Posted at 4:37 p.m., Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Pearl Harbor shipyard to get new commander
Associated Press
The state's largest industrial employer will have a new boss next week after Capt. Gregory Thomas takes over as the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard commander.Thomas comes to Hawai'i from New England, where he was the operations officer at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.
Capt. Frank Camelio, the current commander, will retire from the Navy after a June 22 change of command ceremony.
The shipyard said in a news release today that a lean program Camelio initiated saved it an estimated $20 million.
The shipyard also undertook some major repair missions, including partially fixing the USS San Francisco after the submarine struck an undersea mountain near Guam in 2005, during Camelio's tenure. The ship later went to Bremerton, Wash., for more intensive work.
Thomas was the first design manager and technical director for the world's largest unmanned submarine, the LSV-2 Cutthroat.
He also served as the first program manager's representative at Northrop Grumman Newport News for the Virginia-class of submarines, the Navy's next generation of subsurface ships. Northrup Grumman is one of the Virginia-class submarine's two builders.
The shipyard has about 5,000 workers, making it Hawai'i's largest industrial employer.
