A Vet and a Lady
On my safari yesterday, I had the pleasent surprise of meeting a World War II vet. My first thoughts were, unfairly, “They don’t allow her kind in the Army.”
She was there at D-Day, in combat. And here she is, over sixty years later, still looking good and serving in her own way. My dad, a vet of the same war, would have been both astonished and pleased to have met her.
This is the first thing I saw. Needless to say, it wasn’t a marking I expected to see. And it wasn’t the wackiest ship in the Army, but a working ship, with an honorable record.
Historic Naval Ships AssociationBuilt to serve during WW II, USAT LT-5 moved military cargo under the Army Transportation Corps. She served in both the Atlantic and Pacific. On February 3, 1944, she sailed for Great Britain to assist in the preparations for Operation Overlord. LT-5 arrived off the Normandy coast on June 7 as part of Operation Mulberry. On June 8th while moored to a sunken LST, LT-5 was subjected to air attacks. Her log book for June 9 records that at 20:30 hours, “planes overhead. Everyone shooting at them. Starboard gunner got an F.W.” (German Luftwaffe fighter, the Focke Wulf.)
While many of the Army’s remaining tugs were decommissioned, sold or scrapped, LT-5 was assigned to the Army Corps of Engineers out of Buffalo serving from 1946 until 1989 as a Great Lakes harbor tug. She is the only known essentially unmodified example of the LT-type left in the US. Her heroics during the Normandy invasion led to the awarding of National Historic Landmark status in 1991.
LT-5 is berthed on the West Pier in the Oswego Harbor where she is made available for public viewing through the H. Lee White Museum. The Museum is open seasonally from May through September.
History of the Motor Transport CorpsA major port was required to land all the equipment needed to win the battle for Normandy and the liberation of France.
At the Roosevelt-Churchill conference in Quebec in August 1943, it was decided that an artificial harbor would be built and towed across from England to France.
In the fall of 1943, General Eisenhower’s planners realized the need for the rapid insertion of combat supplies and soldiers to sustain the fighting in France following the Normandy Invasion.
Ships were the only feasible means to transport the enormous quantities of supplies and equipment needed to defeat the Germans. After months of debate, the planners decided to construct two artificial harbors, code named “OPERATION MULBERRY.”
The construction of harbors was a massive undertaking and required the use of 158 tugboats. The Army Transportation Service (ATS) supplied 74 ST small tugs and 6 LT large tugs.
In preparation for the operation, the Army tugs sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to England. This was no easy task for the small ST-type tug, which only measures 86 feet long. The ATS was also instrumental in recruiting and organizing Merchant Marines and civilians to help man the Army tugboats, and sail the blockships, “Gooseberries,” to their scuttling position.
H&I* Fires 7 Aug 2006 Thanks for the linkage, John!
Subscribe
Comments