Arthur Leopold Busch

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Arthur Leopold Busch (1866-1956) was a British-born American naval architect (born on March 5, 1866) responsible for the development of America's first submarines. He was the shipyard superintendent at Lewis Nixon's Crescent Shipyard located in Elizabethport, New Jersey at the turn of the last century. This shipyard is where the United States Navy's first submarines were built under Busch's supervision beginning in the late fall of 1896. Busch worked in unison with John Philip Holland to design and build the first submarine craft accepted by the United States Navy, on April 11, 1900. This particular day is commemorated [today] by the United States submarine community as "Submarine Day".

This pioneering craft was originally laid down as the "Holland VI" but was renamed the USS Holland on April 11, 1900. Holland's company was then known as The Holland Torpedo Boat Company - the forerunner and precursor to the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics Corporation. The USS Holland was eventually given the SS-1 designation... America's first truly viable submarine.

Busch was also responsible for the design and development of many ship classes for the United States Navy and contributed to their production through both World Wars. Mr. Busch was also sent to Yokosuka, Japan during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 to build the Imperial Japanese Navy's first submarines during this time period. This work was done on behalf of the newly renamed Electric Boat Company and the company's very first President/CEO, Isaac Leopold Rice. Busch was a shipbuilding consultant during World War II and worked at some of the largest shipyards in the world for the great majority of his life. He was a draftsman-in-charge at the famous Harland and Wolff shipyards in Belfast, Ireland between the years 1888-1892... the same shipyard where the RMS Titanic was built a decade a so afterwords. After World War I, Busch changed his last name to Du Busc in 1919 - this was most probably due to the large amount of anti-German sentiment that existed in the United States during that time. Mr. Busch (Du Busc) can trace his family lineage to that of Huguenot origins.

[edit] References

  • Who Built Those Subs? by John P. Holland's primary biographer and submarine historian, Richard Knowles Morris, PhD; published by the United States Naval Institute in Naval History Magazine - October 1998 (125th anniversary) issue.
  • John P. Holland, 1841-1914 - Inventor of the Modern Submarine, published by the University of South Carolina Press, 1998, originally published in 1966 under the same title.
  • Submarine Pioneers, by Richard Compton-Hall MBE RN, Sutton Publishing LTD. UK. 1999.
  • International Directory of Company Histories, Volume 86. Published by Thomson Gale Group/St. James Press, July 2007 under the heading General Dynamics/Electric Boat Corporation. pp 136-139.
  • The Defender, "The Story of General Dynamics", published by Harper-Collins, 1986. Written by former Business Week on-line editor Roger Franklin.
  • The Klaxon, official newsletter of the U. S. Navy's "Silent Service", published by the Nautilus Memorial Submarine Force Library and Museum, New London/Groton CT. March 1992.
  • Documents and letters written by John Philip Holland, Elihu B. Frost, Lewis Nixon etc. complementing Arthur L. Busch's proficiency in the field of naval architecture and shipbuilding during the time when the United States Navy's first submarines were being developed at Nixon's Crescent Shipyard (NJ). These documents are archived and can be found housed at The Nautilus Memorial Submarine Force Library and Museum in New London CT.
  • The New York Times, Sunday March 11th, 1956. Obituary section.

[edit] External links