Printable View
These assorted landing craft were all designed to operate from ship to beach, not ship to pier.
By June 6th, 1944, many or all of these designs had proved their worth in the Pacific, then in the invasion of Sicily and Italy.
The LST; my Seabee Uncle Carl, enlisting in his late 30s, rode in one prior to the invasion of Guam.
Regards,
Louis of PA
It wouldn't have been quite so bad if there weren't men with automatic weapons, mortars and artillery blasting at you and your buddies the whole time.
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...acles009-1.jpg
The assault vest. I don't know how extensively these were issued, though I've seen them in photos from the period.
Regards,
Louis of PA
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...acket007-1.jpg
If anyone is interested in touring an LST, we have one here in Evansville, Indiana that is open for tours.
They were made here during the war. The one we have was made elsewhere, Cincinatti, I think.
There is a landing craft not mentioned above because it was sort of a SeaBee inventioin. The "Rhino Barge" which was used to take heavy equipment right up to and on the beach.
The illustrations of the various classes of landing craft and the scaling are very interesting.
Bob
Quote:
Originally Posted by Art
Art - That Rhino barge was a great example of ingenuity by the Seabees. I believe it started life as an ordinary pontoon. Then the Seabees decided to install enormous outboard engines on the stern. Eureka! A high-capacity, self-propelled barge that served to unload materiel from craft having ramps, then transporting the supplies and vehicles to the beach. Nifty!
Regards,
Louis of PA
My father was at D-Day as a motor mac on board an LCI #331 (Landing Craft Infantry). They were small ships with flat bottoms. The ship would run ashore left their troops and equipment off and winch the ship back to deep water. The winch was connected by cable to a large anchor the ship would drop on the way to the beach. Dad's little ship made landings at North Africa, Salerno and Normandy. They made one other landing but I can't remember it tonight. Dad said they dropped their troops and then took out the injured to large hosptial ships. Thanks for an interesting thread.
Bill
"Spearheading D-Day" -- a very good book on the topic of the technical and doctrinal preparation for the landings, and how it worked out.
They have a set of images of re-enactors showing the uniforms and gear among their pages. I would have preferred original photos of the guys who were really there but it's a minor beef. Apparently there are Dutch organizations for WW II re-enacting.
Louis, thanks for another interesting post. I always enjoy what you come up with.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fredtheobviouspseudonym
Oddly, that fine book was printed in France; I forget the publisher's name. I don't object to the staged photos; to show the gear clearly would have been virtually impossible if original photos had been used; those folks didn't have a lot of time to pose for pictures in those days.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fredtheobviouspseudonym
Regards
Around 1989, I spent an afternoon driving through the hills above Livorno, Italy. I came around a curve and coming the other way was a DUKW, loaded down with lumber and other construction material. The driver and I waved at each other, and kept going. It sort of led me to wonder how many WWII vehicles are still around in Europe and the Pacific being used for ordinary workaday transport.
Jim
There's a number of DUKWs used in Boston as sight seeing vehicles for tourists.
"The LST; my Seabee Uncle Carl, enlisting in his late 30s, rode in one prior to the invasion of Guam."
My dad got to cross the Pacific in one. He was in the 1884th Engineer Aviation Bttn, AAF. His outfit packed up and left Seattle in July '44, stopped off in Honolulu for a couple of weeks, and left there headed for Anguar. They took part in the invasion there on Sept 17. All that time was spent on an LST! He said it was the most miserable ride of his life. Slow with a shallow draft, the boat just wallowed it's way through the waves.
General George S. Patton, Jr.
Somewhere in England.
Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bull****. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. You are here today for three reasons. First, because you are here to defend your homes and your loved ones. Second, you are here for your own self respect, because you would not want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real men and all real men like to fight. When you, here, everyone of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players. Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.
You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you right here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Death, in time, comes to all men. Yes, every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood. Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base. Americans pride themselves on being He Men and they ARE He Men. Remember that the enemy is just as frightened as you are, and probably more so. They are not supermen. All through your Army careers, you men have bitched about what you call "chicken **** drilling". That, like everything else in this Army, has a definite purpose. That purpose is alertness. Alertness must be bred into every soldier. I don't give a **** for a man who's not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are ready for what's to come. A man must be alert at all times if he expects to stay alive. If you're not alert, sometime, a German son-of-an-*******-bitch is going to sneak up behind you and beat you to death with a sockful of ****!"
There are four hundred neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily, all because one man went to sleep on the job. But they are German graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before they did. An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is pure horse ****. The bilious bastards who write that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting under fire than they know about ****ing!
We have the finest food, the finest equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity those poor sons-of-bitches we're going up against. By God, I do.
"My men don't surrender. I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he has been hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight back. That's not just bull **** either. The kind of man that I want in my command is just like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Luger against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand, and busted the hell out of the Kraut with his helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German before they knew what the hell was coming off. And, all of that time, this man had a bullet through a lung. There was a real man!
All of the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters, either. Every single man in this Army plays a vital role. Don't ever let up. Don't ever think that your job is unimportant. Every man has a job to do and he must do it. Every man is a vital link in the great chain. What if every truck driver suddenly decided that he didn't like the whine of those shells overhead, turned yellow, and jumped headlong into a ditch? The cowardly bastard could say, "Hell, they won't miss me, just one man in thousands". But, what if every man thought that way? Where in the hell would we be now? What would our country, our loved ones, our homes, even the world, be like? No, Goddamnit, Americans don't think like that. Every man does his job. Every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important in the vast scheme of this war. The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns and machinery of war to keep us rolling. The Quartermaster is needed to bring up food and clothes because where we are going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man on K.P. has a job to do, even the one who heats our water to keep us from getting the 'G.I. ****s'.
Each man must not think only of himself, but also of his buddy fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this Army. They should be killed off like rats. If not, they will go home after this war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the Goddamned cowards and we will have a nation of brave men. One of the bravest men that I ever saw was a fellow on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of a furious fire fight in Tunisia. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at a time like that. He answered, "Fixing the wire, Sir". I asked, "Isn't that a little unhealthy right about now?" He answered, "Yes Sir, but the Goddamned wire has to be fixed". I asked, "Don't those planes strafing the road bother you?" And he answered, "No, Sir, but you sure as hell do!" Now, there was a real man. A real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time, no matter how great the odds. And you should have seen those trucks on the rode to Tunisia. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting all around them all of the time. We got through on good old American guts. Many of those men drove for over forty consecutive hours. These men weren't combat men, but they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it, and in one hell of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without team effort, without them, the fight would have been lost. All of the links in the chain pulled together and the chain became unbreakable.
Don't forget, you men don't know that I'm here. No mention of that fact is to be made in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell happened to me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be here in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the Goddamned Germans. Some day I want to see them raise up on their ****-soaked hind legs and howl, 'Jesus Christ, it's the Goddamned Third Army again and that son-of-a-****ing-bitch Patton'."
We want to get the hell over there. The quicker we clean up this Goddamned mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against the purple ****ing Japs and clean out their nest, too. Before the Goddamned Marines get all of the credit.
Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. And when we get to Berlin, I am personally going to shoot that paper hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler. Just like I'd shoot a snake!
When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a German will get to him eventually. The hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one either. We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that we've got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We're not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we're going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun cocksuckers by the bushel-****ing-basket. War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it's the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you'll know what to do!
I don't want to get any messages saying, "I am holding my position." We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy's balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living **** out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like **** through a tin horn!
From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing our people too hard. I don't give a good Goddamn about such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder WE push, the more Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that.
There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you WON'T have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, "Well, your Granddaddy shoveled **** in Louisiana." No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, "Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch named Georgie Patton!
I had to laugh at the part where Patton wanted to get the war in Europe over so he could go to the Pacific before "the Marines got all the credit."
OFC