The Boat that Won the War: An Illustrated History of the Higgins LCVP

By Charles C. Roberts, Jr.

“This is an excellent examination of one of the most important Allied naval weapons of the Second World War.”—HistoryOfWar.org
 
The Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel—LCVP for short, or simply the “Higgins boat” to most of its users—was one of the keystones of victory in the Second World War. Like the army’s Jeep or the Air Forces C-47 transport, it served in almost every theatre of war, performing unglamorous but vital service in the Allied cause. Derived from a humble workboat, the Higgins boatbuilding company designed a brilliantly simple craft that performed its role so well that over 23,000 of them were constructed—indeed, a high proportion of all the troops landed on enemy beaches came ashore from LCVPs, an achievement that led General Eisenhower to describe it as “the boat that won the war.” As Eisenhower had more experience of major amphibious operations than any other commander, it is a judgment to be taken seriously.
 
This book combines the first in-depth history of the development and employment of the type, with a detailed description of its construction, machinery, performance and handling, based on the author’s first-hand experience masterminding the restoration of a wartime example for his museum. Well-illustrated with plans and photographs, it will be of interest to modelmakers and enthusiasts, both military and naval.

“An invaluable record for military historians and the designers, builders and operators of the successor boats. The photographs and drawings of every imaginable aspect of the LVCPs are beyond price. A magnificent contribution to both naval history and the future planning of amphibious operations.”—Ausmarine

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781526706935

Book preview

Introduction

Landing craft have been used to support military operations since ancient times. In the Iliad, Homer describes how the Greeks sailed across the Aegean Sea, landed on the beaches and attacked the city of Troy. In 490 BC the Persian ruler Darius sent a fleet of ships to attack Greece that included landing craft designed to allow horses to disembark and enter the battle. In 414 BC the Athenian navy put ashore an invasion force to attack the city of Syracuse in Sicily. In 55 BC Julius Caesar landed soldiers on the Kentish coast of Britain. For several decades around 800 AD the Vikings carried out amphibious raids on parts of the British Isles and European coastal areas. The last successful invasion of England came in 1066 when William the Conqueror landed his force on the Sussex coast, defeated the English King Harold at Hastings and established a new blood line of royalty. However, only in very few cases were these operations carried out by specialist landing craft, and history is replete with amphibious landings which were not successful. There was a perception that amphibious landings were risky and often costly. In modern times this was bolstered by the landing operation disaster at Gallipoli in 1915, where British and French troops were initially repulsed at the beach by the Turks. Since amphibious warfare was not part of the military lexicon between the wars, the United States was unprepared for such actions, although the US Navy had not given up totally on amphibious operations and was doing some development work on landing craft in the late 1930s. With the outbreak of the Second World War and the necessity to land forces on foreign coasts, amphibious forces became an important priority for the US Navy. Rapid Japanese conquests in the Far East attested to the viability of amphibious operations. In the early 1940s many American shipyards competed to supply landing craft to the US Navy based on naval designs, but a boat designed and built by Higgins Industries of New Orleans emerged as the best means of putting troops and light vehicles ashore. The evolution of the Higgins design resulted in the Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel (LCVP), or ‘Higgins Boat’, that General Eisenhower called ‘The Boat that Won the War’. Over 23,000 were manufactured and Higgins Boats were used in virtually all US amphibious operations of the Second World War, as well as being supplied in quantity to the Allies. This book reviews the history of the LCVP, the design, the manufacturing, handling and its employment in the Second World War. In terms of significance, the LCVP is one of the most innovative landing craft in naval history.

CHAPTER 1

The Landing Craft Concept

In the late 1930s Andrew Jackson Higgins operated a boatbuilding company in the New Orleans, Louisiana area, specializing in small, versatile, shallow draft watercraft. There was a demand for a small boat that could traverse shallow water and be resistant to propeller damage from floating objects. Trappers and oil company crews needed a vessel to navigate the Louisiana marshes which could run aground, off-load material and back off the shore without hull damage. In response to this need, Higgins Industries developed a wide bow profile boat (pram bow) with a tunnel in the stern to protect the propeller and provide a shallow draft. This was called the Wonderboat. The forebody was round and reinforced to withstand the forces of repeated beachings, and shaped such that the bow wave formed an aerated water surface which tended to reduce hull friction and increase speed. The bow shape also expelled the aerated water to the side, preventing ingestion into the propeller tunnel which would decrease propeller efficiency.

Administration building of the Higgins City Park Plant. (Ref 1. For references see page 128)

Higgins West End Landing Service wharf and showrooms. (Ref 1)

Night view of the City Park Plant, at that time the world’s largest building dedicated to the manufacture of naval craft. (Ref 1)

St Charles Avenue plant in New Orleans, Louisiana, which dealt with engine installation. (Ref 1)

Bayou St John where boats were placed in the water, tested and awaited delivery. (Ref 1)

Higgins plant on St Charles Avenue, New Orleans in 1937. To the left in the photo is an early Wonderboat. (Ref 14)

Bottom view of a Eureka boat showing a single screw, tunnel, flanking rudder and keel. (Ref 29)

Eureka Boat with twin tunnels, 1937. (Ref 14)

A 42ft steel hulled Eureka boat being loaded on a ship to South America. (Ref 14)

A civilian Eureka boat at full speed. (Ref 14)

Basic hull shape concept showing a V forebody and a tunnel shape near the stern (Ref 10)

Further research, plus trial and error, increased the speed of the boat to an astounding speed of 20mph. The final product was called the ‘Eureka’, and was sold to petroleum companies in the United States as well as to those in South America.

There was a problem with wood boats of that time in that when placed in the water they leaked until the planks swelled and sealed the gaps. This was undesirable when a craft that had been out of the water for a period of time was placed in the water and immediately required to be used. Higgins Industries solved this problem by manufacturing a double-bottom boat with a sheet of canvas sandwiched between the two layers. The construction method involved a canvas layer that would cover the underwater hull from the keel to the chine, sealing off the bottom from water leakage.

Sales of the boat increased as its reputation as a practical, shallow draft, workboat became widely known. The US Army Corps of Engineers, the Biological Survey Department, and Coast Guard were all customers.

With the onset of the Second World War, Higgins Industries began selling landing craft based on the Eureka design to the British. At that time landing craft attacks on defended enemy positions were not considered viable by the US military as a result of the experience of the disastrous landings at Gallipoli during the First