Landing Ship Infantry (Large) describes the ships' wartime function rather than their commercial origins. Their merchant appearance concealed a ship able to carry troops, landing craft, stores, and the supporting personnel needed for an assault. An official postwar account begins this family of development in 1940, but the underlying combined-operations thinking ran through interwar work to lessons learned from the Dardanelles campaign. The official category therefore dates from 1940, while the capability behind it had a much older history.
Chapter · 9:50-12:18
From cargo liners to Landing Ship Infantry (Large)
The Glen-class ships appear unglamorous, but their conversion placed substantial troop and landing-craft capacity inside a useful merchant hull.