Editor’s note: Larry Bulanda of Jim Thorpe worked as an engineer at Newport News Shipbuilding, which is where the S.S. United States was built. He will be speaking to the Lehighton Area Heritage Alliance on Monday about the majestic ship that has been decommissioned and will be sunk off the coast of Florida this May to become the world’s largest artificial reef.

By LARRY BULANDA

tneditor@tnonline.com

Her engines are silent, her boilers cold.

This once mighty powerplant of the S.S. United States propelled the ship to a record-breaking trip across the Atlantic Ocean in 1952, but sadly she has not answered any orders from her bridge in over 56 years.

Soon the ship that was designed to be unsinkable, immune from fires and fast enough to evade enemy submarines will find a new and permanent home at the bottom of the Gulf of America.

The S.S. United States, also known as “The Big U” and “America’s Flagship,” was a luxurious ocean liner built in 1952 at a time when the only practical way to cross the Atlantic was via ship.

The Queens — Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth — were iconic ships that plied the Atlantic from England to New York and back. The Big U was designed to run with that crowd and run she did! On her maiden voyage in 1952 she shattered the record set by the Queen Mary in 1939.

The Big U crossed the Atlantic going from Ambrose Light (New York) to Bishop Rock at the entrance to the English Channel, a distance of 2,939 miles, in 3 days, 10 hours and 40 minutes. This was a full 10 hours faster than the Queen Mary.

Big U made record speeds in excess of 44 mph during that run, and it was said that she had more “under the hood.”

For this accomplishment the S.S. United States became the new holder of the Blue Riband, an award for the fastest passenger liner to cross the Atlantic.

She holds the record to this day, some 74 years later.

The Big U was the lifelong dream of William Francis Gibbs, a self-taught naval architect and undoubtedly the greatest naval architect of the 20th century.

Aside from the S.S. United States, Gibbs, or “WF” as he was known, was responsible for the design of 74% of all the U.S. military ships used in World War II.

Those ships included the Liberty Ships; big, lumbering, mass-produced transport ships that carried the troops, bullets and beans to the battlefields of the war. They were an integral part of the Allied victory.

During his early years, WF witnessed the maritime tragedies of the Lusitania, the Titanic and the Morro Castle. Gibbs felt that the loss of life which resulted from those tragedies were preventable and he vowed that his ship would not meet those same fates.

Additionally, Gibbs was well aware of the ship sinkings that came as a result of enemy submarines during World War II. He said of the S.S. United States: “You can’t set her on fire, you can’t sink her and you can’t catch her.”

Why did he view these characteristics as so important? Simply because not only was the Big U intended to carry 2,000 vacationing passengers, but she was also intended to carry troops to war, up to 14,000 of them at one time. Those troops could not be lost through poor design or other preventable circumstances.

Advantages

To keep her from sinking, Gibbs incorporated a double-bottom hull and 19 transverse bulkheads with watertight doors to divide the ship into 20 compartments.

Unlike the Titanic, gashes in the hull would not sink this ship.

To outrun enemy submarines or surface ships, power and speed were the answers. Eight oil-fired boilers and high-pressure, high-temperature steam delivered 240,000 shaft horsepower to the propellers and speeds in excess of 44 mph were obtained. In fact, the Big U could go faster in reverse than the Titanic could go forward. An aluminum superstructure and aluminum funnels were included to reduce weight. This was the first time that this aluminum was used in such large quantities on a ship.

To contain fires an extensive firefighting and alarm system was included.

Unlike other liners, the only wood on the ship was in the piano in the lounge and the butcher block in the galley.

Even the fabrics and materials used in draperies, artwork and furniture had to be fireproof. Cabin walls were made of Marinite, an asbestos panel that eliminated the threat of fire.

And unlike the Titanic, there were more than enough lifeboats and rafts for all onboard. All of the lifeboats were made of aluminum instead of wood to save weight and eliminate fire risk.

Celebrities loved traveling on the Big U because of her luxury, first class service and accommodations.

John Wayne, Bob Hope, Walt Disney, President and Mrs. Kennedy, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and many more celebrities and dignitaries graced the passenger list.

Several movies made in the 1950s and 1960s featured the ship in some scenes, and the Disney movie “Bon Voyage” was filmed in part on the ship.

The emergence of air travel in the late ’50s spelled the end of trans-Atlantic liner travel, and that included the Big U. With that trend passenger interest waned, and the U.S. Navy, which kept her as a potential troop transport, decided that aircraft could move troops faster.

Removed from service

So in 1969 America’s Flagship was removed from service and mothballed by the Navy.

W.F. Gibbs passed in 1967 and thus never saw the ship taken out of service. Her operator, the United States Lines, also went out of business, unable to make a profit in the liner business.

The ship passed through the hands of several owners over the ensuing years. Some planned to reactivate it as a cruise ship, others into a hotel — but none of the ideas bore fruit.

In 1984 the ship was stripped of its contents, which were sold at auction.

The ship was docked in Newport News, Virginia, and then Norfolk, Virginia, for many years.

A new owner moved the ship to pier 82 in Philadelphia, where it stayed for 30 years before the SS United States Conservancy, which was the owner at the time, was forced to sell the ship due to a lawsuit over dock space.

In 2025 the ship was sold to Okaloosa County in Florida. Currently it plans is to sink it off the Gulf Coast of Florida near Destin in May. It will serve as an artificial reef and diving attraction.

In order to do that, the ship had to be prepared for sinking so it was towed to MARS, a marine recycling yard in Mobile, Alabama.

Once there, hazmat materials were removed as were both of the ship’s iconic funnels — the largest ever installed on a ship. The radar mast was removed as well.

The Conservancy plans to build a museum there incorporating the ship’s massive funnels along with a large collection of artifacts from the ship.

Many people feel that sinking her is a tragedy and that the ship should have been preserved as a tribute to America.

Others feel that the sinking allows the ship to remain intact for many years to be enjoyed by divers and sea life, and avoiding the scrappers torch.

One must ask the question: What would W.F. Gibbs have thought about the sinking?

We’ll never know.

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The Lehighton Area Heritage Alliance presents “The Story of the SS United States America’s Flagship with Larry Bulanda” at the Lehighton Boys & Girls Band Hall (197 N Sixth St) on Monday from 7-8 p.m.

Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

Admission is free for members, while a donation is requested for nonmembers.

Larry Bulanda is a retired electrical engineer who worked at Newport News Shipbuilding, where the S.S. United States was built. His focus was reactor plants and aviation systems of the Navy’s nuclear aircraft carrier fleet, but he gained an appreciation for the famed ship from an engineering perspective and is dedicated to preserving its legacy.