers.

What it shows

The history says the yard expanded rapidly from 1940, that a Safety Charge Job Number was set up in January 1942, and that accident frequency fell from 23.2 in 1943 to 13.17 in 1945. It does not discuss asbestos or dust disease. The excerpt ends at the start of a section on the fire aboard the USS Saturn on April 27, 1944, in which fifteen yard employees died. It gives background on safety conditions in a large Navy shipyard where insulation work was done during the war (see Shipyard Exposure).