Over the beach - University of Oregon

a narrow bow ramp that allowed troops to run directly onto the beach
rather than climbing over the sides. The installation of a wider ramp to
accommodate trucks and other light vehicles resulted in the optimum
landing craft, the 36-foot landing craft, vehicle, personnel (LCVP)—the
most widely used American World War II landing craft. The LCP(R) with
its narrow bow had excellent sea-keeping qualities particularly useful for
beach reconnaissance and raiding missions, so it continued in service
aboard APDs for use by raiders and underwater demolition teams (UDTs).
To get tanks and heavy equipment ashore, a 50-foot craft originally called
a tank lighter and then designated landing craft, mechanized (LCM), was
also put into service. 82 The third platform for ship-to-shore movement
introduced before the war was an amphibious tractor based on a vehicle
developed for rescue work in the Florida Everglades. The Marines saw
in it a way to get cargo onto the shore and then inland, reducing congestion
at the beachhead, as well as a way to cross the coral reefs that ringed
Pacifc atolls. By July 1941 the frst military version, the landing vehicle,
tracked (LVT[1]), was in production. In December 1941 Food Machinery
Corporation (FMC) and Borg–Warner began work on improved cargocarrying
LVTs as well as an Army-sponsored armored version that could
mount a 37-mm gun turret to provide an amphibious assault and fre support
capability. 83
On the other side of the Atlantic, the British had established an Inter-
Service Training and Development Center (ISTDC) in 1937 to study
the techniques and equipment for amphibious warfare on a joint basis.
By 1939 the British had produced small numbers of LCMs and landing
craft, assault (LCA), an armored equivalent of the US LCP(R) and LCVP,
designed to be carried aboard landing ships, infantry (LSIs), the British
equivalent of the American combat loaders. The tiny British amphibious
feet frst saw action during the battles on the Norwegian fjords around
Narvik in 1940. That year, a Combined Operations Headquarters (COHQ)
was established to continue the development of amphibious doctrine and
to carry out amphibious commando raids on the coast of Europe. The landing
craft, tank (LCT), a 150-to-200-foot-long tank lighter that could carry
three to six 40-ton tanks, entered British service in 1940. By 1941 the
British were experimenting with the conversion of shallow-draft tankers
into ocean-going tank landing ships and had entered into talks with the
Americans concerning production of an Atlantic-crossing tank carrier that
would become known as the landing ship, tank (LST), as well as a landing
ship, dock (LSD), that could carry landing craft and LVTs in a foodable
well deck and launch them from the stern. Early operations at Dakar and
North Africa had convinced the British that warships made poor command
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