the yard attempted to become part of the building of the Forrestal-class aircraft carriers when Bethlehem objected to the awarding of the contracts to the Newport News Shipbuilding and the New York Naval Yard. Although the company pointed out that it had produced many carriers during World War II, Newport News pointed out that the company never requested an improvement of its shipbuilding facilities by the government during the war, which hampered its future bidding of aircraft carrier construction. That it had not built a single carrier since the end of the war also hurt its chances. The yard was later rewarded four frigates to build instead. The yard began a new era when it was awarded construction of , a nuclear guided-missile cruiser. Such was the amount of work involved in the building of the Long Beach that the yard had to decline building , the world's first nuclear-powered merchant ship. The yard entered into an expansion period during these years, replacing six pre-World War I sliding ways, which could now accommodate between three and six ships. Ships were built for the Greek shipping company Stavros Niarchos including a tanker with a capacity of of crude oil, named and . The yard produced the nation's largest tanker, , which was christened by Frederica of Hanover, Queen of Greece. Fore River also branched out into radar tower construction in this time, constructing Texas Tower 2 in 1955 and Texas Tower 3 in 1956. The 1960s began with a five-month strike by workers over either wages and benefits (according to local newspapers), or unilateral work rules (according to the Industrial Union of Marine and Ship-building Workers). In the midst of the strike, the Navy towed , which was under conversion at the time, to the nearby Boston Navy Yard for completion, an action which prompted both laborers and management to negotiate a three-year contract and helped to nullify unpopular work rules. Later that year, the Long Beach was launched, which was a major achievement for the yard. 1962 brought about the construction of , which was the largest commercial vessel built in the United States at the time, and became the first ship to transit the Northwest Passage to the Alaska North Slope oil fields. The Bainbridge was launched in that year, but not without accusations from the government that Bethlehem overcharged the Navy, as the costs increased from almost $