LST-312 at HRPE Newport News VA, between Piers 5 and 6, 16 April 1943 with LCT-420 (Landing Craft Tank) loaded on deck. Note the LCVP (Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel aka: Higgins Boat) loaded in LCT-420's well-deck. Original source of this image is from The Library of Virginia US Army Signal Corps Photograph Collection.
About the Higgins Boat: General Eisenhower said of Andrew Jackson Higgins, “He is the man who won the war for us.” Without Higgins’ landing craft the Normandy Invasion and other large Allied amphibious operations would not have been possible. Ike also said, "If Andy Higgins hadn't designed and built these landing craft, we never could have gone in over an open beach. I don't know how we ever would have gotten back into Europe." "Those Higgins boats may have won the war for us, but every man who went in on one hated them. They were flat-bottomed, they did this in the waves, the gunnels were only 6 feet high, the waves were washing over. Everybody was seasick -- everybody. The decks were just awash in vomit. There was no place to sit down on these boats. They were like sardines packed into them, and everybody was sick." - Stephen Ambrose
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