From the D-Day invasion to Okinawa, and later to peacetime science exploration, a “little” tugboat designed and built at Levingston Shipbuilding in Orange made maritime history.
The World War II ocean-going tugs were used to help damaged and disabled ships, even under battle conditions.
And if that wasn’t enough, they helped feed Russians during the war and even appeared in a movie starring William Holden and Sophia Loren.
Paul Mattingly, a Stark High graduate who has written a book about the shipbuilding company where his father was chief financial officer, is working on a 15 minute documentary about the tug.
Mattingly, who now lives in Houston, said the tugboat showed that “size didn’t matter” for the importance of war vessels.
Edgar Brown Jr. of Orange had bought Levingston Shipbuilding in 1933 during the Great Depression. He was a graduate of Princeton University and a grandson of H.J. and Miriam Lutcher, who owned vast timberlands and lumber mills.
Mattingly said the U.S. Navy was looking for ocean-going tugs in 1939, the year Europe became engulfed in war. Navy officials found a tug that would work for them at Levingston. The company had built a prototype large harbor tug on speculation and launched it in January 1941, almost a year before the Pearl Harbor attack that brought the country into the world war.
The tug had a steel hull and was 135-feet long and worked on a diesel engine. The Navy bought the tug and commissioned it as the USS Tuscarora.
After the Japanese attack, Levingston naval architects worked with the Navy to modify the tug design for wartime use. Mattingly said Levingston was not large enough to get the government contract, so it partnered with General Motors.
GM, which provided diesel and electric motors, got the contract with Levingston building the tugs. Mattingly said Levingston during the war worked with Gulfport Shipbuilding in Port Arthur to produce more of the wartime vessels.
The ATA-170 class tugboats had a hull that was 143 feet and had “crowded, but livable” room for five officers and 40 enlisted men.
The Soviet Union during the war was with the Allies and the country acquired some of the tugs. Mattingly said Russian sailors were in Orange to learn to operate and maintain the vessels. When the tugs went back to the USSR, they took supplies of Spam and snow boots.
Nikita Krushchev, leader of the USSR during the 1950s through early 1960s, once said “without Spam, we would not have been able to feed our army.”
After the war, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, acquired one of the Levingston tugs for its “blue-water” research in the oceans. The tug was renamed the “Horizon” and served many years before being replaced by “The New Horizon.”
The Scripps connection later led to Levingston’s greatest and most famous accomplishment, “The Glomar Challenger.”
Also after the war, Levingston tugs were used in the atomic bomb experiments on the Bikini Atoll in July 1947. The tugs moved Navy ships around so scientists and engineers could study how an atomic explosion would affect ships. The experiments were conducted with an above-ground explosion and an underwater explosion.
Mattingly said a Levingston tug was used for filming of the 1958 movie “The Key” with William Holden and Sofia Loren. The plot involved the captains of World War II rescue tugs in 1941 England during the Battle of the Atlantic.
One of the tugs also served many years as a U.S. Coast Guard cutter on the U.S. West Coast. That tug, named the USS Commanche, has been restored and is operational in the Puget Sound area of Washington.
The Scripps Institution in the 1960s led the way for a worldwide scientific project to explore the depths of the oceans and underneath the floors. After the good experience with the Horizon tug, the institution chose Levingston to build the Glomar Challenger. Glomar was short for “global marine.”
The Glomar launching ceremony was held at Levingston on March 23, 1968. Mattingly said the earth core samples taken from around the world by the Glomar led scientists to discover evidence of climate change. The core samples also proved the theory of plate teutonics. Oil companies have used the samples to search for off-shore drilling sites.
The drilling cores from 624 sites and are archived for study. The Glomar served until 1983 and was scrapped. The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., has parts of the ship stored as part of the country’s maritime history.
And it all started with a tugboat in Orange.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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