Mass-produced assault craft and close fire support

British designers combined features from competing proposals into the Landing Craft Assault. Available estimates differ, with 1,929 presented as the most reliable production total. Great Western and Southern Railway facilities helped manufacture the craft, showing how wartime amphibious production drew on industrial capacity beyond conventional naval yards. LCAs and early LCMs served in Norway and at Dunkirk. Support variants added machine guns to the same compact hull. During one Norwegian commando raid, an officer drove his support craft so far up the beach to suppress a troublesome position that the commandos had to push it back into the water.