By using Higgins Boats, armies could unload across an open beach and have more options in choosing their attack points. This also stretched the defending armies. Instead of concentrating on only a few entry points, defenders had to cover more shoreline. The success of these boats ensured that Higgins Industries would be a major employer during the War. A small workforce of only 75 workers in grew to over 20, by The Higgins workforce was the first in New Orleans to be racially integrated.
LCTs were usually built in three sections and transported to their debarkation port for welding together into their foot length. The LCT-6 carried three medium tanks or two hundred tons of cargo. With flat bottoms for beaching on the hostile shore, LCTs were notoriously difficult to maintain on course in strong winds or currents.
British-built LCTs were powered by two diesels, providing a maximum of ten knots. They were larger than their American counterparts, measuring feet long by thirty-one wide with a three-foot, ten-inch draft. At tons, they were crewed by two officers and ten men and could carry five Churchills or eleven Shermans. A typical loadout for an American LCT was four DD tanks and four jeeps with a trailer filled with ammunition and supplies.
The magnitude of the invasion is partly illustrated by the fact that LCTs were involved, of which were committed to the sixty-four flotillas delivering troops and equipment to the five beaches.
The balance were mainly LCT A and R craft with artillery and rocket-firing batteries aboard, respectively. Twentyfour U. The most familiar type of amphibious craft in the war, LCVPs carried platoon-sized units of some thirty-six infantrymen, or a single vehicle, or five tons of cargo. The troops or cargo were debarked over a retractable bow ramp, permitting direct access to the beach. LCVPs were built to various capacities but were all powered by a hp diesel or a hp gasoline engine and typically were thirty-six feet long with a beam of ten feet, ten inches.
Built of oak, pine, and mahogany, they weighed fifteen thousand pounds empty. Their light weight and powerful engines drove them at twelve knots. The propeller was recessed and protected by a shroud that prevented fouling in shallow water.
Each craft had a three-man crew of coxswain, engineer, and crewman. The latter could man one of two. The LCM was also significantly wider in order or accommodate a tank. The larger size of an LCM allowed for greater cargo capacity.
Gift in memory of Andres N. Operating in units called flotillas, the LCMs mostly made the crossing on their own power; few were towed or transported aboard troop transports. If the crossing was rough on a troop transport, it was miserable in the open, low LCMs. As H-Hour neared, they pulled alongside troop transports, picking up men to ferry them ashore.
One member of Flotilla 2 was Lieutenant junior grade Robert E. Though details on the photos are limited, some appear to have been taken early in the day on June 6. At a. The LCM was packed with a demolition team and their equipment. In a stroke of luck, the entire team was not immediately killed. The survivors were picked up by another LCM and taken ashore. Gift of Robert Bedford, LCMs land troops on Utah Beach.
A cargo carrier M29 Weasel has just debar. The troops are likely part of the th Glider Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne. After retracting from the beach, the LCMs began a long day of ferrying men and equipment to the beach from transports miles offshore along with the other craft in their flotilla. Joined later in the day by 17 additional LCMs which had crossed the Channel from Dorset, England, the 66 remaining LCM of Flotilla 2 continued to ferry men and equipment back and forth from the beach for over a week.
The work the men of Flotilla 2 carried out was constant and exhausting. They had gotten off to a rocky start when they set out from Dartmouth, England, on June 3. The invasion was postponed, and the convoy headed for Utah Beach was turned around. There was no rest for the crews of the LCMs, had to stay on station in the convoy, ready to leave as soon as the word came down.
By 11 p. They had been on their landing craft for over 72 hours.
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