Sun Shipbuilding: World's Largest Shipyard in World War Two
Near Wilmington, Pennsylvania
During World War Two, a shipyard on the Delaware River in Chester, Pennsylvania became the largest single shipyard on earth. Sun Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company employed more than thirty-five thousand workers at its peak and introduced two technologies that reshaped the industry. The first was all-welded ship construction, which was dramatically faster than riveting and became standard across American yards.
The second was the T-two oil tanker, a design so effective it became the template for virtually every tanker built in the United States during the war. Sun built more than two hundred fifty World War Two tankers, roughly forty percent of all tankers produced worldwide, and repaired over fifteen hundred war-damaged vessels. Founded by the Pew family, the yard operated at this Chester site from nineteen sixteen to nineteen eighty-two.
