A barge carrying the Navy’s P-82 crane moves through a drawbridge in Manitowoc, Wis., where it was manufactured, on its way to Hawaii on May 29, 2026. (U.S. Navy)
A massive crane capable of lifting 175 tons began a monthslong journey by barge last week from its manufacturer in Wisconsin to a Navy shipyard in Hawaii.
The Navy’s crane P-82 is expected to reach Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility by late summer, according to Claudia LaMantia, a spokeswoman for the shipyard.
The crane, which will join nine already at the shipyard, will have the capacity to hoist parts and equipment to the highest points of ships in drydock for repair or maintenance.
The crane stands at about 200 feet at its highest point when in operation, LaMantia said.
Weighing 1,100-tons, it was built by Konecranes Nuclear Equipment and Services of Manitowoc, Wis., 1 mile from Lake Michigan, and will traverse the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway and then pass through the Panama Canal on its way to Hawaii.
The barge will be pulled by large tugboats capable of open-ocean transits during portions of the trek.
The crane is a major component of the Navy’s ongoing Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program, which was established in 2018 to modernize equipment at the service’s four shipyards.
The other three shipyards are Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia, Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine and Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility in Washington.
All four shipyards are in dire need of upgrading and modernization, according to a May 2023 report by the Government Accountability Office.
In 2019, Konecranes won a $46 million contract from the Navy to deliver a 175-ton crane to the Puget Sound shipyard, according to a company news release at the time.
The contract contained an option to build six more cranes over the following seven years at a total cost of $330 million.
The company processed an order last month for the seventh crane that will eventually head to Portsmouth Shipyard, the firm said in a May 25 news release.
The Pearl Harbor shipyard is amid a $3.4 billion project to build a submarine-repair dry dock that began in 2024.
The dry dock, expected to be completed in 2028, will replace the smallest of the shipyard’s four dry docks.
