{"id":43,"date":"2021-05-06T01:52:02","date_gmt":"2021-05-06T01:52:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.umsldigitalhumanities.org\/StLouisInWorldWarTwo\/?p=43"},"modified":"2021-05-13T18:00:15","modified_gmt":"2021-05-13T18:00:15","slug":"setting-sail-for-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.umsldigitalhumanities.org\/StLouisInWorldWarTwo\/uncategorized\/setting-sail-for-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Setting Sail for War"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

            As the war transitioned from 1942 to 1943, U.S. military planners began to realize the paramount importance that amphibious assault vehicles would play in the planned offensive in North Africa, Europe, and the Pacific theatre. Offensive operations at sea would require a different type of vessel compared to the \u201cliberty ships\u201d currently being mass produced to transport cargo to different theatres. Luckily for the U.S., there was already a ship in existence that was perfectly suited to the task, and it was thanks to a man by the name of Andrew Jackson Higgins. Higgins operated a logging company in Louisiana and by the 30\u2019s, he realized the need for a boat with a shallow draft, whose propeller wouldn\u2019t become snagged by the marshy undergrowth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            At first the Navy was uninterested in his designs, until the sudden attack at Pearl Harbor forced them to admit that his boats were better than the designs they were currently working on. As the war dragged on, Higgins modified his original design several times. First he exchanged the curled lip at the front of the ship for a ramp that would descend and allow troops and vehicles to avoid climbing over the sides to get off. Higgins boats would also receive different classifications such as LST\u2019s (Landing ship, Tank) depending on the type of cargo they were supposed to carry to the beaches. Thus, one man became the sole supplier of the ships that would literally carry U.S. troops to victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of the thousands of LST ships produced during the war<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

            St. Louis would become one of many important producers of the crucial LST throughout the war. The primary manufacturer of these new ships was The Missouri Shipbuilding Co., which was operated by St. Louis Shipbuilding and Steel Co. Each LST was 327 feet long and capable of carrying up to six armored tanks each. The fact that they had no armor made them easy to sink, but also meant that they only needed 3 \u00bd feet of water to operate. This is what allowed them, to drive right up to the beach where a ramp at the front of the craft lowered to allow the tanks to depart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Other St. Louis companies also made amphibious vehicles for the war effort. The St. Louis Chevy Plant produced DUKWs, which were amphibious vehicles that could drive off the ramps of the larger Higgins boats into the seas, and then drive up onto the beach and keep going inland. They could reach speeds of roughly six miles per hour on calm seas or fifty miles per hour on land.  A similar vehicle was also produced by the St. Louis Car Company in the form of the LVT-A or \u201cWater Buffalo\u201d as the vehicle was called. The main difference between the DUKW and the LVT-A, was that the latter used treads similar to a tank to move on land while the former used six drive wheels to get around. At first, the production of the water buffalos in St. Louis was hindered by the fact that the head of the company, Edwin Meissner, couldn\u2019t secure the permission or building materials necessary to expand his factory for their production. To solve this problem, he was eventually forced to buy buildings from the Curtis-Wright complex located at Lambert field. He then had the buildings disassembled, transported via rail to his facility, and then rebuilt at his factory complex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A group of water Buffalos produced by the St. Louis Car Company
(Image courtesy of Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

            Once these ships were completed, the boats were often crewed by members of the Coast Guard, who then sailed them to their various destinations. To train these crews, the Navy had its own barracks facility located in the city. One such facility for the Coast Guard was established on a floating barracks at the foot of Washington Avenue. In addition to this, the Naval Air Station at Lambert Field was expanded at the war\u2019s outbreak to train new recruits. This group was later relocated in 1943 to the NAS station at Glenview, Illinois. In addition to its production of assault craft, St. Louis also served as a vital transportation hub of the Mississippi River. All types of resources ranging from metal ore, food, and fuel, often traveled from the Great Lakes Region as well as the Missouri and Illinois Rivers, down the Mississippi to St. Louis, and on to New Orleans and eventually, the front lines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

            As the war transitioned from 1942 to 1943, U.S. military planners began to realize the paramount importance that amphibious assault vehicles would play in the planned offensive in North Africa, Europe, and the Pacific theatre. Offensive operations at sea would require a different type of vessel compared to the \u201cliberty ships\u201d currently being mass\u2026 Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.umsldigitalhumanities.org\/StLouisInWorldWarTwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.umsldigitalhumanities.org\/StLouisInWorldWarTwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.umsldigitalhumanities.org\/StLouisInWorldWarTwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.umsldigitalhumanities.org\/StLouisInWorldWarTwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.umsldigitalhumanities.org\/StLouisInWorldWarTwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.umsldigitalhumanities.org\/StLouisInWorldWarTwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":239,"href":"https:\/\/www.umsldigitalhumanities.org\/StLouisInWorldWarTwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions\/239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.umsldigitalhumanities.org\/StLouisInWorldWarTwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.umsldigitalhumanities.org\/StLouisInWorldWarTwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.umsldigitalhumanities.org\/StLouisInWorldWarTwo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}