A D-Day Story: Winston Churchill's Bright Idea!

“LOST MUSKET DIARY” Saturday June 6, 2015

Low Clouds, then Sunny and Warmer 74°F/23°C in Rancho Santa Margarita

Buongiorno,

   Just before General Dwight Eisenhower gave the final order to launch Operation Overlord 71 years ago today, Prime Minister Winston Churchill turned to him and said, It appears that the destinies of

Churchill

two great empires seem to be tied up in some God-damned things called LSTs! Were that to be said today about some impending military offensive like Operation Desert Storm in the Middle East, that pithy phrase – in spite of being uttered by a world statesman of Churchill’s caliber – would be meaningless. But on June 6, 1944 both Eisenhower and Churchill knew that the outcome of the largest military offensive in human history depended on the long, squat amphibious cargo haulers that would deliver the troops and their weapons and supplies to the shore of Hitler’s Festung Europa. In today’s world of global commerce, we marvel at the supertankers and the giant container ships that carry the world’s energy supplies and our food and merchandise from their sources to the destinations where they are needed. 

Dad's LST at Normandy

The Landing Ships of World War 2 were their ancestors. Now, if you are wondering why I’ve chosen to write about such an arcane bit of naval weapon to commemorate the 71^st anniversary of D-Day, it’s simple. My dad used to drive one – the LST 920. He was the ship’s second-in-command.

   The largest of the World War 2 landing ships, the LST for Landing Ship, Tank, was little more than 300 feet long with an interior deck that ran the full length of the ship, from the watertight gull wing doors and vehicle ramp at the bow, all the way back to the stern which carried a huge anchor attached to a winch by a thousand feet of steel cable. The LST’s mission in the operation was to steam onto the beach with its cargo of tanks,

Lt (jg) Charles Botula, Jr

trucks, jeeps and troops along with their fuel, ammunition and supplies, open the front doors, lower the ramp and enable the troops and other cargo to join the battle. Then the ship and its crew would wait until the next high tide so it could back off the invasion beach and sail back to its base for another load. The Allies used a variety of landing ship types in their operations around the world in World War 2. The craft came in a variety of shapes and sizes, each with a specific mission. Small landing craft like LCVP’s carried troops and small vehicles, like jeeps. LCI’s were designed to land infantry and used twin ramps at the bow so their troops could exit the ship quickly in battle. Other LCI’s were fitted with batteries of rocket launchers. While an LST could carry a whole column of tanks on its lower deck, an LCT was a smaller version that carried a smaller number of heavy vehicles.

               The genesis of these amphibious weapons of war can be traced back to the disastrous 1915 Gallipoli campaign of World War 1; and the need for them was emphasized almost 20 years later during the early months of World War 2 at the Battle of Dunkirk in 1940. Winston Churchill was a key figure in both of those historic events. As First Lord of the Admiralty during the First World War, Churchill played a key role in what became known as The Dardanelles Campaign, which was carried out to secure the sea route between the Aegean and Black Seas, the maritime route from the Mediterranean to the Russian Empire through what is now Istanbul, Turkey. Following the Allied invasion and eight months of intense fighting, the Gallipoli Campaign ended in a disaster for the Allies and the biggest victory of the war for the Ottoman Turks, with over 100,000 dead on both sides. For his part, Churchill laid part of the blame for the Allied failure at Gallipoli on the Allies inability to land large numbers of troops and materiél on shore quickly and in sufficient amount in a seaborne invasion. A similar lesson for the Allies played out in the early days of World War 2 at the Battle of Dunkirk. By then, Churchill was Prime Minister and Britain was staring at impending defeat in the face of the Nazi onslaught across Europe.

LST 920 En Route to Normandy

               At Dunkirk in late May 1940, the Allied Expeditionary had been pushed back through France to the Channel coast by the advancing Wehrmacht. Before they could be pushed into the sea, Churchill rallied the nation which responded by sending an armada of boats and ships to the French coast and rescued over 330,000 British and Allied troops. While a victory was snatched from the jaws of defeat by Churchill and his embattled countrymen, the Allies had to leave the bulk of their arms, ammunition, vehicles and other equipment behind when they evacuated. What the British could not take or destroy, the Germans captured and made good use of as the war played out. No wonder that, in his earliest meetings with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Churchill sought not only the immediate assistance that was desperately needed to keep the Nazi wolf from John Bull’s door, but he also discussed longer range plans aimed at the ultimate defeat of the Axis menace. Among the tools he requested was a ship that could carry large numbers of troops and their vehicles, including tanks and artillery along with all of their equipment and supplies, land them on enemy beaches, or where necessary, evacuate them quickly. The idea for the LST, the very ship that my own father served aboard during the war, was born.  And so, in December 1942, a few days following the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, HMS Boxer came into service in the Royal Navy. Its builders were the same company that built RMS Titanic, Harland and Wolf Heavy Industries of Belfast, Northern Ireland. By the time that the D-Day invasion at Normandy took place in June 1944, more than a thousand LSTs and hundreds of others landing craft of all types and sizes had been put into World War 2 service.

First Time at Sea - LST 920 1944

   My father’s ship, LST 920 was commissioned ten days after D-Day, and had been painted in Pacific Theater camouflage colors, when suddenly, its Captain received new orders, the paint scheme was changed overnight to North Atlantic Gray and it joined a convoy bound for Britain. It arrived at Normandy in early September carrying out support missions for the next six months.

Ciao,

MikeBo

©Mike Botula 2015