Ingalls Shipbuilding Yard, Mississippi

Ingalls Shipyard is one of the largest shipbuilding facilities in the United States, and the state's largest private employer. Navy destroyers, cruisers, nuclear submarines, and numerous other types of vessels are built at this 800-acre shipyard, more than a square mile of intense heavy engineering, on the Mississippi coast. Like many American shipyards, it grew quickly during WWII, but unlike most others, it continued to grow after the war, peaking with 25,000 workers in 1977, as the Navy's busiest battleship building facility. It was operated by Litton Industries for many years, until Litton was acquired by Northrop Grumman in 2001. Northrop's other Gulf shipyard is the Avondale Yard, near New Orleans. Northrop also operates the largest shipbuilding yard in the nation, at Newport News, Virginia.