A Wonder of WWII - The Advanced Base Sectional Dock (ABSD)

The Historical Society of Santa Rosa kicks off 2024 with another in our series of free webinars, A Wonder of WWII - The Advanced Base Sectional Dock (ABSD) with Andy Werback.

When the US Navy started operations in the South Pacific in 1942, the ship docking facilities were limited to ports in New Zealand, Australia, Pearl Harbor, and a few ports on the west coast of America. This required trips of thousands of miles for servicing or battle damage repairs.

The need for a “portable” floating dry dock resulted in the Advanced Base Sectional Dock (ABSD) – a self-sustaining design that could be built rapidly and deployed to safe areas near the battle zone. This saved many damaged ships and allowed many more ships to remain near the action instead of spending weeks sailing to a shore-based facility.

Andy Werback is from China Lake, California, home of Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake. He and wife Sam call Sebastopol home. Andy is a retired software engineer spending 35 years programming embedded computers for Radar Warning (ALR-67, ALR-74) and IEEE 802.11 (WiFi). He earned his BS and Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering from U.C. Davis where he also began his flight training 48 years ago. He built and currently flies a Lancair Legacy sport aircraft.

His other hobbies include history, particularly the US Navy in World War II. He was a docent and ship keeper on the S.S. Jeremiah O’Brien, a WWII Liberty ship based in San Francisco.

Our zoom host and emcee Leslie Graves facilitates questions during the last 30-minutes of the webinar. This webinar was presented live on Thursday, January 18, 2024 and is approximately 100 minutes in length.

Videos linked in the presentation are the following:
WWII documentary construction, launching, cruiser repair:    • Floating Dry Docks WWII  

And, a 3-min video from the Press Democrat:
   • Modeling history  

Facebook site is mentioned during the Q&A:
San Francisco Maritime & Coastal History Club FB site:   / 181611878645487  

For upcoming events, membership, information and to make a donation to Historical Society of Santa Rosa www.HistoricalSocietySantaRosa.org