Why interwar amphibious plans lacked landing ships
Interwar conversion plans and embarked landing craft still fell short of a complete amphibious fleet.
From A Question of Getting Them There - Landing Ships & Amphibious Warfare Part 2(i) ·
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Why small exercises concealed the shipping gap
An apparently successful interwar exercise shows how limited opposition and small scale could hide the absence of specialist amphibious shipping.
From A Question of Getting Them There - Landing Ships & Amphibious Warfare Part 2(i) ·
Landing Ship Infantry categories and shifting roles
Large, medium, small, and hand-hoisting LSIs did not always fit neat wartime categories.
From A Question of Getting Them There - Landing Ships & Amphibious Warfare Part 2(i) ·
Glen-class landing-craft capacity and evolving davits
HMS Glenroy's plans show how stacked LCAs, derrick-handled LCMs, and revised davits increased the craft carried by a large infantry ship.
From A Question of Getting Them There - Landing Ships & Amphibious Warfare Part 2(i) ·
Glen-class armament, personnel load, and endurance
A Glen-class LSI combined high-angle guns, nearly 1,700 embarked personnel, a 10,000-ton hull, and a stated 15,000-mile range.
From A Question of Getting Them There - Landing Ships & Amphibious Warfare Part 2(i) ·
Long-range LSIs for an expanding global war
A 15,000-mile range and the first LSI orders in April 1940 link procurement to a war spreading beyond northern Europe.
From A Question of Getting Them There - Landing Ships & Amphibious Warfare Part 2(i) ·
Medium LSI speed, capacity, and launch gear
A 22-knot infantry ship could move a commando-sized force while davits placed LCAs and heavier LCMs into the water quickly.
From A Question of Getting Them There - Landing Ships & Amphibious Warfare Part 2(i) ·
Medium LSIs make Operation Claymore possible
Operation Claymore demonstrates how fast infantry ships, motorized landing craft, commandos, destroyers, and air defense had to work as one force.
From A Question of Getting Them There - Landing Ships & Amphibious Warfare Part 2(i) ·
Small LSIs and the tradeoffs of converted ferries
Small and medium LSIs often began as ferries, producing useful but imperfect combinations of troop capacity, speed, space, and landing-craft fit.
From A Question of Getting Them There - Landing Ships & Amphibious Warfare Part 2(i) ·
Hand-hoisting LSIs reveal wartime urgency
Manually operated davits show how urgently Combined Operations converted available shipping while amphibious requirements kept growing.
From A Question of Getting Them There - Landing Ships & Amphibious Warfare Part 2(i) ·
Reading landing-craft history through its engineers
Engineers' own accounts, including work chaired by Director of Naval Construction Stanley Goodall, explain how landing craft were designed and built.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
Were purpose-built landing craft needed before World War I?
Most earlier landings relied on ordinary ships' boats because defenders rarely had enough warning, range, or mobility to contest the shore in strength.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
From ships' boats to Gallipoli's X-lighters
See why ordinary ships' boats worked for many earlier landings, and how Gallipoli drove the Royal Navy towards armoured X-lighters.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
Henderson's staff assessments linked Gallipoli and convoys
Reginald Henderson's wartime staff work examined Gallipoli's naval failings and helped underpin the Royal Navy's adoption of convoys.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
The myth of neglected interwar amphibious warfare
Interwar Britain retained amphibious expertise through a joint committee, new craft, recurring exercises, and Henderson's inter-service reform.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
Why were London barges suitable for X-lighters?
The Royal Navy chose a large, sturdy, near-seagoing barge type that could handle choppy water and was already supported by substantial production capacity.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
Was Gallipoli Japan's main amphibious lesson?
Gallipoli strongly influenced Japanese amphibious thinking, but Japan also learned from Tsingtao and from watching Royal Navy activity in the Indian Ocean.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
Could the Allies have continued at Gallipoli?
Continuing towards the Sea of Marmara remained possible, but the Anglo-French leadership was no longer willing to accept the additional casualties.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
How 1924 exercises anticipated World War II landings
A 1924 exercise report already identified shallow-draught armoured craft, direct naval gunfire, heavy-equipment handling, sectional jetties, tides, and air defence.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
Which troops repeated interwar amphibious exercises?
British exercises rotated Army formations, while Ceylon's recurring brigade-scale role often fell to Gurkhas; Royal Marines usually supplied smaller shipborne parties.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
From the Motor Landing Craft to the LCM
Follow the interwar Motor Landing Craft as heavier tanks drive its evolution into the Landing Craft Mechanized.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
How were the early LCMs crewed?
Each Landing Craft Mechanised used six crew, while one officer supervised a group of three craft.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
Mass-produced assault craft and close fire support
The Landing Craft Assault became a mass-produced troop carrier, while machine-gun-armed support variants fought close to the beach.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
Namsos repeated the interwar amphibious lessons
At Namsos, Adrian Carton de Wiart and Peter Fleming confronted the same unloading, fire-support, and air-cover problems already reported in 1924.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
How did early landing craft protect themselves?
Protection varied: some craft carried little defensive armament, while support derivatives mounted machine guns and fought close to the beach.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
Higgins designs and Anglo-American landing-craft exchange
British and American officers both examined Higgins designs, producing fast personnel craft and the larger LCM Mark III.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
Designing Landing Craft Tank for heavier armour
The Royal Navy anticipated heavier tanks before the war and developed LCT variants that became essential to Allied invasion fleets.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
Operation Claymore, Crete, and specialised support craft
Operational experience showed that landing forces needed both close gunfire and dedicated anti-aircraft craft near the beach.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
The LCT Mark IV's mass lift and Far Eastern refit
See how the LCT Mark IV simplified tank lift for mass production, then gained extra strengthening for planned Far Eastern assaults.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
Dieppe, raiding limits, and stable gun platforms
Dieppe confirmed that a heavy assault was not a light raid and that effective landing-craft gun platforms needed size and stability.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
The Landing Craft Infantry as a giant raider
See how a fast 200-man raiding requirement became the nearly 400-ton Landing Craft Infantry (Large), with American construction protecting British destroyer capacity.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
Did Henderson also shape the Hunt-class destroyers?
Henderson's association with the smaller Hunt-class destroyers is confirmed, though the design story is not developed here.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
From six-pounders to destroyer guns on landing craft
See the Royal Navy enlarge support craft until converted LCTs could carry destroyer-calibre guns close to defended beaches.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
Why did landing craft keep getting larger?
The answer separates small craft carried aboard ships from larger craft expected to make more of the journey under their own power.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
When LCA mass production crowded out a successor
A promising fast successor to the LCA remained a small program because changing course made little sense once the established assault craft was already in mass production.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
Fairmile's British-built answer to American landing craft
Fairmile offered a smaller British-built counterpart after the large Landing Craft Infantry went to American yards to protect destroyer capacity.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
Why heavy warships could not replace close-support craft
Battleships and cruisers had greater firepower, but smoke, friendly troops, reaction time, and distance created a need for destroyers and armed landing craft close to the beach.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
Long-range LCTs and heavy gun craft for the Far East
Far Eastern distances produced larger LCTs with troop accommodation and armoured gun craft carrying 17-pounders or 25-pounders.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
A thousand-rocket barrage from an LCT
Converted LCTs carried roughly a thousand rocket projectors to saturate a beach with explosives in seconds.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
Why arm landing craft with 17-pounders?
The 17-pounder offered the best British anti-tank performance available, while the 25-pounder added powerful general fire support.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
Why wartime landing-craft lists are never exhaustive
The standard marks were only a baseline: theatre commanders and crews produced many local conversions as operations exposed new requirements.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
How separate were American and British landing-craft designs?
The Allied programs repeatedly observed and borrowed from one another, making a simple one-nation invention story hard to sustain.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
How did gun craft alter trim for shore fire?
Crews counterflooded, beached their craft, and shifted weight to obtain useful gun elevation and firing positions.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
Why fire a thousand rockets at point-blank range?
The reported crew meant to destroy both a pillbox and the ground beneath it, though the underlying episode remains unchecked.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
How did the British landing in Somaliland work?
The Somaliland landing used locally available craft and sloops against limited opposition rather than mounting a heavily contested assault.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
Did Madagascar reshape landing-craft development?
Madagascar added little new to landing-craft design because overwhelming naval firepower handled the defences.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
Did British landing craft carry flamethrowers?
An anecdote may point to an unofficial Churchill Crocodile-derived conversion, but photographic and official confirmation has not been found.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·
Why did Allied landing-craft bows differ?
Bow forms reflected different expected beaches, reefs, surf, and water conditions rather than one universally best landing-craft shape.
From A Question of Getting There – Landing Craft & Amphibious Warfare Part 1 ·