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- Landing craft (National Historic Ships)
- Fighting back: the liberation of Europe (PortCities)
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This exhibition features six vessels filmed for the BBC Four series Boats that Built Britain. Two are on the National Register of Historic Vessels, managed by National Historic Ships
Conflict – Landing Craft (LCVP PA25-26)
Image: D-Day June 6th 11:00 hrs – Coming ashore LCT, by Anthony Gross. PU9719, NMM
'It was a vast armada… an unforgettable sight. It dawned on me that ”this was it”’
Roy Nelson, D-Day veteran
Despite a delayed start due to bad weather, 75,215 British and Canadian troops and 57,500 US troops were put ashore on D-Day, many packed into landing craft.
The boat
The landing craft (LCVP) featured in the television series was built after the Second World War. Few of these vessels have survived in the UK and the film crew found this one on a Midlands river, where she is regularly used for film work.
Image: LCVP PA26-25 today
Image credit: Vanessa Bird
On 6 June 1944, during the Second World War, Allied forces launched ‘Operation Overlord’, the campaign to liberate Western Europe. This began with the Normandy landings in Northern France, codenamed ‘Neptune’. The landings were a complex operation. A well-assembled fleet of mixed landing craft were key to the Allied success.
The landings required manoeuvrable boats which could be used in shallow water and brought up to the beaches. The design of the ‘landing craft, vehicle and personnel’ (LCVP) was ideal for this purpose. It was 36 feet (11 m) long, with a square bow and armour-plated sides. Its diesel engine made it vibrate heavily at sea but it could carry a platoon of 36, or a jeep and a squad of a dozen men.
The story
Roy Nelson joined the Royal Marines, aged 17, and only a year later found himself in charge of a landing craft off the Normandy beaches.
Image: Roy Nelson in uniform.
Credit: Roy Nelson
Roy Nelson was coxswain of an LCVP and underwent a period of intensive training, including practice ‘beachings’, in 1943. During this time, he was forced to abandon one vessel on a sandbank off Ramsgate, while another snapped its steering cable and started going round in circles.
On 3 June 1944, Roy Nelson was transported to the Normandy beaches, where he worked for six days without a break operating an LCVP. Living conditions on the landing craft were basic, with scant rations, a primus stove for cooking and a bucket for a toilet.
After several weeks, his LCVP was in urgent need of maintenance, so he went ashore, leaving it on the beach. On returning, he found that, ‘the repair party had declared the craft beyond repair…and unceremoniously bull-dozed her out of the way to allow the war to continue’.