Dry Docks & Fleet Repair

The Navy’s advance across the Pacific outran its fixed shipyards, so it built dry docks that could follow the fleet — fixed graving docks, enormous floating dry docks towed forward in sections, seagoing repair ships, and ship cradles. Together they let battle-damaged vessels be patched up thousands of miles forward instead of steaming all the way home. These pages gather the Navy’s dry-dock story, from the wartime construction program to modern battleship overhauls.