The Saber and Scroll
Enter Louisiana boat-builder Andrew Jackson Higgins . Higgins had entered his Eureka shallow draft workboat in a contest sponsored by the Navy in 1936 . The Eureka was designed for use in the swamps and bayous of Louisiana and already featured many of the requirements for an amphibious landing craft . It was stable , powerful , operated well in shallow water , and could even traverse sandbars and small spits of land when underway . It could also retract itself efficiently from being grounded and was of extraordinarily robust construction . 11
In 1939 the Marines and the operational Navy tested the Higgins design , which won universal praise . In 1941 Higgins adapted his design , now known as the Landing Craft , Personnel ( LCP ), to include a bow ramp for easier discharge onto a beach . At the same time , Higgins won a contest between his design for a tank lighter and one offered by the Bureau of Ships . This craft became known as the Landing Craft , Mechanized ( 2-6 ) ( LCM 2-6 ). 12 This craft should not be confused with the British boat of the same designation which it eventually supplanted . 13
Higgins endured long battles with the Navy bureaucracy , particularly the Bureau of Ships , which was determined to see its own boats adopted over the clearly superior Higgins designs . This struggle continued until March 1943 when a Bureau-designed landing craft failed in an exercise , costing the lives of nineteen men . Higgins had criticized the design as unsound , and his Landing Craft , Vehicle , Personnel ( LCVP ) had beaten it soundly in a head-to-head competition . Under pressure from the Navy and Marine Corps , the Bureau of Ships finally relinquished its less-than-effective hold on the design of small boats . Higgins eventually produced over twelve thousand landing craft for the US Navy and the British with thousands more being produced under license by other builders . 14
By the time the British accepted the need for modern amphibious capability in 1940 , the doctrine existed , as did the recognition of the necessity of specialized landing craft . The problem was that the development of such craft was in its infancy . The late start toward the design and development of suitable landing craft meant that there were chronic shortages throughout the war . The Allies struggled to establish production priorities , and the needs of amphibious forces in the Pacific and Mediterranean competed directly with the buildup and deployment of craft for the invasion of France .
The first Higgins-built LCPs were not ordered until September 1940 , and the first major contracts were not let until the spring of 1942 . The British took delivery of the first LCT in November 1940 and , though development was rapid , the workhorse fourth-generation LCT ( 4 ) was not ordered in large numbers until December 1941 . The spring of 1942 saw the beginning of mass production of landing craft in the United States , including the entire production of the LST ( 2 ), the model which had been accepted by the Admiralty and the US Navy . 15
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