The Brown Shipbuilding Company was founded in
Houston,
Texas, in 1942 as a subsidiary of
Brown and Root (now
KBR) by brothers Herman and
George R. Brown to build ships for the
U.S. Navy during
World War II. Brown Shipbuilding Company ranked 68th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.[1]
In 1941, Navy officials asked the Brown brothers to build four
submarine chasers. The brothers had no shipbuilding experience, but had helped build
Naval Air Station Corpus Christi.[2]
In 1942, the brothers formed Brown Shipbuilding and, with
$9 million in Navy funding, built the Green's Bayou Fabrication Yard at the juncture of the
Houston Ship Channel and Green's Bayou.[3] After delivering the ships, Brown received orders for landing craft and more sub chasers, and eventually won an order for
destroyer escorts at $3.3 million per ship.
[2]
Between May 1943 and August 1944, Brown turned out 61 destroyer escorts, an average of one per week.[3] Perhaps the most famous was
USS Samuel B. Roberts, part of the outgunned Taffy 3 unit that turned back a Japanese battleship force during the
Battle of Leyte Gulf.
Brown also built 254
amphibious assault ships, known as
LSMs, between May 1944 and March 1946.
By the end of the war, it had produced over 350 Navy warships in contracts totaling over $500 million.
[2]
After the war, the shipyard was sold to
Todd Shipyards. After Todd's Houston division closed in 1985, the yard was once again used by Brown and Root, this time for barge construction and repair. The property was sold piecemeal to multiple buyers in 2004.[4] In 1961, the company won the $200 million contract to build the
Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas.[5]