An amphibious warfare ship (or amphib) is an amphibious vehicle warship employed to land and support ground forces, such as marines, on enemy territory during an amphibious assault.
Specialized shipping can be divided into two types, most crudely described as ships and craft. In general, the ships carry the troops from the port of embarkation to the drop point for the assault and the craft carry the troops from the ship to the shore. Amphibious assaults taking place over short distances can also involve the shore-to-shore technique, where landing craft go directly from the port of embarkation to the assault point. Some tank landing ships may also be able to land troops and equipment directly onto shore after travelling long distances, such as the .
History In the days of sail, ship's boats were used as landing craft. These rowing boats were sufficient, if inefficient, in an era when marines were effectively light infantry, participating mostly in small-scale campaigns in far-flung colonies against less well-equipped indigenous opponents.
In order to support amphibious operations during the landing in Pisagua (1879) by carrying significant quantities of cargo, and landing troops directly onto an unimproved shore, the Government of Chile built flat-bottomed landing craft, called chalanas. They transported 1,200 men in the first landing and took onboard 600 men in less than 2 hours for the second landing.
Origins
During World War I, the mass mobilization of troops equipped with rapid-fire weapons quickly rendered such boats obsolete. Initial landings during the Gallipoli campaign took place in unmodified rowing boats that were extremely vulnerable to attack from the Ottoman shore defences.
In February 1915, orders were placed for the design of purpose-built landing craft. A design was created in four days resulting in an order for 200 'X' lighters (or X-lighters) with a spoon-shaped bow to take shelving beaches and a drop-down frontal ramp.
The first use took place after they had been towed to the Aegean and performed successfully in the 6 August landing at Suvla Bay of IX Corps, commanded by Commander Edward Unwin.
'X' lighters, known to the soldiers as 'Black Beetles', carried about 500 men, displaced 200 tons (or 160 tons according to some sources) and were based on London barges being long, wide, and deep. The engines mainly ran on heavy oil and ran at a maximal speed of approximately . The sides of the ships were bullet proof, and was designed with a ramp on the bow for disembarkation.
The Imperial Russian Navy soon followed suit, building at the Russud Shipyard in 1916 a series of similar landing motor barges of the so-called Bolinder class (a.k.a. the Russud class), named in Russia after the supplier of semi-diesel engines installed in them. These, however, proved too small and unseaworthy for their intended Black Sea theater, as they were intended for planned landings on the coast of the Marmara Sea and Turkish Straits. Instead, a new ship class was designed, based on a widespread in Southern Russia merchant ship type of the era which were Azov–Black Sea steam schooners – so-called Elpidifors – commissioned into naval service during World War I and used as landing craft during the Trebizond Campaign, etc. These vessels were given the Elpidifors appellative after one of them, the grain carrier Elpidifor, which was owned by the Rostov-on-Don merchant Elpidifor Paramonov. These were typically very light at the bow, having all their machinery concentrated at the stern, which allowed easy beaching on any gently sloping coast, and often were equipped with bow gangways for fast unloading. This resulted in the , Elpidifor class, named after the Elpidifor Paramonov's eponymous grain carrier that served as a pattern on which it was based. Elpidifor-class steamships had a loaded mean draft and a reinforced hull, were equipped with ballast tanks for safe beaching, and able to land 1,000 troops with their train at virtually any available beach. While the landings for which they were created never happened, the ship class themself turned out quite useful and ships of the class had a long career, supporting Wrangel's Army landings in Kuban and in Northern Taurida during the Russian Civil War, and later were used by the Russian SFSR and the Soviet Union as minesweepers, minelayers, gunboats, and merchant ships.
A plan was devised to land British heavy tanks from pontoons in support of the Third Battle of Ypres, but this was abandoned.
During the inter-war period, the combination of the negative experience at Gallipoli and economic stringency contributed to the delay in procuring equipment and adopting a universal doctrine for amphibious operations in the Royal Navy.
Despite this outlook, the British produced the Motor Landing Craft in 1920, based on their experience with the early 'Black Beetle' armoured transport. The craft could put a medium tank directly onto a beach. From 1924, it was used with landing boats in annual exercises in amphibious landings.Buffetaut, Yves D-Day Ships, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, 1994. A prototype motor landing craft, designed by J. Samuel White of Cowes, was built and first sailed in 1926.Bruce, Colin J Invaders, Chatham Publishing, London, 1999. Buffetaut, Yves D-Day Ships, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, 1994. , p. 11
It weighed 16 tons and had a box-like appearance, having a square bow and stern. To prevent fouling of the propellers in a craft destined to spend time in surf and possibly be beached, a crude waterjet propulsion system was devised by White's designers. A Hotchkiss petrol engine drove a centrifugal pump which produced a jet of water, pushing the craft ahead or astern, and steering it, according to how the jet was directed. Speed was and its beaching capacity was good.Fergusson, Bernard The Watery Maze; the story of Combined Operations, Holt, New York, 1961. pp. 38-43 By 1930, three MLC were operated by the Royal Navy.
The United States revived and experimented in their approach to amphibious warfare between 1913 and the mid-1930s, when the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps became interested in setting up advanced bases in opposing countries during wartime; the prototype advanced base force officially evolved into the Fleet Marine Force (FMF) in 1933.Allan R. Millett, "Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps", (New York City, NY: The Free Press, 1991).
In 1939, during the annual Fleet Landing Exercises, the FMF became interested in the military potential of Andrew Higgins's design of a powered, shallow-draught boat. These LCPL, dubbed the 'Higgins Boats', were reviewed and passed by the U.S. Naval Bureau of Construction and Repair. Soon, the Higgins boats were developed to a final design with a ramp - the LCVP, and were produced in large numbers. The boat was a more flexible variant of the LCPR with a wider ramp. It could carry 36 troops, a small vehicle such as a jeep, or a corresponding amount of cargo.
Second World War
Specialized infantry landing craft In the run-up to WWII, many specialized landing craft, both for infantry and vehicles, were developed. In November 1938, the British Inter-Service Training and Development Centre proposed a new type of landing craft.Maund, LEH. Assault From the Sea, Methuen & Co. Ltd., London 1949. pp. 3–10 Its specifications were to weigh less than ten long tons, to be able to carry the thirty-one men of a British Army platoon and five assault engineers or signallers, and to be so shallow drafted as to be able to land them, wet only up to their knees, in eighteen inches of water. All of these specifications made the Landing Craft Assault; a separate set of requirements was laid down for a vehicle and supplies carrier, although previously the two roles had been combined in the Motor Landing Craft.
J. S. White of Cowes built a prototype to the Fleming design.Buffetaut, p. 26 Eight weeks later the craft was doing trials on the River Clyde. All landing craft designs must find a compromise between two divergent priorities; the qualities that make a good sea boat are opposite those that make a craft suitable for beaching.Saunders 1943, p. 11. The craft had a hull built of double-diagonal mahogany planking. The sides were plated with "10lb. DIHT" armour, a heat-treated steel based on D1 steel,Welding & Fabrication of Ships Structure MOD in this case Hadfield's Resista ¼".Buffetaut 1994, p. 49
The Landing Craft Assault remained the most common British and Commonwealth landing craft of World War II, and the humblest vessel admitted to the books of the Royal Navy on D-Day. Prior to July 1942, these craft were referred to as "Assault Landing Craft" (ALC), but "Landing Craft; Assault" (LCA) was used thereafter to conform with the joint US-UK nomenclature system.Bruce, p. 10
The Landing Craft Infantry was a stepped up amphibious assault ship, developed in response to a British request for a vessel capable of carrying and landing substantially more troops than the smaller Landing Craft Assault (LCA). The result was a small steel ship that could land 200 troops, traveling from rear bases on its own bottom at a speed of up to 15 knots. The original British design was envisioned as being a "one time use" vessel which would simply ferry the troops across the English Channel, and were considered an expendable vessel. As such, no troop sleeping accommodations were placed in the original design. This was changed shortly after initial use of these ships, when it was discovered that many missions would require overnight accommodations.
The first LCI(L)s entered service in 1943 chiefly with the Royal Navy and the United States Navy. Some 923 LCI were built in ten American shipyards and 211 provided under lend-lease to the Royal Navy.
Specialized vehicle landing craft
Following the successful development of the infantry carrying LCA by the Inter-Service Training and Development Centre (ISTDC), attention turned to the means of efficiently delivering a tank to a beach in 1938. Inquires were made of the army as to the heaviest tank that might be employed in a landing operation. The army wanted to be able to land a 12-ton tank, but the ISTDC, anticipating weight increases in future tank models specified 16 tons burthen for mechanised landing craft designs. Another limit on any design was the need to land tanks and other vehicles in less than approximately 2½ feet of water.Ladd, 1976, p.42
Design work began at John I. Thornycroft Ltd. in May 1938 with trials completing in February 1940. Constructed of steel and selectively clad with armour plate, this shallow-draft, barge-like boat with a crew of 6, could ferry a tank of 16 long tons to shore at 7 knots (13 km/h). Depending on the weight of the tank to be transported the craft might be lowered into the water by its davits already loaded or could have the tank placed in it after being lowered into the water.
Although the Royal Navy had the Landing Craft Mechanised at its disposal, in 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill demanded an amphibious vessel capable of landing at least three 36-ton heavy tanks directly onto a beach, able to sustain itself at sea for at least a week, and inexpensive and easy to build. Admiral Maund, director of the Inter-Service Training and Development Centre (which had developed the Landing Craft Assault), gave the job to naval architect Sir Roland Baker, who within three days completed initial drawings for a landing craft with a beam and a shallow draft. Ship builders Fairfields and John Brown agreed to work out details for the design under the guidance of the Admiralty Experimental Works at Haslar. Tank tests with models soon determined the characteristics of the craft, indicating that it would make on engines delivering about . Designated the LCT Mark 1, 20 were ordered in July 1940 and a further 10 in October 1940.