D-Day Landing Craft

[John R Smith]

Fellow Forumites

Last week I bought a nice old volume on English yacht design in our local s/hand bookshop. A handwritten dedication on the flyleaf reads -

"To Allan . . . hoping that this volume will recall many happy memories of the years aboard L.C.T. 535 . . . Xmas 1945"

I assume that these chaps must have been RNVR aboard Landing Craft (tank?) of some sort, possibly involved in the D-Day landings. I tried various Internet searches, but it seems from the info there that LCT 535 was a US Navy ship and would have had an American crew. So I am puzzled - the book and it's recipient are definitely English.

Can any of you with more info on WW II help solve the mystery?

John

[TomRobb]

John, I tried Google w/ Royal Navy LCT 535 and got a rather lengthy list of ships lost, how and when. A quick scan through the list failed to get 535 even though it claims to have it there.
Needs a more savy "googler" than I smile.gif

[Donn]

In our Navy, an LCT is a Landing Craft Tanks or Landing Craft Tender. Maybe that'll help.

[ 01-22-2003, 03:41 PM: Message edited by: Donn Westervelt ]

[Donn]

On June 4, 1944, "0630: H-Hour on Utah, Omaha Beach; LCT 535 lands the first tanks on Omaha; 116th and 16th Infantry land at Omaha; Higgins boats near the beach; 8th Infantry Regiment lands at Utah Beach."

link (http://www.military.com/Content/MoreContent1/?file=dday_timeline)

[Donn]

"On July 6, 1945 the 1045 was loaded on LST 88 and we headed back to the

States. I was given a thirty-day leave on August 1 and assigned LCT duty for the invasion of Tokyo Bay (expected casualtliles=50%). Needless to say I was overjoyed to hear that the Atom Bomb brought the Japanese surrender. When I returned to Little Creek, VA, I was eventually assigned to LCT 535 on Staten island. A few months later I was ordered to sail the 535 to Norfolk. No charts were provided and the generator burned out soon after we got underway. But that's another LCT story for another time."

link (http://ww2lct.org/mk6/1001_1050/lct1045.htm)

[Donn]

"Assigned to Force O-2, scheduled to land at Dog Green at H+120, loaded with 467th AAAW Bn. Underway in convoy to the invasion coast, [LCT 27] developed a decided starboard list, cause undetermined. At 0400 6 June 1944 the starboard screw was missing and by the time the craft reached the beach area at 0830 the list had increased considerably despite attempts to pump out the ballast tanks. Heavy fire from the beach caused damage to the port engine and prevented beaching. LCT 535 towed this craft to a repair tug, but further attempts to pump out the ballast tanks proved futile."

link (http://ww2lct.org/history/stories/flot_18_at_omaha.htm)

[Donn]

"When I wrote to Dean Rockwell, in charge of rocket training LCT crews for Normandy and the skipper of LCT 535, "the first ship in the first wave to launch equipment in the Omaha area," to see if he knew of writings on landing craft, he said he knew of none, and besides the "ugly ducklings were pretty hard to glamorize.""

link (http://ww2lct.org/reunion/books/TheLCTStory.htm)

http://ww2lct.org/reunion/books/6290-BAKE-thumbnail.gif

[John R Smith]

Hell's teeth, Donn, that's fantastic - more info than I had expected or knew was there. Thanks very much for taking the time and trouble smile.gif

But this doesn't look right for my book dedication. The crew and beach-head are both US, not British. Dean Rockwell, the commander of 535, seems to have been decorated for gallantry for his part in the action at Omaha beach. And he is certainly American.

Which all leaves me very puzzled. The British Navy wouldn't have had a parallel numbering system for its own LCTs, would it?

Thanks again, Donn.

John

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

John, the answer is yes, the RN did indeed have a numbering system for landing craft which was just the same as the US one. LCT = Landing Craft (Tank), and there was a British LCT 535, which from the numbering, assuming that it was consecutive, would have been a Mark 4, of 640 tons, able to carry 5 40ton or 11 30 ton tanks, and served probably in the Mediterranean, with, probably, RNVR crew.

[John R Smith]

Brilliant, Andrew, thanks very much. That makes sense at last. So "my" LCT crew may well have been involved in the Sicily landings, perhaps, where my own father came ashore with the 8th Army.

I'm not sure quite why this has got me so intrigued. The book was part of a collection which arrived in the shop just after Christmas, I assume because someone has died recently. I think I was upset in a way that presumably no-one in the family wanted these books and they had just sold them.

I was very pleased to buy the book, however - "Cruising Yachts - Design and Construction", by T Harrison Butler, 1945, an absolute classic in which he expounds his metacentric theory of yacht design.

John

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Funnily enough, John, my late father was there too, in the RNVR - his job was to lay a smoke screen for the landings, using a rather simple device, which he had invented - basically a smoke generator and an aero engine on the back of a landing craft.

Now that you have a first edition of HB's book, may I introduce you to the Harrison Butler Association, of which I am a very happy Associate Member?

The President and Membership Secretary is Joan Jardine Brown, THB's daughter:

2, The Chestnuts,
60, High Street,
Theale,
Reading,
Berks,
tel 01189 302 945

It is probably the nicest sailing organisation that I know of. I had the pleasure of offering Joan tea aboard Mirelle this summer when she visited Woodbridge for their Laying Up Supper.

[John R Smith]

Funny place, this Forum.

So it turns out that your father was busy laying a smoke-screen from his landing-craft, while my father was coming ashore from another landing-craft with his X-ray truck. Sixty years later, here we are, chatting via a server somewhere in the USA . . .

Thanks for the THB society contact. It sounds good.

John

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Silly thought, but the closest that my father came to death in WW2 was when, suffering a chest infection, he was jabbed full of the newfangled wonder drug, penicillin, which had just then become available in quantity, by an enthusiastic 8th Army medico - he was violently allergic to it!

[John R Smith]

Nice one, Andrew ;) but I don't think you can blame my father for that. He certainly didn't go around injecting people.

Father was a radiographer with the RAMC, 8th Army. His job was to set up his mobile x-ray unit just behind the front-lines, and the seriously wounded were taken straight to him by stretcher-bearers. He x-rayed them, developed the films, and then sent the casualties back to the field hospital with their pictures ready for theatre treatment.

Incidentally, for the amusement of our American friends and the probable annoyance of our German ones, both these stories about our respective parents demonstrate the splendid British ability to improvise.

Your father had to invent and build his own smoke-screen device, presumably because the Navy didn't have a small, portable one.

My father's x-ray truck was a converted Huntley and Palmer's biscuit lorry (because the Army didn't have enough x-ray trucks) which he drove (nursed) across Iraq, the North African desert, and all the way up through Sicily and the Italian campaign (including Monte Cassino).

Interesting to think that they could have met each other, though.

John

[Clive P]

My father was skipper on the Belgian channel packet Prince Leopold ferrying US rangers into Omaha beach 4 hours before the D day invasion. His 2 big memories were the shells going over their heads from the fleet in the channel, while the troops were embarking on the landing craft, and watching a landing craft take a direct hit from a german shell. He used to describe how the ship rose slowly into the air turned over hit the water upside down and sank.
He lost Prince Leopold the next month on a mine off Dover.

[Peerie Maa]

I was very pleased to buy the book, however - "Cruising Yachts - Design and Construction", by T Harrison Butler, 1945, an absolute classic in which he expounds his metacentric theory of yacht design.

John

Metacentric Shelf. Now there's a topic for a tread. Mathematically it's complete dingo's kidneys, but it seemed to work. Not his theory by the by, although he was a famous exponent. Admiral Stuart Turner devised it.
S##t, I've used the word "theory". I hope SamF does not read this.

[Tom Robb]

Damn.
Here I was thinking that John R. was back with us.
Too bad.

[Pernicious Atavist]

A little aside, if I may, Gentlemen....I'm working on a book about my Mom's last husband--a C47 (Dakota to you Brits) pilot, who flew in N. Africa, and dropped troops during Sicily and D-day and their respective '+' days! So he looked over your Dads, probably wondering where all the damn smoke was coming from, and what the hell was that little truck doing on the beach!

[Lew Barrett]

Great thread. Thank you all.

[Ed Harrow]

Damn.
Here I was thinking that John R. was back with us.
Too bad.


Yup. Finast kind.

[Tom Robb]

Amen, Ed.