This January 1955 article from All Hands magazine covers seagoing dry docks and floating repair ships, presenting three pages of photographs from the feature “Repair Ships on the Job.” Floating dry docks — designated ABSD (Advance Base Section Docks) during World War II — allowed the Navy to perform major hull and propeller repairs far from permanent shore facilities, a capability critical to sustaining fleet operations across the Pacific.
Destroyer tenders (AD), submarine tenders (AS), and repair ships (AR) extended this support to combatants at forward bases, performing machinery overhauls, electronics repairs, and ammunition replenishment that would otherwise require a return to Pearl Harbor or the continental United States. The postwar Navy retained many of these afloat logistics assets for deployment in Korea and the Cold War era.
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