Higgins Boat

The Higgins boat, formally the Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel or LCVP, is a shallow-draft wooden landing craft designed by the New Orleans boatbuilder Andrew Higgins and mass-produced for the United States and its allies from 1942 onward, distinguished by a flat bow ramp that dropped down to let troops, vehicles or supplies disembark directly onto a beach rather than over the side into the surf. Its shallow draft let it run close inshore over sandbars and shallows that would ground a conventional ship's boat, and tens of thousands were built to carry out amphibious landings across both the Pacific and European theaters of the Second World War, most famously ferrying the first waves of Allied troops onto the beaches of Normandy on D-Day in June 1944. General Dwight Eisenhower is widely quoted as having said after the war that Higgins and his landing craft won the war for the Allies, a judgment reflecting how essential the type's ability to land large forces directly onto hostile shorelines was to Allied amphibious strategy.