The Brooklyn Navy Yard operated as a United States Navy shipyard in Brooklyn, New York, from 1801 to its closing on June 25, 1966. It was known officially as the New York Navy Yard until a 1945 renaming to New York Naval Shipyard, though the Brooklyn Navy Yard name stayed in common use throughout. For most of the twentieth century, the yard built and repaired warships using asbestos-containing insulation, pipe covering, and fireproofing material that was standard on Navy ships of the era. A federal appeals court later reviewed a large body of asbestos-related cases tied specifically to work performed at this yard, described below.
What work happened at Brooklyn Navy Yard (New York Naval Shipyard)
During World War II, the Navy’s own history states that the yard’s primary responsibility was ship repair, not new construction. It repaired 5,000 combat-damaged Allied ships and converted another 250 to warship standards, work that earned it the nickname the “Can-Do Shipyard.” One of its more demanding jobs was USS Franklin (CV-13), hit by two bombs off Japan in March 1945. At the yard, about 80 percent of the carrier’s superstructure had to be cut away and rebuilt, her armament replaced, and the entire ship rewired.
Alongside that repair load, the yard also built new ships through the war and after it. During World War II it launched three battleships, North Carolina, Iowa, and Missouri, four aircraft carriers, and eight tank landing ships. USS Missouri (BB-63), the ship on whose deck Japan signed the instrument of surrender on September 2, 1945, was built start to finish at this yard: laid down January 6, 1941, launched January 29, 1944, and commissioned June 11, 1944.
After the war, New York Naval Shipyard became the Navy’s primary design yard for converting and modernizing Essex-class carriers so they could operate larger, heavier, and faster jet aircraft, a program of extensive structural rebuilding rather than clean new construction. On December 19, 1960, a fire broke out aboard USS Constellation (CVA-64) while she was being outfitted at the yard. It burned for 12 hours, killed 50 workers, injured 150, and delayed the carrier’s commissioning by a year, one of the most serious industrial accidents documented at this yard. Construction of USS Oriskany (CV-34) was suspended here in August 1947 amid postwar budget cuts and sat unfinished for about three years before being completed after the Korean War began in 1950.
Repair and overhaul work of this kind, cutting into aged insulation, stripping and replacing pipe covering, tearing out and rebuilding structure, generally disturbs more material than assembling new insulation a single time. The yard’s mix of heavy new construction and even heavier overhaul work is part of what makes its asbestos record so extensively documented in federal court.
Ships in our roster built at this yard
Our roster tracks fourteen Navy ship classes, not every ship ever built at every U.S. Navy yard. Within that limited roster, nine ships across four classes were built at Brooklyn Navy Yard:
| Ship | Hull Number | Commissioned | Class |
|---|---|---|---|
| USS Iowa | BB-61 | 1943 | Iowa-class Battleship |
| USS Missouri | BB-63 | 1944 | Iowa-class Battleship |
| USS Bennington | CV-20 | 1944 | Essex-class Aircraft Carrier |
| USS Bon Homme Richard | CV-31 | 1944 | Essex-class Aircraft Carrier |
| USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (ex-Coral Sea) | CV-42 | 1945 | Midway-class Aircraft Carrier |
| USS Kearsarge | CV-33 | 1946 | Essex-class Aircraft Carrier |
| USS Oriskany | CV-34 | 1950 | Essex-class Aircraft Carrier |
| USS Saratoga | CV-60 | 1956 | Forrestal-class Aircraft Carrier |
| USS Independence | CV-62 | 1959 | Forrestal-class Aircraft Carrier |
If you or a family member served aboard any of these ships, or worked on them as a civilian yard employee during construction, that ship and hull number are useful details to note when requesting service or employment records.
Documented asbestos use at this yard
The clearest documented asbestos record for this yard comes from a federal appeals court decision, In re Brooklyn Navy Yard Asbestos Litigation, 971 F.2d 831 (2d Cir. 1992). According to that opinion, from the 1930s through the yard’s 1966 closing, workers at New York Naval Shipyard were exposed to airborne asbestos fibers from insulation products used across the site. The court found that the yard environment was, in its words, “extremely dusty with asbestos fibers,” and that the asbestos-containing products in use there were used interchangeably throughout the yard. The court also found that the Navy itself knew of the dangers of asbestos exposure but did not warn its own workers.
Several thousand New York-area asbestos cases were pending in federal and state court in the early 1990s. Roughly 600 of those involved workers exposed specifically at this yard. Those cases were consolidated under a joint federal-state order, overseen by Judge Jack B. Weinstein and Justice Helen E. Freedman, with Kenneth R. Feinberg serving as Settlement Master, and tried in groups based on what share of a person’s asbestos exposure happened at this yard specifically: more than 90 percent, 50 to 90 percent, or the remainder.
Trial evidence included a documented asbestos insulation product called Kaylo, manufactured by Owens-Illinois, Inc. and distributed by Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp. A period advertisement for “Kaylo Heat Insulation” was introduced at trial showing the product’s connection to this yard. Six manufacturers were found by the jury to have failed to warn users of the asbestos hazard in products supplied to this yard: Owens-Illinois, Owens-Corning Fiberglas, Pittsburgh Corning Corporation, Fibreboard Corporation, Keene Corporation, and the company now represented by the Manville Personal Injury Settlement Trust. No punitive damages were assessed in these proceedings.
Trades and ratings with documented exposure
The federal case record for this yard specifically documents a pipe fitter’s work history at the site. Separately, the Navy’s own history documents that by January 1945, at the height of World War II production, 4,657 women were employed at this yard in production trades that had previously been held only by men, working ten-hour shifts, six days a week. Those documented trades include:
- Pipefitter
- Electrician
- Welder
- Crane operator
- Truck driver
- Sheet-metal worker
These trades worked in close, repeated contact with pipe insulation, machinery spaces, and structural steel throughout the yard’s ships, exactly the kind of work documented as exposing workers to airborne asbestos fibers here.
Environmental record
Brooklyn Navy Yard does not appear on the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s National Priorities List under either the Brooklyn Navy Yard or New York Naval Shipyard name. A 13-acre portion of the former yard is listed separately in the New York State Registry of Inactive Hazardous Waste Disposal Sites, Site No. 224019A, addressed under the state’s own hazardous waste program. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s Record of Decision, dated March 25, 2009, identifies PCBs released during a 1986 fire at a former transformer substation, along with semivolatile organic compounds and metals, as the contaminants driving that state listing. Asbestos does not appear anywhere in that state environmental record as a contaminant of concern.
In other words, the environmental cleanup record for this site is a separate matter from the yard’s asbestos history. The well-documented asbestos exposure record for Brooklyn Navy Yard comes from the federal court proceedings described above, not from an environmental contamination listing.
If you worked at this yard
If you or a family member worked at Brooklyn Navy Yard, whether in the Navy or as a civilian employee, between the 1930s and its 1966 closing, a few kinds of records can help establish where and when that work happened:
- Military service records and a DD-214, which show ship assignments, ratings, and dates of service
- Civilian personnel or employment records from the yard, where available through federal records channels
- Union or trade records, for trades such as pipefitting, welding, or electrical work
- Ship muster rolls or deck logs tied to a specific hull number, for a documented time aboard a particular vessel
Gathering this kind of documentation is often the most useful first step, regardless of what comes next. You do not need to have all of it before you start.
You can see how this yard compares to others on our shipyards overview, read a general explanation of asbestos trust funds on our trusts page, review the VA forms page for benefit-related paperwork, or request a case review to talk through what documentation you already have.