WWII USS N01 CRANE SHIP AB-1 "Kearsarge"

Description

In 1920 the now-obsolete battleship "Kearsarge" was converted to a heavy-lift crane ship, intended to provide a mobile capability to handle large guns and other massive objects. This work, carried out at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, Pennsylvania, involved stripping away the ship’s superstructure and replacing it with a huge crane rated at 250-tons lifting capacity. To ensure stability, Kearsarge’s hull was fitted with side blisters that increased her beam by some twenty feet. She also retained her engines and some boilers. Carried on the Navy’s register of ships as "unclassified", with the designation "Crane Ship # 1", she retained her original name until November 1941, when she was formally renamed Crane Ship No. 1. She had already (in April 1939) been redesignated AB-1. Beginning active service in her new role in the mid-1920s, Kearsarge spent much of the inter-war era on the West Coast, at the Puget Sound Navy Yard, where her work included regunning battleships. During World War II she was employed at East Coast shipyards, where she assisted in the construction of the battleships Indiana (BB-58) and Alabama (BB-60), among other chores. She was towed back to the Pacific in 1945 but came back east in 1948 to serve at the Boston Naval Shipyard. After more than three decades of unique non-combatant service, Crane Ship No. 1 was sold for scrapping in August 1955. Waterline resin and photoetched kit. (Scale : 1/700e)