USS Newport News CA-148 · A people's history

About & Sources

Who made this, and on what

Publisher

ussnewportnews.org is published by Danziger & De Llano, LLP as a historical tribute to USS Newport News (CA-148) and the people who built her, crewed her, and keep her memory. This address previously carried the Liaison Committee's own site. After the domain lapsed it was re-registered on 31 October 2026, and this history was built here. It carries no advertising, no claim or contact forms, no trackers, and no analytics.

This site is not the website of the USS Newport News Museum and Memorial Foundation and is not affiliated with it. The Foundation — the living community of the ship's veterans, families, and friends — keeps its own home on the web at uss-newport-news.com, and that is where its reunions, memorial services, and collection live. Nor is this site the website of the USS Newport News Liaison Committee — the citizens' committee the City of Newport News created in 1987 to stand behind the submarine and her crews; the Committee's current home is the city's own boards-and-commissions listing. Nothing here speaks for the Foundation, the Committee, the crew association, or the Navy.

The rule the copy is written under

Every person named on this site is a real person whose name appears in a cited public record. There are no composite characters, no imagined scenes, and no reconstructed dialogue. Where records conflict, the conflict is printed rather than resolved. Where the record is silent, the silence is printed. The name-by-name index is on Names & Records; the full provenance and methods are summarized in this site's research notes.

Sources

The controlling records

  • The Asbestos Atlas vessel record — uss-newport-news-ca148.json (evidence rows ev-01 through ev-06; the publisher's own dataset). The transcription of the ship's DANFS entry (ev-03) supplies the chronology and specifications this site carries; the record itself is linked once, in the evidence frame on One Shipfitter.
  • DANFS — Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships entry for Newport News (CA-148), Naval History and Heritage Command. Public domain; paraphrased, quoted briefly with attribution. history.navy.mil
  • The Atlas shipyard record — newport-news-shipbuilding in the shipyards dataset: yard history, wartime peak employment, and the documented product/litigation landscape for the Builders page.

The twenty

  • Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Wall of Faces — the roster and casualty narratives, accessed through an archived capture of the unit listing. vvmf.org/Wall-of-Faces
  • U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings — Taylor Baldwin Kiland, "'Fire in Turret Two!'", October 2012 (the author is the daughter of the ship's 1972 operations officer; the article draws on the ship's command history, deck log, and the official investigation report): the incident narrative, inquiry findings, survivors' accounts, and the complete victims list.
  • The Virtual Wall — virtualwall.org unit page for USS Newport News and the individual casualty records it hosts (Coffelt Database data): ages, homes of record, and Wall panel/line for each man.
  • Crew-maintained rolls — the CA-148 reunion association's gallery roster and the memorial index mirrored at UNM, used for corroboration and for the wider roll of honor (Balzano, Brumfield, Sansone).

Court records

  • Locke v. Johns-Manville Corp., 221 Va. 951, 275 S.E.2d 900 (1981) — CourtListener / Justia. Read as it is written: a statute-of-limitations decision that recites alleged exposure.
  • John Crane, Inc. v. Hardick, 283 Va. 358, 722 S.E.2d 610 (2012), modified on rehearing (Va. Sept. 14, 2012), Record No. 101909 — official Virginia courts PDF.
  • In re Warhead Explosion Aboard USS Newport News on October 1, 1972, 411 F. Supp. 790 (J.P.M.L. 1976) — the consolidated litigation cited on The Twenty.

The ship's own documents, and the community record

  • U.S. Navy deck log, 11 May 1959 — National Archives (NND 927605), accessed via DPLA; the drydock remarks sheet reproduced on One Shipfitter.
  • The ship's official 1974 command history, the 1949 commissioning program, the 1949 cruise book (Blue Prints to Blue Seas), the yard's Shipyard Bulletin christening report, and the Fifth Naval District news release No. 127-75 — primary Navy/yard documents hosted on the Foundation's history pages at uss-newport-news.com. The documents are primary; the host is the Foundation, and these are cited as Foundation-hosted.
  • USNI Proceedings, March 1976, Comment and Discussion — Capt. Robert R. Briner's letter on the inactivation and decommissioning, with the companion comment of VADM Roland N. Smoot. usni.org
  • Paul Stillwell, "Looking Back," USNI Naval History, December 1993 — eyewitness at the decommissioning; the Philadelphia mothball decline. usni.org
  • Hampton Roads Naval Museum (an official U.S. Navy museum) — historian's account "Call Sign Thunder": the naming petition, the launch-year and sponsor discrepancies, the failed preservation plans, the name board and the Fore River model. hamptonroadsnavalmuseum.blogspot.com
  • U.S. Navy Memorial — the Lone Sailor statue at Wisconsin Square, Norfolk, and its plaques. navymemorial.org
  • NavSource Naval History — the ship's data block and photograph captions (strike date, Philadelphia lay-up, May 1975 inactivation scene). navsource.net

The building community

  • Richmond Fed Monthly Review, December 1948 — the downward trend in Virginia shipyard employment and the yard's $69 million liner bid. FRASER, Federal Reserve Archival System. fraser.stlouisfed.org
  • Intrepid Museum, "Unsung Heroes of Shipbuilding" — women entering the Newport News yard's mechanical trades; Berline Cashwell. intrepidmuseum.org
  • International Directory of Company Histories — yard founding (1886, Collis P. Huntington, Chesapeake Dry Dock & Construction Co.), the company town, the Ferguson succession, the 31,000 wartime peak. encyclopedia.com.
  • The yard's centennial supplement (Maritime Reporter, May 1986) and the Congressional Record (2018, 2019) — April 1943 peak employment, the wartime carrier rhythm, Hilton Village, and the Apprentice School's 1919 founding.
  • The silver service's later voyage — told from a 1989 Daily Press account (“Silver to Ship Out Again,” 24 May 1989), known to the publisher through a library catalogue summary (ProQuest/MBRL). The piece counts that circulate with the story — 459 pieces; 174 restored for SSN-750 — are not carried on this site: they could not be verified against the article's full text, and the publisher is seeking that text.
  • The shipyard archive at the Mariners' Museum — the museum's ArchiveGrid collection record ("Records of the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, ca. 1886–1961") and its Hidden Histories project blog (the Ellis Parker Griffith collection). ArchiveGrid · marinersmuseum.org
  • The Apprentice School's scale — the Congressional Record centennial statement (2019) and Sea Power's account: 10,800+ graduates across the school's first century, about 13 percent of the workforce, a majority of the general foremen. house.gov

The submarine and her Committee — SSN-750

  • U.S. Naval Forces Central Command / U.S. 5th Fleet — the official release on the 8 January 2007 collision with the tanker Mogamigawa, carried on DVIDS; with contemporaneous Reuters and Stars and Stripes reporting (the venturi-effect account) and Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha's own release and settlement announcement (2 October 2007). dvidshub.net
  • Dick Brown, "Post-Commissioning Support of Namesake Submarines," The Submarine Review (Naval Submarine League), April 2013 — the Liaison Committee's origin and duties ("managing homecomings, picnics, scholarship programs and holiday parties"). archive.navalsubleague.org
  • Hampton Roads Messenger, "USS Newport News Returns from Seven Month Deployment," 21 July 2020 — the Committee's 1987 creation by the City Council, its role during the 2020 deployment, and its $30,000-plus scholarship record. hamptonroadsmessenger.com
  • The City of Newport News — the Committee's current listing on the city's boards-and-commissions pages: purpose, fourteen public members, ex-officio membership (CO, XO, COB, ombudsman), monthly meetings. nnva.gov
  • Navy Flagship / militarynews.com, "Namesake city honors submarine's 25th anniversary," July 2014 — the Huntington Park proclamation by Mayor Price to Cmdr. Hartsfield for Cmdr. Tarsa and the crew; U.S. Navy photo by MC2 Benjamin Malvezzi. militarynews.com
  • H.Res. 488 (111th Congress, 2009, introduced) and Virginia Senate Joint Resolution 447 (2009) — the twentieth-anniversary record (500,000+ miles, operation names, 40 foreign port visits, four Panama transits) and the motto's meaning, respectively. govtrack.us · legis.virginia.gov
  • U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, "Consequential Words: Ship Mottos," February 2020 — Magni Nominis Umbra, "under the shadow of a great name." usni.org
  • U.S. Navy imagery and photo captions — NavSource Naval History's SSN-750 captions (launch crowd, commissioning party, 2003 strike count and Bronze Stars, homeport) and the Navy's own photos on Wikimedia Commons and DVIDS (Souda Bay 2004, homecomings 2007–2026, Iceland 2025). navsource.net · dvidshub.net
  • The inactivation — NAVADMIN 034/26 as reported by Seapower and USNI News (inactivated 31 January 2026 at Norfolk; bound for Puget Sound Naval Shipyard recycling); the 23 January 2026 Norfolk return/homeport shift per the Navy's own photo caption on DVIDS. Status is date-stamped "as of 2026" on the page.

Community accounts, labeled as such

  • The Foundation's museum pages (uss-newport-news.com/museum/) — the bell recovery, the mooring-bitt account, the 2001 acquisitions, and the 2002 restoration of Salem's Turret No. 2: the Foundation's own account, cited as such.
  • navysite.de crew list — Flor Buncab's self-recorded decommissioning-crew line: a sailor's own recollection, printed as such.
  • MaritimeQuest — dated photographs placing her at the New Orleans breaker's yard by 1 April 1993.

The conflicts, printed

Six disagreements in the record are carried openly rather than smoothed over:

  • Her build dates. Laid down 1 November 1945 — DANFS, the Naval Vessel Register, and the 1947 wire stories agree; the commissioning program's 1 October 1945 stands alone. Launched 6 March 1947: dated United Press and Associated Press stories from 6–7 March 1947 and the Navy's All Hands magazine (April 1947) all say so, as do the yard's Shipyard Bulletin christening report and the commissioning program; 6 March was Homer Ferguson's 74th birthday (he was born in 1873). DANFS and the Naval Vessel Register give 6 March 1948, but no source independent of those two Navy records supports 1948, and this site treats it as their shared error. Earlier versions of this site carried the DANFS values with the conflict open; the publisher's research review (October 2026) closed it.
  • The injured count, 1 October 1972. The USNI account drawn from the investigation says 36 seriously injured; the Hampton Roads Naval Museum says 38; an older DANFS-era text says 10. This site carries 36 and records the rest here.
  • The death count in older texts. An older account says "nineteen men were killed" — the full record is twenty, Seaman Joseph Grisafi having died of smoke inhalation on 3 October 1972.
  • Locke's diagnosis. The Atlas record's narrative says asbestosis; the Virginia Supreme Court's opinion itself says mesothelioma. This site follows the opinion and flags the discrepancy.
  • The sponsor. Mrs. Homer L. Ferguson — the 1947 wire stories, the cruise book, and the yard's christening report agree. The Hampton Roads Naval Museum's account names the mayor's wife, Elise Taylor, as sponsor; in the 1947 reporting, Mrs. R. Cowles Taylor was the matron of honor. DANFS misprints the sponsor's husband as “Homer T. Ferguson.” (The same museum piece calls the breaker's “Southern Scrapping Company” where the disposal record says Southern Scrap Material Co. — the variant is noted, not resolved.)
  • The name's ordinal. Navy reporting calls the submarine the third U.S. Navy ship named for the city; the 2009 congressional anniversary resolutions call her the eighth vessel to bear the name — a count that sweeps up vessels beyond Navy ships. This site carries "the third U.S. Navy ship of the name" and records the broader count here.

Image credits

Every photograph on this site is a U.S. federal government public-domain image, downloaded and self-hosted; nothing is hotlinked and nothing is called from a third party at page load. Full per-file citations and source URLs are listed below with each photograph.

  • Underway, 1 February 1960 — U.S. Navy photo NH 106502 (Wikimedia Commons)
  • Under construction, 8 January 1947 — U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships photo (Wikimedia Commons)
  • Commissioning week, 31 January 1949 — U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships photo 19-NN-133271 (Wikimedia Commons)
  • Firing off Vietnam, circa May 1972 — U.S. Navy photo USN 1151899 (Wikimedia Commons)
  • After 1972, Turret No. 2 plated — U.S. Navy photo (Wikimedia Commons)
  • From Salem's bow, April 1980 — official U.S. Navy photo 428-GX-K-128484, National Archives
  • Three sisters in mothballs, April 1980 — official U.S. Navy photo 428-GX-K-128499, National Archives
  • At the breaker's, 1993 — U.S. Navy photo DN-SC-93-04169 by OS2 John Bouvia
  • Deck log remarks sheet, 11 May 1959 — National Archives NND 927605, via DPLA
  • SSN-750 commissioning, 3 June 1989 — U.S. Navy photo, National Archives via DPLA
  • SSN-750 departing Souda Bay, 25 October 2004 — U.S. Navy photo 041025-N-0780F-081 (Wikimedia Commons)
  • SSN-750 at Reykjavík, 9 July 2025 — U.S. Navy photo 250709-N-YD731-1003 (Wikimedia Commons)
  • SSN-750 homecoming, 24 April 2007 — U.S. Navy photos 070424-N-8655E-002 and -003 (Wikimedia Commons)
  • SSN-750 homecoming, 15 October 2009 — U.S. Navy photo 091015-N-7705S-116 (Wikimedia Commons)
  • SSN-750 homecoming, 18 July 2020 — U.S. Navy photo by Lt. j.g. Jacob Dirr (DVIDS)
  • SSN-750 last homecoming, 23 January 2026 — U.S. Navy photo 260123-N-LR905-4091 by MC2 Ace Foster (DVIDS)

The build

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