Built Around It

[tbutler]

At first glance, one might mistake this for an industrial building... but no.



The curve of the wall might say a bit more...

This is the Tank Deck of LST-325. The LST's were WW II ships purpose-designed for landing large quantities of men and equipment on the beach during amphibious operations, where they had to get in, dump their loads, and get out as quickly as possible. So instead of the usual cargo holds, the LST's were built around this wide open deck where anything up to medium tanks could be parked. Then the bow was fitted with a ramp covered by a pair of doors. The LST would sail into the beach, open the doors, and drop the ramp, letting everything on the Tank Deck drive out.

It was an interesting design. Unfortunately, the qualities that made it great for delivering lots of cargo fast made it less than admirable as a ship; it needed a shallow draft to get up close to the beach, for example, but that made it pretty unstable in rough seas. After WW II, they were mostly retired.

LST-325 is one of the last surviving ships, tied up in Evansville Indiana of all places. (Apparently that's where a lot of them were built; one advantage of the shallow draft is being able to sail well on rivers.)

Comments

[yhlee]

Cool! I learned about LSTs at the WWII museum in New Orleans, which has a section (?) devoted to explaining them.

[tbutler]

Neat! Did they have one on display, I'm hoping?

This one was actually used by the Greek navy for several decades, before being brought back to the US around the turn of the century. It's actually still operational and cruises under its own power at least once a year, which is very cool.

[yhlee]

I don't remember--this was a couple years ago. I'll make a note of it next time we get to go down there.

Operational LST, very cool!