Landing Craft - Origin

Origin

In the days of sail, the ship's boats were used as landing craft. These rowing boats were sufficient, if inefficient, in an era when marines were effectively light infantry, participating mostly in small-scale campaigns in far-flung colonies against less well-equipped indigenous opponents.

However during World War I, mass mobilization of troops equipped with rapid-fire weapons quickly rendered such boats obsolete. In February 1915 orders were placed for the design of purpose built landing craft. A design was created in four days resulting in an order for 200 'X' Lighters with a spoon shaped bow to take shelving beaches and a drop down frontal ramp. The first use took place after they had been towed to the Aegean and performed successfully in the 6th August landings at Suvla, Battle of Gallipoli.

'X' Lighters, known to the soldiers as 'Beetles' displaced 135 tons, and were based on London barges being 105 ft 6 in long, 21 ft wide and 7 ft 6 in deep. The engines were mainly heavy oil using, whatever was available. Some were converted to carry water and were renamed 'L' Lighters. Five of these craft were used at the Dunkirk evacuation.

A plan was devised to land British heavy tanks from pontoons in support of the Third Battle of Ypres but this was not proceeded with.

The British produced the Motor Landing Craft in 1920 that could put their then-current medium tank directly onto a beach. From 1924 it was used with landing boats in annual exercises in amphibious landings. It would later be given the name "Landing Craft, Mechanized" (abbreviated to LCM). In the 1930s the British Army carried out divisional-sized amphibious landing exercises. A boat for landing infantry, the Landing Craft Assault, and a new design for landing a tank, the Mechanized Landing Craft, were drawn up after research by the Inter-Service Training and Development Centre in 1938.

The United States revived and experimented in their modern approach to amphibious warfare between 1913 to mid-1930s, when the United States Navy and Marine Corps became interested in setting up advanced bases in opposing countries during wartime; the prototype advanced base force officially evolved into the Fleet Marine Force (FMF) in 1933. In 1939, during the annual Fleet Landing Exercises, the FMF became interested in the military potential of Andrew Higgins's design of a powered, shallow-draught boat. These LCVPs, dubbed the 'Higgins Boats', were reviewed and passed by the U.S. Naval Bureau of Construction and Repair. Soon, the Higgins boats were developed to a final design with a ramp, and were produced in large numbers.