LCMs Across the Rhine?

Absolutely. There's a photo at

Very big trucks.

"The versatility of Ordnance maintenance companies was also demonstrated by the use of a heavy tank maintenance company to process and test the hundred LVT's used by XVI Corps in the initial Ninth Army Rhine crossing. The company was augmented with all the Ninth Army Ordnance men who had had any experience with LVT maintenance, and the problem of nonexistent spare parts was met by cannibalizing the LVT's that had been wrecked in the Roer crossing. The LVT's were especially valuable in the Rhine crossing because they required no special river entrances or exits. The other Navy landing craft that were used, the LCM's and LCVP's, and the Seamules were much heavier and harder to handle.

"Evacuation companies with Ms5 tank transporters were used to help the Navy bring the assault boats up to the Rhine. This was done not only in the Ninth Army crossing but in Third Army crossings around Mainz on

22-23 March. The Navy men would lash a huge cradle to the transporter with ropes, lift the big LCM with a crane so that the transporter could drive under it, and then lower the craft into the cradle, creating "a monster on wheels" (as one Third Army historian described it), seventy-two feet long and more than seventeen feet high. For the first time, the big M25 tank transporters looked small. When the strange, unwieldy convoys made their journeys to the Rhine, towns had to be bypassed because the rigs could not turn sharp corners, roads had to be widened, bridges reinforced, communications wires lifted so that they would not be torn down, and obstacles ahead blown up by demolition squads."

Bruce Melbourne, Australia

There absolutely were both LCMs and LCVPs used in Rhine crossings, as well as being very heavily used on the Scheldt River in Belgium and Holland (near and around Antwerp). My father - in the USCG - drove both types in several locations.

In fact, one of his boats - don't know which type - is probably still there, up near Bad Braubach on the Rhine south of Remagen. It seems that there was this steel girder just barely sticking up out of the water..... 'Nuff said.

Andy

a roomy i had once drove one on the rivers. he sidelined selling balck market. ended the war with a nice nest egg.