Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel (LCVP)
Landing craft, vehicle personnel, LCVP Mark 7 is capable of landing limited quantity of personnel, equipment, and/or cargo on the beach. It is normally carried by LSTs and is best suited as a carrier for floating dumps. A typical load could consist of 1 HMMWV or 36 combat-loaded troops; max load is 8,100 lbs.
The Normandy assault force transferred from large transport into landing craft, vehicle, personnel (LCVPs). Made by the Higgins Boat Industries, Incorporated, these small, wooden-hulled craft (also called Higgins boats) could carry a single mortar squad and their equipment. Once loaded, the craft circled in a rendezvous spot a few miles from shore, waiting for the signal to head in. The shallow-draft boats were made of plywood. The only metal part was the ramp on the front. The boat was built tough to survive repeated groundings in the surf. Its shielded propeller enabled the boat to pull free of the beach and turn around in its own length.
The classic slab-sided, shallow-draft, bow-ramp landing craft of pre-World War II design by Andrew Higgins was clearly superior to the landing craft that had come before. "Andrew Higgins....'Eisenhower said'....is the man who won the war for us." My face must have shown the astonishment I felt at hearing such a strong statement from such a source. Eisenhower went on to explain, '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.'" [Stephen E. Ambrose D-DAY JUNE 6, 1944: THE CLIMACTIC BATTLE OF WORLD WAR II].
The National D-Day Museum, operated in New Orleans, Louisiana by an educational foundation, is the only museum in the United States that exists for the exclusive purpose of interpreting the American experience during the World War II years (1939-1945) on both the battlefront and the home front and, in doing so, covers all of the branches of the Armed Forces and the Merchant Marine. The National D-Day Museum was founded by the preeminent American historian, Stephen E. Ambrose, as a result of a conversation with President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1963, when the President and former Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe, credited Andrew Jackson Higgins, the chief executive officer of Higgins Industries in New Orleans, as the "man who won the war for us" because the 12,000 landing craft designed by Higgins Industries made possible all of the amphibious invasions of World War II and carried American soldiers into every theatre of the war.
