Landing-craft development emerged from an Anglo-American exchange. In spring 1941, the US Marine Corps was preparing combined operations involving tanks and visited the Higgins yard, while Royal Navy observers also examined the work. Competing accounts disagree over which service placed its order first, but both describe officers learning from the same designs. The personnel craft could carry thirty men at about eighteen knots. The larger LCM Mark III measured about fifty feet, displaced roughly fifty-two tons fully loaded, used a crew of three plus an officer, and could carry a thirty-ton tank for Allied amphibious forces.
Chapter · 37:03-43:17
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.