ARLINGTON, Va. — The aircraft carrier construction team at HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding faced a key deadline in March 2022.
The team was on the hook to move a block of the keel for the future Enterprise weighing hundreds of tons into the dry dock.
Shipbuilders outfit these pieces, known as superlifts, in the final assembly platform on the pier, installing the piping and wiring into these massive Lego blocks and then crane-lifting them into place in the dry dock.
But, a single component threatened to throw off this complex activity, Brian Fields, the vice president for Enterprise and sister ship Doris Miller, recently told reporters.
In November 2021, the team learned one cast metal part — a critical but sensitive component Fields declined to name — would not be available until late June or early July.
“I needed to put that huge superlift into the dry dock,” he said. “It…
