SHIPBUILDING IN GDANSK: SHIPYARDS/CONSTRUCTION OFFICES/SHOCK TEMPO SHIPBUILDING/SOVIET SPECIFICATIONS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-00809A000500310008-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 17, 2010
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: December 1, 1953
• Content Type: REPORT

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occ'TOSi a'-*o
U.S. Officials Only
COPT- lDEiiTIi L
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
INFORMATION REPORT
Shipbuilding in Gdansk: Shipyards/Construction Offices/
Shock Tempo Shipbuilding/Soviet Specifications
NO, OF PAGES If
NO. OF ENCLS.
SUPP. TO
REPORT NO
TNII D000.i1Nr-C61.TD INS 1NI .11,7,3? 4571371 NG r?1 N4 r1 DNA1 DC'1N,I)C'IO,T
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MD TIN. 3r TI,1 u.5 CODE. 44 u...NOa. 1rs r4q 4?1?.5130 3. .,.I.
LATIN. 07 175 LONTINn r3 a 713,1.7 .0 ,N u?w7?On AcD 41443. 1I
Gdansk Shipyards
2. "There are three shipyard; in GdAnr.k:? S_ncznla,Gdanaka, Stocznia Polnocna (both
subordinated tc the 'diniro;ry for Machine building - Ministeretwo Przemyslu
Maszynowego) and the f:epairf; Shipyard (:^ubordinated to the Ministry for Ship-
building - Mini..,ter txo 7.eglugi
Construction Cf1?.L::es
3. 11A cocatruct.or at Cent."ra ne Bior:: N.1~n-arui_cj1 Okretowych (.onstruction offices)
in Gdansk both draf_j blt4eprin*:. and cielculate?=: design specifications. He it
superior to the r:~gu_lar draftsmen. ira.:, are in turn superior to the trasseura,
or men who make v: _'den model; _.i? t , :.rna:ll ;hip parts for the smiths to re-
produce in metal, Mrlnv of ?he employee:, at the Centralise B1uro Konctrukcji
Okretowych ut,:dy n:?ht._ r,.., he 'ie~:hna..}:um lt-uiowy Okretow Din Pracv,)acych,
2 Piramowicza St,r - C la.to:-k; to r??r :Ime f,;.112-fledged marine nrehitacts.
If. "A typicasl _onc~rl:c ;,r tt Cent.rs.lnr :.~r' Kr)n;0ruitc,ji Ukretowych hue a basic
monthly salary of bU?,,, 7 z.1. p1LS it bonus' of 150 zi - although hit,
work may be ent'r.^ Ly ;n land? He cat,; i E'.rea e hie income through overfulfill-
ment of norms, is doing h_-r; v:.rk it, a ?.n::?rter period of time than prescribed.
II. S. Official, Only
CONFIDEN !'TM.
{f N
DISTR I, TT ION '.iTATE T__ I;-Mr ^Z ..r ;IN T~F111 Oast 1, r.'
This report is for the use within tin USA of the Intelllgeurc (oniponerots of the Departments or
Agencies IndleaII'd Tlhove. It is not to be trunsrnitted oversew., withou! t!:r cor-aueuce of the
nrl,0nntl.^.g ot!i;:: *,' :-u1;h lilt, Asr;TSta?.t Director of the dtllce of Collection and Disseminnt},on; CIA.
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If he could 1, execute hl.: assignments in half tae time prescribed he could earn 500-600
zl more income per month. As such speed is impo'eible, another method is used. At
the beginning of each month a constructor get:, his work quota - say, 20 ports or pieces
of equipment for which to calculo+e the %:,ecifications and prepare blueprints. According
to the plan his norm is fulfilled if nc nas these blueprints ready within the month. If
he does the work more quickly he gets a premium. The amount p:_'d out in premiums depends
on the speed of the worker. In order to earn as much as possible, t. -instructor aorta
out his assignments. He selects those requiring the least calculations. -::?.tead of
sitting at them for a week, he prepares them in three days - and gets more than double
his salary for that week because he has done 25% of his work with an 'akord of 200%'.
The remaining assignments are also executed in groups based on the degree of complexity.
Since each is paid for separately, a constructor can earn 20 up to 80% more than his basic
salary, if he really sets his mind to it and knows the tricks of the trade, i e when to
calculate seriously and when to guess. Of course, this means that the work is inaccurate,
but that is isomething nobody carsa about.
Shock Tempo ShIpbuildin
Ships are built today at shock tempo (udarnyje temps). The only important thing is
speed. That yields bad results. To speed up preparation of blueprints, the Centralne
Biuro Konstrukcji Okr~:.owych no longer calculates accurately the dimensions and weights
of various parts. The constructors guess. For instance, if a constructor has to deter-
mine the diameter of a pillar or support in a ship he reasons as follows: 'In accordance
with the type of ship the diameter should be 30 cm. But the material we use is of pretty
bad quality.! Therefore I shall put into my blueprint a pillar of 45 cm just to be on
the safe sido.' Taken together, all such 'safe' pillars, supports, dividing walls, steel
plates etc,l, made the ship up to 30% heavier than it should be and not safer at all;
safety depe.ids on accurate design.
Not only are metal parts made thicker and heavier than required. Masts, doors, etc
down to the simplest. hooks and catches, are designed unnecessarily massive. Things
have gone so far that the steel wires used in a ship have been made 18 mm `?'irker than
required - 38 mm instead of the necessary 20 mm - and, a thing that cannot be explained
by any safety factor, 150 sun long instead of the required 50 m. It is the same with
pipes and the outer hull; they are made 30 mm thick instead of 20 me. The only excep-
tion is iron chains; their dimensions are standardized.
"Thus, the required speed of production has made acr:ura}..e n impossible and
reduced the safety and the operative potential of a ship. all ships
built in Polish shipyards now suffer from such constructional defects as Listed above.
Guessing instead of calculation has been a practice since 1949.
None of the newer Polish ships are really seaworthy
1. The fallowing projects had serious faults caused by shoddy construction:
a. Project 150,001: The supports (reinforcements) of the foremast obstructed
the forward view from the captain's bridge. Special openings had. to be
made through the supports so that the captain could see the prow of his
ship. This weakened the mast considerably. The chip was built in summer
1953-
b. Pro ect 131,005: The armature (ermatura oh etwa) of this ship upiit during
its tr:cl tour in :'eptenber 1953. The deck had Split in August 1953 while
the ship wan still in the shipy!..rd. The platen had been poorly welded.
C. Pr.9 cc t 150,002; The board f ic7 of this nhi}> was danaged during launching
2niexnztalcenir nadburcia na srodokrecie) in July 1953. plate: had to
be repln(- rd _
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d. Project 132,001: The anchor could not be drawn because certain holes in
side of the ship were too small. Thai. happened in late summer 1953.
e. Project 130,011: The foreward reinforcement plate (grodz zderzeniowa)
was welded obliquely, instead of under an angle of 900. This happened
in September 1953. Nobody had measured properly.
f. Project 130,014: The entire lifesaving equipment on this sh`_n. including
the boats, had to be dismantled. The rodnie ratunkove were so pc:~r that
they did not hold water during the tests in August 1953. New equipment
had to be made et the yacht shipyard in Szczecin.
g. Project 131,007: Water seeped in at points where the plates had been
SEW This happened in the beginning of September 1953. The welding
had been done by the leading brigade, under (fnu) Cichowlas, the famous
welder.
h. All the lifeboats built date not spec:ified7 at the Uetka shipyards had
a warped step ka caused by the use of raw timber.
.0. "Accident prevention is badly organized in all three shipyards at Gdansk. Fatal
accidents occur. On 27 July 53 at Stocznia Gdanska one of the workers was killed
instantly and another severely wounded when a press that was being hoisted fell on
its foundation. The press was smashed. The widows of men killed by accidents during
work got only a tiny pension - between 50 and 120 zl per month. In certain canes,
if the victim was a prominent shockworker, he may be buried a' the /a4 a of the
enterprise, i e of the state.
.1. Soviet Specifications
"Whenever the Polish shipyards build a ship for the Soviets, the latter insist that
they be provided with three times as many spare parts as are required in international
rules. This, the Soviets say, is because they want the ship fit to meet any emergency
on the high seas. They maintain that the Poles lose nothing in this, because they
are comp-sated under the trade agreement. That is not true. The Soviets pay . if
they pay at all - per ship only, irrespective of how many spare parts it carries.
2. "On arrival in Leningrad, the new Polish-built ships turn over two-thirds of their
spare parts to Soviet ships that have not been built in Poland. This procedure
happened with the following coal and iron ore transports (rudove lowee): s/s WORKUTA,
s/s DONBAS, a/c KUZBAS (4880 tons) and s/s CH1-AF'K}{O,;0 (262-0 tons and others in
that same series. For earn chip in the CHEF MKHC`!O series, at least 40 tans of metal
for spare parts were used in excess over what was legitimate - not to mention other
types of construction material.
Dzien Stoczniowca
.3. "Every year on 29 June the i)zien `?toczniowca, or -,)ay of the ^hipyard Worker, is solemnly
celebrated on the Polish coact. In honor of that day the chlpyardn must undertake all
sorts of 'socialist obligations'.
.4. "In 1953 the 2tou7ni.a Gdanska undertook to . acuich en "9 June- P. cargo freighter of the
LEWANT tyr', 4000 tons. Her name was to be 1,,')I~' . The Ohl,) was duly built and entered
nn finished into the report for plan i'ulfillment. '.hen see was launched, however, the
engines did not work properly. The r?paira took some time, but t:,.=y did work in the
end. Then the real misfo'tune happened. In the general excitement nouc-dy nutiued that
a large piece of timber, r_Imnst a beam, had floated aft. .hen the propeller was set
in motion, it caught the been and one of the blades was Draker.. H.d this accident
happened in the capitalist world It would not ',wive been a major catastrophe. new
propeller would have been iotched .'roe a warehouse, ana everything would have been
in order. In sociali.at "oland, however, the clan provides one propeller for every
ship and no more. if two are used nomebody v'll nave to answer fr,r this 'wcecxing'
' n?IFI I+i:: "-'I'! ' U" ' I'FIC2,1L`' ONLY/SECURITY INF01141.TION
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of the plan. The malagesssc~nt of Stocznia Gdanska found an ingenious way out Qf the
LODZ difficulty. The next day the local paper carried a short notice: 'Yesterday
the LODZ was renamed KOP NIK' (not to be confused with the ferry of that name).
This little ruse not only provided them with the right to provide the ship with a
new propeller but also to note a considerable overfulfil3ment of the plan (przekroc-
zenie planu). No ship called KOPEItNIK had even been pr.-ject'r Pt Stocznia Gdanska and
no material appropriated for it. On paper, however, the Storzn.Lu ,:,', rred to have
built two ships with Ithe n+aterial for one. The management could expect. , r-lmium
for having saved raw materials and for having produced more ships than expected.
Also, if it did not fulfil its actual plan, this ruse would provide camouflage. There
might be no premiums, but also no reprimands or fines. 1z. all probability it, viii
be the latter situation. toczni, Gdansska was scheduled to build two more ships of
the LEWANT type during 195 the WARS WA and the NOWA HUTA They probably will not
be finished on time. IIt is quite possible that this LODZ falsification will never
be discovered. The agencies which cLeck on plan fulfillment look at the reports only
and do not count the ships sailing the seven seas. In a report everything in sure to
look all right; nobody's s picionc will even be aroused.
15. "The LODZ incident did not prevent the authorities from solemnly celebrating he 1953
Dzien Stoczniowca. Sierut and Rc.kossovski arrived in Gdansk for the occasion.. (fnu)
Kostoj, the manager of Sto znia Gdanska, made a long speech on the work at the ship-
yard: the unproductive pas under capitalism, the great plans for the future. Zone
of the ordinary workers present even pretended to listen to the speech. They were
interested in the distribution of prizes and the subsequent party in the largest hall
of the shipyard, the co-caled theater hall. The prizes were digtrib uteri ; to .a}~pck-
workers in this order: sixIAGA radio sets (the highest prize), eight 8HL motorcycles -
125 corm, 16 bicycles, sui" lengths, purchasing certificates for textiles, Z01watches,
six suits of work overalls and, lastly, to the least deserving, diplomas for good work.
A dance followed which was attended by all the high CP officials of the shipyard and
of the town of Gdannk.l Abqut 300 persons were present. There was vodka, wine, bear
and a fine cold buffet. 1 I
(fnu) Kostoj
16. "The general manager of St eznih rdannk4 i
COI+FIM- i`ITIAL; US OFFICIAi:
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