Landing Craft: What to put in it?

All the US Sherman tanks landed at Normandy in the initial stages of the campaign were the M4 and M4A1 model, which shared the same engine and simplified the spare parts situation. The M4A3 didn't appear until later in the campaign. The Italeri Marine Sherman is supposed to represent the late M4A2, but only the engine deck is correct. The upper tailplate flares out too much (being based on their earlier M4A3 kit), and the lower plate should have a pair of mufflers fitted for the -A2 model's dual diesel engines (though this error is concealed by the wading trinks). These tanks were seen from Saipan on, and one battalion still operated the type on Okinawa (though other Marine battalions had transitioned to the M4A3). Most British units had the M4A4 with either 75mm or 17 pounder gun (UK also received and operated the M4, M4A1 and M4A2, and some M4 composite hulls were rebuilt as 17 pounder-armed "Fireflies"). British units also had a host of "Funnies" operated by Percy Hobart's 79th Armoured Division, which included tanks fitted with mine flails, mat layers to negotiate the slippery clay surface on some British-zone beaches, and engineer vehicles which fired enormous demolition charges to destroy beach defenses. There were plenty of other specialty types based on Sherman and Churchill chassis. Gerald Owens

I was born in 1945 and as a tyke my parents belonged to the Larchmont Beach Club in Westchester County, New York. The club owned a small sandbar of an island in Long Island Sound. It had a nice beach plus some service facilities (ice cream cones anyone?).

There was no road access to the island; you got there by boat. They had an old fashioned wooden excursion boat from the 1930s, but needed more capacity. So they had a surplus LCM to haul beach goers out to the island. I thought it really cool when the forward ramp came down and we all trapsed out onto the island.

The boats left the mainland from New Rochelle, NY, from a dock next to the NY Yacht Club and at the foot of a draw bridge to the island where the Glen Island Casino used to be. I doubt if today the LCM would pass Coast Guard safety rules for that many civilian passengers.

OK, there is a lot of potential here for a diorama. Put a bunch of summertime beach goers in the boat with umbrellas, blow up rafts, bikinis and tykes with pails. Or maybe from the dock with a bandstand on Glen Island with a big band playing "In the Mood." Add a draw bridge for interest. Tie up Mayor LaGuardia's or Donald Trump's father's yacht next to the LCM. Alas, I do not remember what color the LCM was painted, so there your imagination must suffice.

..../Vess

My sister used to live out on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington near Bremerton; in the bay on whch she lived was an island, and there was an old flat-bottomed, ramp-nosed boat (which I now think must have been an LCM) which hired out to people who needed to move stuff to their homes on the island. The superstructure was much more complex than an LCM's, though, but I had the impression that it had been added on. This wasn't so very long ago, either; 1990s.

Make a good diorama, filled with furniture and a piano...

Steve H

Vess Irv>

I'm pretty sure old WW2 landing craft were used all round the British Isles for ferry work, some might still be. Try for a load of food crates, a pallet of bricks and wood for a builder and a few fishermens wives heading back from a mainland shopping trip. :-)

Nick

Back in the early '70s I was a volunteer firefighter with Sausalito FD.

Angel Island is the large island in SF Bay close to Tiburon. We were called to bring our water tender over to help fight a major brush fire. Drove the tender to the boat harbor at the fort beneath the north tower of the GG Bride and onto a landing craft. As the driver I got to go with the rig, everybody else had to go to the island on their shuttle boat.

The landing craft operator insisted on taking the tender on to and off of the boat on the way over and back. It was a beautifully preserved boat.

The lowlight of the fire fight was having a B-17 drop it's slurry (we still called it Borate back then) load on top of us. We dove under the water tender, but that stuff hits hard and goes everywhere. Pink firefighters were kind of funny, but a blue and pink water tender lookeed only like lots and lots of work cleaning it up. The slurry down jacket necks, up sleeves and cuffs turned out to be most unpleasant.

As it was converted fro a GMC 2 1/2 ton truck (as was the first engine I served on in Inverness) I have plans to make models of both some day.

Tom