In February 1942, Rear Admiral Arthur W. Radford brought into the Navy a (51 -year-old photographer who had an unmatched resume. He had honed his skills and technique among the artists of the avant-garde at the turn of the century, under the watchful eye of General Billy Mitchell on the Western Front during World War I, and on the pages of Vogue and Vanity Fair in the 1920s and 1930s. The photographer was Edward Steichen. Though “hired” to produce photographs for the recruitment of naval aviators and propaganda for the naval aviation program, Steichen expanded his orders to include all aspects of naval wartime activity. One summer day in 1943, he and the other photographers on his team documented a day’s work for the civilians and naval personnel at the Electric Boat shipyard at Groton, Connecticut, and the submarine base at nearby New London. The following photographs, arranged to progress from the earliest stage of a submarine’s construction to her outfitting, are but a few of those Steichen and his men took on that day.
The photographs begin with the foundry workers pouring molten metal and casting a ship part at Electric Boat. Steichen typically used natural light, and here it emanates from the white-hot metal to illuminate the faces.
Furthermore, the subjects’ look of grim determination calls to mind the American character in time of adversity, a theme that fascinated Steichen before the war and underlay all his combat photography.
Outside the foundry, Steichen recorded activity in and around the shipyard cranes. A poster of a cavalla chewing on the seat of Hitler’s pants bedecks one crane. The Cavalla (SS-244), was launched in November and won the Presidential Unit Citation after she tracked a Japanese task force and relayed information that aided the U.S. victory at the Battle of the Philippine Sea. The Cavalla was awarded four battle stars and sank 34,180 tons of shipping.
The Steichen photographs proceed to the actual construction process. Giant hull rings are the focal point, as they contrast the enormity of the war machine with the smallness of the men working on them. Steichen made a mundane subject a poignant one by comparing the size of the material to the humans beside it. And he contrasted the tragedy implicit in the construction of the implements of war with the light bantering of the workers.
Steichen photographed the hull of the Blenny (SS-324) at two different times of the day, from two slightly different angles, and with different men in the foreground. In the one reproduced here, a man leans against a support and is part of a good documentary picture of the construction process. The second photo shows a distracted worker, tall and lanky with a furrowed brow, holding his gloves idly. He also stands outside the photograph and seems to bring up the rear of a queue of white-painted supports marching toward the Blenny’s hull in a neat perspective line.
Men cut holes in the hull of the Blenny with gas torches in the following picture. A flaming tail of sparks from one of the torches gives an unexpected dash of color to this heavily shadowed photograph. The Blenny's keel was laid on 8 July 1943, and she was launched the following April.
In another shot of the Blenny, men install sections of the pressure hull. The viewer gets an impression of the size of the completed submarine and the cramped space that will be the living environment of the sailors.
Steichen finds a turbaned woman reading the Blenny's blueprints while precariously balanced atop its hull sections. Her cuffed blue jeans and scuffed saddleshoes look contemporary. This interesting shot is an ironic send-up of the fashion photography Steichen did for Vogue and Vanity Fair.
Still atop the Blenny, Steichen catches the men who electric-welded hooks, brackets, and braces to the bull-nose so that it could be lifted. The detail is so sharp that the hair and tattoos on the man’s arms are visible. Although the man in the foreground wears glasses, they are not safety glasses and no shirt protects his skin from the flying sparks.
During his stay in Connecticut, Steichen also shot pictures of the U.S. Submarine Base at New London. There he photographed a chief petty officer loading a torpedo into a submarine under a cloudless blue sky. The striking closeup portrait of a chief in mid command reveals the strenuous and hard labor required of those in the Navy. His sunburned skin indicates the time he has spent on the sea and his sweat- and dirt-stained clothing the hard work he has accomplished that day.
Steichen continued to document the varied life and work at the base, the completed boats, the men working and relaxing on the S-and V-class submarines. He even posed well- groomed officers and enlisted men below decks in the engine, control, and wardrooms, and the mess. Steichen caught and preserved the daily existence of the military and civilian personnel of Groton-New London at the height of the war effort. In the process, he composed an historical record and occasionally created a work of photographic art—all of which was just a day’s work for Edward Steichen.