re: Interesting historical pictures thread (add captions please)

Posted on 1/29/13 at 7:05 pm to Cold Pizza

Posted by HarryBalzack

Member since Oct 2012

15229 posts

Posted on 1/29/13 at 7:05 pm to Cold Pizza

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To win the war, the United States and its allies had to develop tactics and equipment to launch massive amphibious landings at sites ranging from Pacific atolls to the French coastline. The city of New Orleans made a unique contribution to this critical part of America’s war effort.

New Orleans was home to Higgins Industries, a small boat company owned by the flamboyant entrepreneur Andrew Jackson Higgins. Higgins designed and produced a unique and ingenious collection of amphibious boats capable of delivering masses of men and equipment safely and efficiently from ship to shore, eliminating the need for established harbors.

Higgins boats were used in every major American amphibious operation in the European and Pacific theaters, including D-Day in Normandy. Indeed, they were crucial to the success of those operations.

By late 1943, his seven plants employed more than 25,000 workers. The Higgins workforce was the first in New Orleans to be racially integrated. His employees included whites, blacks, men, women, seniors, and people with disabilities. All were paid equal wages according to their job functions. They responded by shattering production records, turning out more than 20,000 boats—12,500 of them LCVPs—by the end of the war.

During the war, Higgins’ name became indelibly tied to his landing craft. Men did not come ashore in LCVPs, they traveled in “Higgins boats.” His achievements earned him countless accolades, but none was greater than the one he received from General Eisenhower. Higgins, Eisenhower said years later, “won the war for us.”

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Photo portrait of Andrew Higgins. July 23, 1944, taken at an event celebrating the 10,000 "Higgins" boat produced.

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Higgins Industries, Inc., New Orleans, La., makes torpedo boats and other boats for the Navy - July 1942

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Civilian Version - According to a 1940 Time article, in the early 1930s, Higgins invented the Eureka, with a design purpose "to enable the boat to crunch through driftwood, bounce over logs, hurdle narrow land spits, climb a beach, land a party dry-shod," and "wham up on a sloping concrete sea wall."

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Higgins boat loaded with troops

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Higgins boat delivering US troops on the beaches of Normandy

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Troops landing

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Higgins NOLA production line

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Marines using Higgins boats for the landing on Tarawa (1943)

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This photos was taken in March 1943 during a landing operation on Lake Pontchartrain at New Orleans, home of the Higgins Boat Works. These photos show men boarding the craft at the boat yard.