Platoon 133 Construction Battalion USN Camp De Soto : unknown location
Photograph Order Number #23429
Digital scan coming soon
The library hasn't digitized this image yet — but the original print exists in their archive, so Bob can still produce it for you. Quote order number #23429 when you reach out.
About this photograph
- Negative Number
- 24-133
- Date
- Creator
- Burgert Brothers
- Publisher
- Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library
- Source (original item)
- 1 photograph : b&w ; 21 x 26 cm +1 negative (21 x 26 cm)
- Format
- JPEG2000
- General Notes
- Neg. no. 24-133; taken March 21, 1942.
Subjects
Notes
Image part of the Burgert Brothers Digitization Project; to be added.
Tampa in the 1940s
World War II put Tampa in uniform. MacDill Field opened in April 1941 and turned into a major bomber-training base — B-17s, B-26s, later B-29s — with as many as 15,000 personnel, plus Drew and Henderson Fields backing it up. The shipyards became the biggest employers in town: Tampa Shipbuilding turned out minesweepers, cargo ships, and destroyer escorts, while McCloskey's yard at Hooker's Point built concrete ships, then steel freighters. Gasparilla sat out 1942 through 1946 and came roaring back in 1947 — that's when the children's parade started. After the war the uniforms went home but the growth stuck around: about 108,000 Tampans in 1940 became nearly 125,000 by 1950. This decade's photographs capture a city mobilized and then rebuilding — military installations, working shipyards, and streets adjusting to peacetime growth.
Sources: Tampa's MacDill Field during World War II (University of South Florida Libraries); Shipbuilding in Tampa During World War II (University of South Florida Libraries); Gasparilla History (Gasparilla Pirate Fest); Tampa at Midcentury: 1950 (University of South Florida Libraries)