LCMs - 'Landing Craft - Mechanized' - were designed to land tanks on enemy beaches. A Fuel Depot Annex was constructed alongside Chelsea Creek in East Boston and connected by pipeline to a fuel pier extending out into Boston Harbor. Additional ship repair facilities were acquired by the Navy in Chelsea and East Boston. Along the waterfront, piers were added, rebuilt, or extended, and the capacity for shipbuilding was dramatically increased with the construction of Shipways 2 and 3 (the latter now referred to as Dry Dock 5). In regards to the physical plant of 1941, storage facilities and several new administrative and shop buildings, including a five-story electrical shop, were under construction in Charlestown while ship repair and conversion facilities were expanded at the South Boston Naval Annex (acquired shortly after World War I). The Fletcher Class was considerably larger and more complex in construction than the destroyers previously built at the yard. In September, the keels of the first Fletcher Class destroyers to be built at Boston Navy Yard were laid down.

By then, it had become standard practice to lay the keels of two to four vessels and proceed with their construction at an even pace, with launchings occurring as soon as the hulls were completed.

Due south of this map were even more private shipyard facilities constructing new warships, such as Bethlehem Steel in Hingham and Fore River in Quincy and Braintree.īy the summer of 1941, the Boston Navy Yard was a hive of activity the yard’s labor force had increased from 3,875 in January 1939 to 18,272 in order to meet the increased demand for new ship construction. During World War II the Boston Naval Shipyard complex encompassed nearly every corner of Boston's Inner Harbor.

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