To Be: Early Construction in the Pacific

Construction of facilities in the south Pacific had been recognized as a high priority requirement for a number of years based on War Plan Orange (later Plan Rainbow Five) and related contingency planning efforts. A more intense phase of construction using civilian contractors started in July 1939 in the Hawaiian islands by BUDOCKS and that contract, and subsequent contracts, resulted in work at Midway, Wake, Johnston Island, Palmyra Island, American Samoa, Guam and Cavite in the Phillipines. A significant amount of construction took place resulting in the initial construction of naval bases, naval air bases, communication stations and fueling stations. After the Japanese attack civilian workers and Civil Engineer Corps officers, who were supervising the work, were subject to capture and imprisonment or death as was the case at Wake, Guam and the Phillipines.

Naval Construction Battalions were organized around the allowance of 33 officers and 1,081 enlisted personnel. They were organized in five companies including a headquarters company and four construction companies. The organizational allowance was designed to provide a self-sustaining unit with individual and organizational equipment, vehicles, supplies and material to perform construction work. The original planning resulted in battalions being assigned as a functional component part of advanced bases known as CUBS, ACORNS and LIONS which were the code names for standard advanced naval bases. Naval Construction Battalions were "completely equipped and self-sustaining able to construct airfields, roads, bridges and buildings at an advanced base and to install, operate and maintain its public utilities."

The first naval construction unit to deploy from the United States was designated the First Construction Detachment. The unit left Quonset Point (Newport), Rhode Island, on 17 January 1942. It stopped at Norfolk, Virginia, and Charleston, South Carolina, and on 27 January left for Bora Bora in the Societies Islands with the mission of constructing a fueling station and other facilities. The 296 men of the unit arrived on 17 February 1942. This unit took on the name of Bobcat Detachment as Bobcat was the code name for Bora Bora. On 5 March, Construction Battalion personnel were officially named Seabees by the Navy Department and the fighting, building bee insignia and shoulder patch was approved.

The initial NCB to be organized was the 1st NCB which was commissioned at Camp Allen, Virginia, near Norfolk, in March 1942. Deployment resulted in companies being sent to Tonga Tabu and Efate, New Herbides, in April 1942. The 2nd NCB arrived in the southwest Pacific in April and May of 1942. The 3rd, 4th and 5th NCBs arrived in the Pacific in June 1942. The 6th NCB, which was destined to be the first naval construction battalion to come under enemy fire, was activated at Camp Allen, Virginia, on 24 June 1942, and went from Gulfport, Mississippi, to Moffett Field, California, and on to San Francisco. It left for the south Pacific on 21 July on the USS President Polk and the USS Wharton with five other ships escorted by the light cruiser USS Helena (CL-50). The 6th NCB reached Esprito Santo on 11 August via Pago Pago, Samoa.

continued on next post.

Copied from Seabeecook.com