Shipyard workers assigned to the USS George H. W. Bush (CVN-77) in Newport News, Virginia - the Navy’s tenth and last Nimitz class supercarrier - are reportedly under serious pressure to get all work completed before the end of President George Bush Jr’s second term as Commander in Chief.
Sources from the shipyard say that Presidential staff members have informed Northrop Grumman shipyard officials that George Jr. wants to commemorate the carrier in honor of his father before he leaves office.
Work on the new carrier has been unavoidably delayed due to civilian manpower shortages, according to a nuclear managerial employee close to the carrier construction.
“People have been quitting for better wages at another local shipyard,” he said. “Bringing in new workers naturally slows things down.”
Employees at Northrop Grumman in other departments, including engineering, have been plucked from their current work projects and quietly re-directed to focus on the Bush carrier.
“We have no choice but to make this happen,” the nuclear engineer department source I contacted said. “We have three shifts running and hopefully with all the people pulled from other departments, we’ll be able to get this done.”
He reluctantly added that a high-ranking Navy official at a recent meeting about the Bush carrier project had yelled, “What the *#@% is going on? We need to get this DONE!”
They’ll get it done.
I’ve lived for the past 20 years on the other side of the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel from Northrop Grumman Newport News Shipyard.
I’ve learned from experience, there aint nothin’ they can’t do once they put their minds to it.
