Built For War
By Melanie Torbett
If you have a chance to visit the newly opened
D-Day Museum in New Orleans, take a close look at the big gray boat
in the cavernous, sunlit Louisiana Pavilion on the first floor.
It’s a duplicate of the World War II era LCVP or
Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel boat, commonly referred to by
soldiers as the Higgins boat. Down to its 1944 marine diesel engine,
it’s a carefully constructed clone of the famous boats that
effectively delivered men and machines to the beaches of Normandy,
other European shores and the Pacific Islands. Renowned for their
ability to quickly and reliably get in and out of beachheads, the
Higgins ramped boats were credited by military men as having a
direct effect on the Allies winning World War II and ending
Hitler’s march across Europe.
Interestingly,
trees from Louisiana forests - specifically old-growth, long leaf
yellow pine - were an important ingredient in these boats that made
successful amphibious military operations possible. Prized for its
strength and durability, yellow pine was coupled with oak, mahogany
and steel to build the boxy, unlovely boats that were churned out by
the thousands in Higgins Industries’ New Orleans plants during the
war years.
The company, led by a colorful entrepreneur and
former timber businessman named Andrew Jackson Higgins, once
employed more than 20,000 and built a total of 20,094 boats for the
Allied cause. By 1943, nine out of every 10 U.S. Navy vessels had
been designed by Higgins. In
addition to the LCVP craft, the company built various other landing
craft as well as high-speed PT boats, antisubmarine boats, dispatch
boats, supply vessels and other specialized patrol craft.
The landing craft, for which Higgins is best known, were used in
transporting fully armed troops, light tanks, field artillery and
other mechanized equipment and supplies essential to amphibious
operations, explains the author of Andrew Jackson Higgins and the
Boats that Won World War II (LSU Press). “Without Higgins’
uniquely designed craft,” writes Kenner, La. based author Jerry
Strahan, “there could not have been a mass landing of troops and
material on European shores or the beaches of the Pacific islands,
at least not without a tremendously higher rate of Allied
casualties. During July 1943, Higgins’ plants produced more
landing craft than all the other shipyards in the nation
combined.”
The Higgins Industries 36 foot LCVP design evolved
from a rugged, shallow draft workboat, the “Eureka,” which
Higgins produced in the 1930s for use by trappers and oil companies
in the swamps and marshes of south Louisiana. The boat “could
operate in only 18 inches of water, running through vegetation and
over logs and debris without fouling its propeller. It could also
run right up on shore and extract itself without damage.” Higgins
often had the boats run up on the Lake Pontchartrain seawall to
demonstrate their capabilities.
The reproduction of the Higgins boat that visitors
to the D-Day Museum can now view was built in New Orleans with
volunteer labor and donated materials over a two-year period. The
reproduction project was headed by Lt. Jimmy Duckworth, a Metairie,
La. businessman and Coast Guard reservist, who was asked by museum
organizers to find an original Higgins boat for display.
Bill Phelps, who worked for Higgins Industries,
came one day to Duckworth’s office and challenged him to build a
Higgins boat from scratch. Duckworth gives Phelps credit for getting
the project started. “I never would have kicked that rock down the
mountain if he hadn’t sat on my desk and told me to do it. He made
me mad.”
Duckworth eventually assembled a crew of
volunteers that included World War II veterans, former Higgins
employees and other naval enthusiasts who worked on weekends to
construct an authentic Higgins landing craft. The boat, which is
seaworthy, is valued for insurance purposes at more than $11.2
million, and is owned by the University of New Orleans Foundations.
(During World War II, each Higgins ramp boat cost the government
$12,000 - $13,000.)
In 1998, project volunteers salvaged an old Higgins boat from the
brackish waters of Irish Bayou south of New Orleans and used it as
the model. Though blackened by age and years of being submerged, the
boat’s pine components “fared very well,” Duckworth says.
Workers were able to reassemble the old boat’s pine members,
examine the cuts and duplicate them for the new boat.
Though Duckworth and his compatriots were working
with Higgins’ boat plans (which were almost trashed by a successor
company now-defunct Higgins Industries, and are now safely stored at
the University of New Orleans) “no one really knows how accurate
the plans were “because of modifications made on the construction
floor at the time. Thus, the salvaged 1940’s-era boat was a
precious find. “We couldn’t have done it without that old
wreck,” says Duckworth. Southern yellow pine was used in several
areas of the boat, most importantly as the head log, the main member
that ties the boat’s bow together. This solid block of pine at the
bow was the strongest part of the boat, enabling it to run at full
speed over floating obstacles, sandbars and right up onto the beach
without damaging the hull. Also called the transverse member, “it
gives a blunt, skiff-type appearance to the boat. It takes the brunt
of anything the boat’s going to hit,” explains Duckworth. In the
LCVP, the head log is located just underneath the hinged bow ramp.
Pine
also went into manufacture of the Higgins boats’ forward and aft
keels, skegs, bow posts, stemposts, shear and chine (spine)
longitudinals. For the reproduction vessel, the requisite “big
pieces” of wellaged pine were donated by Albany Woodworks near
Hammond, La.
One of Higgins long-time key employees, Graham Haddock, worked on
many of the boat designs for the company, beginning in 1937. Pine
was specified for many of the boats’ components, he says, because
“it’s the best boat-building lumber there is. Long leaf pine
will last forever.” Still living in New Orleans, he remembers that
Mr. Higgins employed a couple of timber cruisers who would walk
timber tracts to personally select pine trees of the particular size
and curvature required for keels in the PT boats the company was
building.
Haddock worked on the new Higgins boat at the D-Day Museum, and
calls it an “exact reproduction” of the original Higgins landing
craft he helped design 60 years ago. The only deviations from the
old specifications were to use treated lumber in some components,
new wiring and substituting two joined pieces of pine for one 40 ft.
long member.
Though it’s assumed that many Louisiana sawmills
supplied Higgins with lumber during the company’s wartime building
frenzy, there is apparently little documentation left. A handful of
old correspondence and requisition forms have been found that
describe the commerce between one central Louisiana lumber operation
and Higgins.
Henry Taves, site manager at the Southern Forest
Heritage Museum in Long Leaf near Alexandria, recently discovered
original files related to business between Higgins and the Crowell
Long Leaf Lumber Co., which operated from 1892 until 1969. Crowell
mills at both Long Leaf and Alco cut pine to specification for
Higgins boats, and shipped to New Orleans.
“As you well know, the Higgins Industries have
always preferred the use of Crowell Long Leaf Yellow Pine. In fact,
we find that with your lumber, it helps us to cut down our handling
and reworking time, and increase production,” states a May 17,
1943 letter from Nelson P. Brown, Jr., lumber purchasing agent for
Higgins Industries, to R.D. Crowell, Jr. A letter from Crowell to
the federal Office of Price Administration in 1942 makes the point
that the Higgins’ orders were atypical for the sawmill, “...not
only the various restrictions placed on these timbers but most of
the sizes are not practical to manufacture and we only produce these
grades for the Higgins Industries as a patriotic measure...”
An October 1942 letter from Crowell to several of
his superintendents instructed them to begin saving high-grade
lumber for later use in anticipated orders from Higgins. One October
1942 requisition sheet from Higgins to Crowell specifies 300 pieces
of 12 in. x 12 in. x 8 ft. timbers for use as head logs.
“The ramp boats required very high grades of
timber, often Select #1 with 90% or higher heart content. This
material was found in original growth virgin trees, though not in
unlimited quantity. The sawmill workers squeezed all high-grade
lumber they could out of each log, sometimes sacrificing a greater
volume of a lower grade... “ notes an article in the Southern
Forest Heritage Museum newsletter.
“We’re fortunate that not only did the
Crowells preserve this mill, but also we have all these old
documents. It’s just fascinating,” says Taves.
Historical documents and artifacts at the forestry
museum and the D-Day Museum help preserve and honor World War II
memories. They are reminders of how Louisiana’s people and
products - including the celebrated Higgins boat-helped determine
the war’s outcome.
EDITOR’S NOTE:
This article appeared in the Third Quarter 2000 issue of Forests and
People, a publication of Louisiana Forestry Assn.
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