Miloch
June 7th 19, 04:36 AM
Time to Pay Your Respects to the Plywood Boat that Helped Win WWII
https://jalopnik.com/time-to-pay-your-respects-to-the-plywood-boat-that-help-1835301842
As you likely know, it’s the 75th anniversary of D-Day, when 160,000 Allied
troops invaded the beaches of Normandy, undertaking the largest from-the-sea
invasion in the history of human warfare and marking the beginning of the end
for the Axis. The actual business of getting over 100,000 soldiers and a metric
crapton of vehicles and equipment from the ocean on to land is a decidedly
non-trivial problem, one that the Allies solved with a brilliant but simple
patented plywood boat: the Landing Craft, Vehicle and Personnel (LCVP), also
called the Higgins Boat.
The Higgins Boat, named after its inventor, Andrew Higgins, was designed to
solve what was basically the “last mile” problem for a military invasion: they
could get all the troops and equipment over to the coast on large naval
transport ships, but how do you then get all those people and that stuff from
the ships onto the sandy beach?
To do that, you need some specialized boats, able to carry lots of people or
cargo, with a very shallow draft to let them float right up to the very shore,
and then you need some way to get all those soldiers and their equipment out of
those boats, quickly and easily, because, remember, they’re being shot at by
Nazis the entire time.
This problem is not just huge, solving it was absolutely critical to the very
invasion itself. In fact, Dwight D. Eisenhower, at the time the Supreme Allied
Commander in Europe, said of the Higgins boat and its inventor that
“If Higgins had not designed and built those LCVPs, we never could have landed
over an open beach. The whole strategy of the war would have been different.”
Andrew Higgins was an interesting guy; he started out in the lumber business in
Louisiana, but got into boat building in part by realizing the specialized
transportation needs of trappers and oil-drillers in the Louisiana swamps, where
shallow-draft boats were needed.
Higgins’ boat design, called “Eureka,” had a shallow draft and a protected
propeller and were very easy to beach and then return to the water, all
properties of the later LCVP. During prohibition, Higgins sold these types of
fast, maneuverable boats to both liquor bootleggers and the Coast Guard that
chased them down, a pretty savvy business decision.
During testing in 1938 by the Marines and Navy, Higgins’ Eureka boats were found
to outperform the boats the Navy had designed themselves. Higgins was encouraged
(but not yet paid) to develop versions of his boats specifically for Naval use,
and did so between 1939 and 1941, though his initial boats did not have the
crucial bow that dropped down to form a ramp, which meant that troops had to
climb out over the sides, making them vulnerable, and there was no good way to
unload heavy equipment like Jeeps.
The front-as-a-ramp idea came from the Marine Corps, and in 1941 re-designed the
boat to include the front drop-down ramp, dramatically improving the usefulness
of the boat.
Now troops could exit a beached boat quickly, and jeeps and even tanks could be
literally driven out of the boat and right onto the beach, ready to go.
https://youtu.be/yX8dW1wUdc8
That front ramp, made of steel, also provided most of the arms-fire protection
for the troops inside the boat, and once that thing dropped down when they hit
shore, there was no real protection inside the boat, which certainly helped
encourage everyone to get the hell out of there and onto the shore.
The boats also had a pair of machine gun turrets and were powered by a
seven-liter inline-six diesel engine making 225 horsepower, which was enough to
push the 36-foot boat to 12 knots, or about 14 mph.
Higgins built over 20,000 LCVP boats, in a number of variations, over the course
of the war, from his factory in New Orleans. Incredibly, by 1943, it was said
that nine out of ten vessels in the Navy were designed by Higgins Industries.
Higgins worked his employees hard and fast, and was known for his lavish use of
profanity, of which it was said that the cussing
“...flows as naturally as water from a spring, [and] is famous for its opulence
and volume,”
It’s also worth noting that Higgins’ company was the first in New Orleans to
racially integrate, and he paid all his employees equal wages, no matter their
race or gender.
There’s very few original Higgins Boats left today, less than 20 by some counts,
but if you really want to see what one was like, there is one on display outside
the National Inventors Hall of Fame Museum at the United States Patent Office
Headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia.
So, as you remember the monumental events of D-Day today, take a moment to also
remember the big floating wooden box with the flip-down front that made it all
possible.
*
https://jalopnik.com/time-to-pay-your-respects-to-the-plywood-boat-that-help-1835301842
As you likely know, it’s the 75th anniversary of D-Day, when 160,000 Allied
troops invaded the beaches of Normandy, undertaking the largest from-the-sea
invasion in the history of human warfare and marking the beginning of the end
for the Axis. The actual business of getting over 100,000 soldiers and a metric
crapton of vehicles and equipment from the ocean on to land is a decidedly
non-trivial problem, one that the Allies solved with a brilliant but simple
patented plywood boat: the Landing Craft, Vehicle and Personnel (LCVP), also
called the Higgins Boat.
The Higgins Boat, named after its inventor, Andrew Higgins, was designed to
solve what was basically the “last mile” problem for a military invasion: they
could get all the troops and equipment over to the coast on large naval
transport ships, but how do you then get all those people and that stuff from
the ships onto the sandy beach?
To do that, you need some specialized boats, able to carry lots of people or
cargo, with a very shallow draft to let them float right up to the very shore,
and then you need some way to get all those soldiers and their equipment out of
those boats, quickly and easily, because, remember, they’re being shot at by
Nazis the entire time.
This problem is not just huge, solving it was absolutely critical to the very
invasion itself. In fact, Dwight D. Eisenhower, at the time the Supreme Allied
Commander in Europe, said of the Higgins boat and its inventor that
“If Higgins had not designed and built those LCVPs, we never could have landed
over an open beach. The whole strategy of the war would have been different.”
Andrew Higgins was an interesting guy; he started out in the lumber business in
Louisiana, but got into boat building in part by realizing the specialized
transportation needs of trappers and oil-drillers in the Louisiana swamps, where
shallow-draft boats were needed.
Higgins’ boat design, called “Eureka,” had a shallow draft and a protected
propeller and were very easy to beach and then return to the water, all
properties of the later LCVP. During prohibition, Higgins sold these types of
fast, maneuverable boats to both liquor bootleggers and the Coast Guard that
chased them down, a pretty savvy business decision.
During testing in 1938 by the Marines and Navy, Higgins’ Eureka boats were found
to outperform the boats the Navy had designed themselves. Higgins was encouraged
(but not yet paid) to develop versions of his boats specifically for Naval use,
and did so between 1939 and 1941, though his initial boats did not have the
crucial bow that dropped down to form a ramp, which meant that troops had to
climb out over the sides, making them vulnerable, and there was no good way to
unload heavy equipment like Jeeps.
The front-as-a-ramp idea came from the Marine Corps, and in 1941 re-designed the
boat to include the front drop-down ramp, dramatically improving the usefulness
of the boat.
Now troops could exit a beached boat quickly, and jeeps and even tanks could be
literally driven out of the boat and right onto the beach, ready to go.
https://youtu.be/yX8dW1wUdc8
That front ramp, made of steel, also provided most of the arms-fire protection
for the troops inside the boat, and once that thing dropped down when they hit
shore, there was no real protection inside the boat, which certainly helped
encourage everyone to get the hell out of there and onto the shore.
The boats also had a pair of machine gun turrets and were powered by a
seven-liter inline-six diesel engine making 225 horsepower, which was enough to
push the 36-foot boat to 12 knots, or about 14 mph.
Higgins built over 20,000 LCVP boats, in a number of variations, over the course
of the war, from his factory in New Orleans. Incredibly, by 1943, it was said
that nine out of ten vessels in the Navy were designed by Higgins Industries.
Higgins worked his employees hard and fast, and was known for his lavish use of
profanity, of which it was said that the cussing
“...flows as naturally as water from a spring, [and] is famous for its opulence
and volume,”
It’s also worth noting that Higgins’ company was the first in New Orleans to
racially integrate, and he paid all his employees equal wages, no matter their
race or gender.
There’s very few original Higgins Boats left today, less than 20 by some counts,
but if you really want to see what one was like, there is one on display outside
the National Inventors Hall of Fame Museum at the United States Patent Office
Headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia.
So, as you remember the monumental events of D-Day today, take a moment to also
remember the big floating wooden box with the flip-down front that made it all
possible.
*