Dodge Boat & Plane

Newport News VA

Most recent update: September 8, 2020.

This shipyard started life in 1922, in a corner of the Dodge automobile plant in Detroit, the brainchild of Horace E. Dodge. Two years later, he created the Horace E. Dodge Boat Works in Detroit, and was soon building several hundred boats a year, with Defoe Boat Works as a subcontractor. In 1929, he renamed it the Horace E. Dodge Boat & Plane Company and moved it to a 100-acre site in Newport News VA, which apparently cost over $2 million to develop, and employed 700 workers, producing 40 boats a day. In WWII, they built 27 rescue boats, 25 mooring tugs, 74 landing craft and possibly something else, since there's a gap in the schedule between the mooring tugs and the landing craft. The company built some of the most beautiful launches and runabouts, which are now collector's items. There used to be a great web site at dodgeboats.org but it's disappeared: does anyone know where it went? The yard was located at the southern tip of Newport News, at the foot of Marshall Avenue. See the site - later the Chase Packaging plant - from the air on Google here: it was razed in 2021 and is to be rebuilt as an apartment complex. The table below just summarizes their wartime production.

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O/N Customer Type LDT LOA Delivered Notes
P-42-68 US Army rescue boat 42 11/1941 - 5/1942 27 boats
MT-31-55 US Army Mooring tugboat 26 4/1942 - 6/1942 25 boats
Q-1171 US Navy HDML 54 72 11 Dec 1942 to RN, returned 1947
Q-1172 US Navy HDML 54 72 16 Dec 1942 to RN, returned 1947
Q-1173 US Navy HDML 54 72 7 Jan 1943 to RN, returned 1947
Q-1174 US Navy HDML 54 72 16 Jan 1943 to RN, returned 1947
Q-1175 US Navy HDML 54 72 12 Feb 1943 to RN, returned 1947
Q-1176 US Navy HDML 54 72 12 Feb 1943 to RN, returned 1947
Q-1177 US Navy HDML 54 72 12 Feb 1943 to RN, returned 1947
Q-1178 US Navy HDML 54 72 12 Feb 1943 to RN, returned 1947
Q-1179 US Navy HDML 54 72 4 Mar 1943 to RN, destroyed by hurricane in Jamaica 21-Aug-44
Q-1180 US Navy HDML 54 72 4 Mar 1943 to RN, returned 1947
Q-1181 US Navy HDML 54 72 23 Mar 1943 to RN, returned 1947
Q-1182 US Navy HDML 54 72 23 Mar 1943 to RN, returned 1947
LCVP-25142-215 US Navy landing craft 36 3/1943 - 11/1943 74 boats

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