The landing craft that carried American infantry ashore in World War II started as a workboat for Louisiana swamps. Andrew Jackson Higgins’ shallow-water designs evolved into the Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel, or LCVP, which could carry 36 combat-equipped infantrymen, a jeep and 12 troops, or 8,100 pounds of cargo while still floating in three feet of water. His company, Higgins Industries of New Orleans, built more than 20,000 boats during the war.
Those figures are recorded by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, in a history of the LCVP published in its Journeys in Innovation series. The same account says Higgins Industries grew from one boatyard with 50 employees to seven plants employing more than 20,000 people.
The USPTO’s history, “The Patented Boat That Won the War,” traces the design back to the lumber trade. Higgins, born in Nebraska in 1886, worked in the lumber industry on the Gulf Coast. “While navigating the swamps and bayous, he conceived of a compact shallow-water boat that could remove and transport heavy logs through challenging, debris-laden waterways,” the agency writes. He bought a small boatyard in New Orleans, founded Higgins Industries and branded his improved shallow-water boat the “Eureka.”
Patent 2,144,111: the hull
The first piece of protection came before the war. Higgins received U.S. Patent No. 2,144,111 for boat hull construction on Jan. 17, 1939, according to the USPTO. That hull, the agency says, “allowed his boats to land on beaches without getting their propellers stuck in the sand,” which opened up new options for where planners could put troops ashore.
The National Inventors Hall of Fame, which inducted Higgins in 2019, fills in the rest of the craft’s numbers on its inductee page for Andrew Higgins. The LCVP had “a crew of four and could float in 3 feet of water, reach a speed of 12 knots,” the Hall of Fame states. It lists Higgins as named on 18 patents, including Nos. 2,144,111 and 2,341,866, and says the boat became “the standard personnel landing craft for the military during World War II.”
Patent 2,341,866: the ramp
The feature most associated with the Higgins boat is its bow ramp. Higgins filed for that patent on Dec. 8, 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the USPTO records. “The LCVP’s ramp, protected by U.S. patent no. 2,341,866, would become America’s not-so-secret weapon for quickly offloading machinery and troops throughout the war,” the agency writes.
The ramp is what turned a shallow-draft boat into a landing craft. The National WWII Museum’s research guide on Higgins boats describes how the LCVP “allowed infantry or small vehicles to exit through a front ramp,” and notes that the Higgins workforce grew to more than 20,000 by 1943. The Hall of Fame records that the boats were used to land American troops on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.
A New Orleans production line
Production ran across New Orleans. The museum’s “Bayou to Battlefield” exhibit on Higgins Industries notes that the company’s City Park Plant, completed in 1940, had one PT boat and two landing craft production lines. At the company’s Industrial Canal facility, 100 FP ships, later designated FS (freight, supply), were built on a moving assembly line.
The exhibit credits Higgins Industries with “more than 20,000 combat watercraft essential to the success of the Normandy invasion on D-Day.” It also records that Higgins received the Army-Navy “E” Flag Award, and that his sons Ed, Andrew Jr., Frank and Roland were involved in the company from the beginning.
The USPTO’s account also carries a wartime assessment from Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower: “If Higgins had not designed and built those LCVPs, we never could have landed over an open beach.”
Higgins remained president of Higgins Industries until his death in 1952 and was honored by the Army, Navy and Marine Corps for his work, according to the National Inventors Hall of Fame. His induction there in May 2019 put the man who built more than 20,000 wartime boats alongside the country’s recognized inventors, on the strength of two patents: a hull that could reach the beach and a ramp that could empty the boat once it got there.
Top image: A preserved LCVP of the Higgins design on display in Jincheng, Kinmen. Image Credit: 寺人孟子 (Wikimedia Commons user) — CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Combat Rated editors prior to publication.