Back in the Major League

With a hefty, two-handed swing, the wife of Senator Tom Connally last week smashed a magnum of California champagne against the bow of the biggest, fastest, most luxurious ship ever built in the U.S. Then, before 10,000 flag-waving spectators at Newport News, Va., the 51,500-ton, 990-ft. United States was "launched," i.e., she was towed from the flooded drydock in which she was built (she was too big for the ways of any U.S. shipyard) into the James River, and gently nudged by twelve tugs to her finishing pier.

By next summer, the United States Lines will put its superliner--now 70% completed--on the transatlantic run. Third largest passenger ship in the world (behind the Cunard's two Queens), the United States will carry 2,000 passengers and a 1,000-man crew at better than 30 knots, and her builders think she can crack the Queen Mary's transatlantic record of 3 days 20 hr. 42 min. Said Vice Admiral Edward L. Cochrane, Federal Maritime Board chairman: "For the first time in many decades we are playing again in the major league of the North Atlantic."

Hard to Sink. The United States narrowly missed being finished as a troopship. Only a change of heart by the Defense Department last fall (TIME, Nov. 13) allowed her to be fitted out as a civilian luxury liner. But Naval Architect William Francis Gibbs, who devised the mass-production method of building the Liberty ships, planned the United States so that she can be converted in a short time to carry 14,000 troops. Below decks the United States has the same watertight compartments which make Navy ships hard to sink. To keep the ship fireproof, no wood has been used "except in the pianos and the butcher's chopping blocks"; all the paint is fire-resistant, and the furniture is stuffed with spun glass.

Helping Hand. To the Europe-bound traveler, however, the United States will look as luxurious as any ship in the world. Among her features: 2 2 public rooms, two theaters, and kitchens equipped with electronic radar stoves. Her two giant smokestacks, largest ever built, have fishtail fins to waft the ship's exhaust away from the sports and sun decks below.

The ship cost more than $70 million, with the Government kicking in $42 million to help pay for the military features and the extra cost of building her in an American shipyard rather than in low-cost foreign yards. The United States will also get a subsidy from the Government, possibly up to six figures a year, to make up the difference between U.S. operating costs and the average operating costs of foreign competitors.

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