LCVP

The Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel (LCVP) or Higgins Boat was a landing craft that saw considerable and meritorious service during the Second World War.  Some have said that it singularly changed amphibious operations inasmuch as the capture of a port facility was no longer required to necessitate the transportation of troops and material from ship to shore.

36 feet in length, this shallow-draft, barge-like craft was largely constructed of plywood (saving wartime steel and cost) and could ferry a platoon-sized complement of combat-equipped infantrymen or eight tons of cargo to a beachhead at 9-12 knots.  Disembarkation was facilitated by means of dropping the steel bow ramp.

My pop clambered down a cargo net hung over-side a troopship to board a Higgins craft for a ride to Utah Beach in June of 1944. 

US Army

The craft did not offer much in the way of protection from enemy fire and performance in choppy seas resulted in sea sickness.  Nevertheless, this boat could disgorge its contents on a beach, reverse backwards into the surf and return to a ship to reload for a return trip. 

It was a New Orleans businessman and designer, Andrew Higgins, who designed similar flat bottom boats for use in the Mississippi bayous.  The Navy had struggled over the design and construction of a landing craft until Higgins pitched his design to the Navy and Marine Corps in 1938.  Higgins' original design was adopted yet was bedeviled by the loading and unloading process.  Troops and cargo had to disembark or be off-loaded over the sides of the boat needlessly adding time, aggravation and potentially longer exposure to enemy fire.  Borrowing from a Japanese design; beginning in 1941 a drop ramp in the bow solved this dilemma.  

US Army

Over the course of the war more than 23,000 boats were built by Higgins Industries and its licensees.  Only a few have survived to modern times.  The boat pictured (top) is on display at The National WWII Museum in New Orleans.  It is a replica constructed faithfully from the original Higgins design specifications.

Notably, Andrew Higgins sold boats to the US Coast Guard to interdict gulf coast liquor smuggling during prohibition.  Local legend suggests that he sold faster boats to the rum runners.

Fact or fiction?  

If only the dead could talk....