Designing Landing Craft Tank for heavier armour

The familiar story of an emergency design beginning in 1940 overlooks studies reaching back to 1936 and 1937. Reginald Henderson, Ernle Chatfield, and Stanley Goodall supported work on craft able to carry at least three forty-ton tanks, a weight the Army initially considered improbable. Naval planners expected vehicles to grow heavier because they had watched the same process reshape destroyers and cruisers. Successive LCT marks increased capacity, while sectional construction let merchant ships carry the bulky vessels towards the eastern Mediterranean. One section was reportedly found after drifting roughly 150 to 160 miles when its transport sank. The story makes the LCT's modular transport scheme tangible and shows the odd survivability of an unfinished hull section.