Higgins started making landing craft for the Navy when World War II began. Inventor Andrew Higgins was named on 18 patents. “He would find a way to do something, then find a way to do it better.” “There was no task Higgins couldn’t do,” Schick says. Then, a V-shaped keel was created and that allowed the boat to ride higher in the water. A ridge was later added to the keel, which improved stability. First was the spoonbill bow that curled up near the ramp, forcing water underneath and enabling the craft to push up on to the shore and then back away after offloading. Higgins’ innovative spirit enabled a series of breakthroughs that led to the eventual design that became his namesake boat. “That stuff is always fun to smile and chuckle about, but no one ever keeps a record saying that’s what they did,” he diplomatically states.
Schick doesn’t come right out and confirm the stories, but he doesn’t deny them either. There are rumors that he then went to the rum runners and offered to sell them even faster boats. Coast Guard to build fast boats for chasing after rum runners. The National World War II Museum in New Orleans is displaying this full-scale recreation of a Higgins boat.ĭuring the Prohibition era, Higgins had a contract with the U.S. He constantly tinkered with the concept as he sought to improve his boats to better match the ideal in his own mind of what these boats should be. He concentrated on flat-bottomed vessels to meet the needs of his customers, who plied the shallow waters in and around the Mississippi River delta. Higgins, a Nebraska native who established himself as a successful lumber businessman in New Orleans, began building boats in the 1930s. “Higgins applied it to everything in his life: politics, dealing with unions, acquiring workers, producing fantastical things or huge amounts of things. “His genius was problem-solving,” says Joshua Schick, a curator at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, which opened a new D-Day exhibit last month featuring a full-scale recreation of a Higgins boat. “Andrew Higgins is the man who won the war for us,” he told author Stephen Ambrose in a 1964 interview.Īndrew Higgins' "Lighter for Mechanized Equipment," patented February 15, 1944 At least, that’s what President Dwight D. The vessel’s unique design coupled with the inventor’s dogged determination to succeed may very well have swung the balance of victory to within grasp of the Allies. Higgins’ creation had a dramatic impact on the outcome of the Normandy landings 75 years ago, as well as many other naval operations in World War II. Now these 36-foot LCVPs – also known as Higgins boats – were being manufactured in the thousands to help American soldiers, marines and seamen attack the enemy through amphibious assaults. Patent Office on Decem– the day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Andrew Jackson Higgins had filed his idea with the U.S. Less than four months earlier, the patent was issued for those very boats. In the distance is the coast of Normandy. Tightly packed troops crouch inside their LCVP as it plows through a wave. D-Day and the Allied invasion of Europe had commenced. on June 6, 1944, and the first LCVPs – Landing Craft, Vehicle and Personnel – had just come ashore on Utah Beach at Normandy. Heavy iron ramps dropped into the surf and the men surged forward into the cold water toward an uncertain fate. Suddenly, they heard the sound of the keels grinding against sand and stone. Waves slapped hard against the plywood hulls while bullets pinged off the flat steel bows.įrightened men in uniform hunkered down beneath the gunwales to avoid the continuous enemy fire.
The smell of diesel fumes and vomit was overwhelming as the small vessels lurched toward the beaches. Thousands of flat-bottomed boats plowed through rough seas under cold gray skies.