Giant Navy Shipyard Crane Departs Wisconsin on Long Tow to Hawaii
Giant portal cranes are a photogenic icon of the shipbuilding might of a past era, but a recent delivery from Konecranes suggest that they can be a sign of revitalization, too. Last week, a 200-foot-tall portal crane got under way from the manufacturer's site in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, bound on a 9,000-nautical-mile voyage to Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, Hawaii.
The newly-delivered portal jib crane is the P-82, a behemoth that will be installed at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard. Dubbed "Big Blue," it is part of a $370 million contract to upgrade equipment at the four public shipyards, according to the Navy's Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Project (SIOP). Securely lashed to a barge and braced for a long ocean transit, it is now under tow by the tug Ocean Tower - and attracting attention everywhere on the route out to sea.
SIOP / USN
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The Navy signed an order with Konecranes back in 2019 for the first of up to seven cranes of this classic design, and P-82 is the second in line for delivery. It is a custom crane with a base built to deal with multiple different support rail sizes and shapes, as found at the Navy's historical shipyard layouts.
The PHNSY crane - technically a "weight-handling system (crane type)" for the Navy's planning purposes - will be able to lift components weighing up to 175 tonnes. It is part of a deep renovation of the shipyard and will drive (in part) on brand new tracks: As part of the yard's comprehensive modernization overhaul, the Navy's engineers are building out a new full-size graving dock, a rare project in the United States and the first at PHNSY since the Second World War. The $2.8 billion Dry Dock 5 is scaled to support maintenance of future submarine classes, including the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine fleet, the most survivable element of the U.S. nuclear deterrent.