Landing craft
Landing craft are small and medium seagoing watercraft, such as boats and barges, used to convey a landing force from the sea to the shore during an amphibious assault. The term excludes landing ships, which are larger. Production of landing craft peaked during World War II, with a significant number of different designs produced in large quantities by the United Kingdom and United States.
Because of the need to run up onto a suitable beach, World War II landing craft were flat-bottomed, and many designs had a flat front, often with a lowerable ramp, rather than a normal bow. This made them difficult to control and very uncomfortable in rough seas. The control point was normally at the extreme rear of the vessel, as were the engines. In all cases, they were known by an abbreviation derived from the official name rather than by the full title.
History
In the days of sail, the ship's boats were used as landing craft. These utility 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.In order to support amphibious operations during the landing in Pisagua by carrying significant quantities of cargo, and landing troops directly onto an unimproved shore, the Government of Chile built flat-bottomed landing craft, called Chalanas. They transported 1,200 men in the first landing and took on board 600 men in less than 2 hours for the second landing.
Origins
During World War I, initial amphibious landings during the Gallipoli campaign took place in unmodified ship's boats that were extremely vulnerable to attack from the Turkish shore defenses. The 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 6 August landing at Suvla Bay of IX Corps, commanded by Commander Edward Unwin.
'X' Lighters, known to the soldiers as 'Black Beetles', carried about 500 men, displaced 200 tons and were based on London barges being long, wide, and deep. The engines mainly ran on heavy oil and ran at a maximal speed of approximately. The boats had bulletproof sides and a ramp at the bow for disembarkation.
Spain purchased 26–28 X-lighters. During the Rif War, they were used in the 1925 Alhucemas landing, arguably the first major amphibious landing in which tanks were disembarked in large numbers.
The Imperial Russian Navy soon followed suit, building at the Russud Shipyard in 1916 a series of similar landing motor barges of the so-called Bolinder class, named in Russia after the supplier of semi-diesel engines installed in them. These, however, proved too small and unseaworthy for their intended Black Sea theater, as they were intended for planned landings on the coast of the Marmara Sea and Turkish straits. Instead, a new ship class was designed, based on a widespread in Southern Russia merchant ship type of the era which were Azov–Black Sea steam schooners – so-called Elpidifors – commissioned into naval service during World War I and used as landing craft during the Trebizond Campaign, etc. These vessels were given the Elpidifors appellative after one of them, the grain carrier Elpidifor, which was owned by the Rostov-on-Don merchant Elpidifor Paramonov. These were typically very light at the bow, having all their machinery concentrated at the stern, which allowed easy beaching on any gently sloping coast, and often were equipped with bow gangways for fast unloading. This resulted in the, Elpidifor class, named after the Elpidifor Paramonov's eponymous grain carrier that served as a pattern on which it was based. Elpidifor-class steamships had a loaded mean draft and a reinforced hull, were equipped with ballast tanks for safe beaching, and able to land 1,000 troops with their train at virtually any available beach. While the landings for which they were created never happened, the ship class themself turned out quite useful and ships of the class had a long career, supporting Wrangel's Army landings in Kuban and in Northern Taurida during the Russian Civil War, and later were used by the Russian SFSR and the Soviet Union as minesweepers, minelayers, gunboats, and merchant ships.
A plan was devised to land British heavy tanks from pontoons in support of the Third Battle of Ypres, but this was abandoned.
During the inter-war period, the combination of the negative experience at Gallipoli and economic stringency contributed to the delay in procuring equipment and adopting a universal doctrine for amphibious operations in the Royal Navy.
Despite this outlook, the British produced the Motor Landing Craft in 1920, based on their experience with the early 'Black Beetle' armoured transport. The craft could put a medium tank directly onto a beach. From 1924, it was used with landing boats in annual exercises in amphibious landings. A prototype motor landing craft, designed by J. Samuel White of Cowes, was built and first sailed in 1926. It weighed 16 tons and had a box-like appearance, having a square bow and stern. To prevent fouling of the propellers in a craft destined to spend time in surf and possibly be beached, a crude waterjet propulsion system was devised by White's designers. A Hotchkiss petrol engine drove a centrifugal pump which produced a jet of water, pushing the craft ahead or astern, and steering it, according to how the jet was directed. Speed was 5–6 knots and its beaching capacity was good. By 1930, three MLC were operated by the Royal Navy.
The United States revived and experimented in their approach to amphibious warfare between 1913 and mid-1930s, when the United States Navy and United States 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 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 LCPL, 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 rampthe LCVP, and were produced in large numbers. The boat was a more flexible variant of the LCPR with a wider ramp. It could carry 36 troops, a small vehicle such as a jeep, or a corresponding amount of cargo.
Second World War
In the run-up to WWII, many specialized landing craft, both for infantry and vehicles, were developed. At the start of World War II, the Japanese led the world in landing craft design.Specialized infantry landing craft
The Daihatsu-class landing craft was lowered to disembark cargo upon riding up onto a beach. After reviewing photos of a Daihatsu landing craft, this was adopted by American landing craft designer Andrew Higgins in developing the Landing Craft, Personnel into the Landing Craft, Personnel and later the Landing Craft, Vehicle and Personnel. However, the Daihatsu landing craft was more seaworthy than an LCVP due to its hull design. It was constructed of a metal hull and powered by a diesel engine.Victor Harold Krulak, a native of Denver, who joined the Marines after graduating from Annapolis in 1934, witnessed the Japanese use small vessels like the Daihatsu-class. In 1937, as a lieutenant in an intelligence outfit during the 1937 Battle of Shanghai, when the Japanese were trying to conquer China, he used a telephoto lens to take pictures of Japanese landing craft with a square bow that became a retractable ramp. Krulak noted that the boats' droppable ramps enabled troops to quickly disembark from the bow, rather than having to clamber over the sides and splash into the surf. Envisioning those ramps as answering the Marines' needs in a looming world war, Lieutenant Krulak showed the photographs to his superiors, who passed on his report to Washington. But two years later, he found that the Navy had simply filed it away with a notation saying it was the work of "some nut out in China." He persevered, building a balsa wood model of the Japanese boat design and discussing the retractable ramp concept with the New Orleans boat builder Andrew Higgins. That bow design became the basis for the thousands of Higgins landing craft of World War II. As according to Victor H. Krulak "the Japanese were light years ahead of us in landing craft design".
In November 1938, the British Inter-Service Training and Development Centre proposed a new type of landing craft. Its specifications were to weigh less than ten long tons, to be able to carry the thirty-one men of a British Army platoon and five assault engineers or signallers, and to be so shallow drafted as to be able to land them, wet only up to their knees, in eighteen inches of water. All of these specifications made the Landing Craft Assault; a separate set of requirements were laid down for a vehicle and supplies carrier, although previously the two roles had been combined in the Motor Landing Craft.
File:British LCA commandos.jpg|thumb|left|Royal Navy Beach Commandos aboard a Landing Craft Assault of the 529th Flotilla, Royal Navy
J. S. White of Cowes built a prototype to the Fleming design. Eight weeks later the craft was doing trials on the River Clyde. All landing craft designs must find a compromise between two divergent priorities; the qualities that make a good sea boat are opposite to those that make a craft suitable for beaching. The craft had a hull built of double-diagonal mahogany planking. The sides were plated with "10lb. DIHT" armour, a heat treated steel based on D1 steel, in this case Hadfield's Resista.
The Landing Craft Assault remained the most common British and Commonwealth landing craft of World War II, and the humblest vessel admitted to the books of the Royal Navy on D-Day. Prior to July 1942, these craft were referred to as "Assault Landing Craft", but "Landing Craft; Assault" was used thereafter to conform with the joint US-UK nomenclature system.
File:Invasion Training in England 02.jpg|thumb|, a Landing Craft Infantry, during training for D-Day
The Landing Craft Infantry was a stepped up amphibious assault ship, developed in response to a British request for a vessel capable of carrying and landing substantially more troops than the smaller Landing Craft Assault. The result was a small steel ship that could land 200 troops, traveling from rear bases on its own bottom at a speed of up to. The original British design was envisioned as being a "one time use" vessel which would simply ferry the troops across the English Channel, and were considered an expendable vessel. As such, no troop sleeping accommodations were placed in the original design. This was changed shortly after initial use of these ships, when it was discovered that many missions would require overnight accommodations.
The first LCIs entered service in 1943 chiefly with the Royal Navy and United States Navy. Some 923 LCI were built in ten American shipyards and 211 provided under lend-lease to the Royal Navy.