StarDestroyer.Net BBS

While talking with Marina earlier this afternoon, the topic of ships who's bows were out of alignment came up, and I mentioned CA-122, U.S.S. Oregon City (U.S.S. Oregon City is as far as I know a bit of a mystery as she was pulled from service, and despite her class' status as one of the better classes of heavy cruisers in the fleet, she was never refit with missiles, and no explanation has ever been given). While discussing this, Marina asked if anyone knew where the ship had been built, and raised the possibility that if she was built on the west coast that a minor earthquake had shifted the blocks that she was resting on, resulting in the bow potentially being not true. This would also explain the lack of records for why the bow is out of true. After some basic lookup, I discovered that she had not been built on the west coast, but at Bethlehem Steel in Quincy, Massachusetts on 08 April 1944[link]. This seemed to sink the idea until I noticed that on 05 September 1944 there was a magnitude 5.8 earthquake in upstate New York close to the city of Massena. The USGS page [link] for this earthquake notes that the earthquake's level 4 isoseismals pass through southern Boston[link]. This might explain why the bow might have been out of true, and thus why the ship's time in service was so short.

Theory by Marina Collette, Research by TimothyC.

An interesting idea, but shouldn't this be tested against other ships produced in the area of the quake?