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A Tribute to Andrew Jackson Higgins and the Boats that Won the War
Andrew Jackson Higgins
Andrew Jackson Higgins, the man Dwight D. Eisenhower once credited with winning World War II, was a wild and wily genius.
At the New Orleans plant where his company built the boats that brought troops ashore at Normandy on June 6, 1944, Higgins hung a sign that said, “Anybody caught stealing tools out of this yard won’t get fired — he’ll go to the hospital.”
Whatever Higgins did, he did it a lot. “His profanity,” Life magazine said, was “famous for its opulence and volume.” So was his thirst for Old Taylor bourbon, though he curtailed his intake by limiting his sips to a specific location.
“I only drink,” he told Life magazine, “while I’m working.”
“It is Higgins himself who takes your breath away,” Raymond Moley, a former FDR adviser, wrote in Newsweek in 1943. “Higgins is an authentic master builder, with the kind of will power, brains, drive and daring that characterized the American empire builders of an earlier generation.”
Higgins was not native to the South, despite his love of bourbon. He grew up in Nebraska, where, at various ages, he was expelled from school for fighting. Higgins’ temperament improved around boats. He built his first vessel in the basement when he was 12. It was so large that a wall had to be torn down to get it out.
He moved South in his early 20s, working in the lumber industry. He hadn’t thought much about boats again until a tract of timber in shallow waters required him to build a special vessel so he could remove the wood. Higgins signed up for a correspondence course in naval architecture, shifting his work from timber to boats.
In the late 1930s, he owned a small shipyard in New Orleans. By then, his special shallow-craft boat had become popular with loggers and oil drillers. They were “tunnel stern boats,” whose magic was in the way the “hull incorporated a recessed tunnel used to protect the propeller from grounding,” according to the Louisiana Historical Association.
The Higgnins’ “Eureka” boat
Higgins called it the “Eureka” boat. The war brought interest by U.S. forces in a similar style vessel to attack unguarded beaches and avoid coming ashore at heavily defended ports. The Marines settled on the Higgins boat, transforming what had been a 50-employee company into one of the world’s largest manufacturers.
“To put Higgins’s accomplishment in perspective,” historian Douglas Brinkley wrote in a 2000 article in American Heritage magazine, consider this: “By September 1943, 12,964 of the American Navy’s 14,072 vessels had been designed by Higgins Industries. Put another way, 92 percent of the U.S. Navy was a Higgins navy.”
Though Eisenhower and even Hitler acknowledged the importance of the Higgins boat — military leaders came to call it “the bridge to the beach” — its builder went mostly unmentioned in histories of the war. That is, until 17 years ago, when the World War II Museum opened in New Orleans and recognized Higgins’ life, displaying a reproduction of his boat.
Still, there’s been just one biography written: “Andrew Jackson Higgins and the Boats that Won World War II” by historian Jerry Strahan.
“Without Higgins’s uniquely designed craft, there could not have been a mass landing of troops and matériel on European shores or the beaches of the Pacific islands, at least not without a tremendously higher rate of Allied casualties,” Strahan wrote.
Higgins Hotel, New Orleans, LA
The WWII Museum in New Orleans officially broke ground on the Higgins Hotel directly across the street from the museum in 2017.
“The one man in the South I want especially to see is Andrew Jackson Higgins. I want to tell him, face to face, that Higgins’ landing boats such as we had at Guadalcanal are the best in the world. They do everything but talk; honest they do.” ___ Warrant Officer Machinist, James D. Fox, quoted in the Shreveport Times, 6 March 1943
AJ Higgins held 30 patents, mostly covering amphibious landing craft and vehicles.
Higgins died in New Orleans on 1 August 1952, and was buried in Metairie Cemetery. He had been hospitalized for a week to treat stomach ulcers when he suffered a fatal stroke.
Article resources: The World War II Museum in New Orleans (2018 Annual Report), The Marine Corps & the Washington Post.
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Current info –
May – Military Appreciation Month –
From: Cora Metz posters
May 18, 2019 – Armed Forces Day
A day set aside to pay tribute to men and women who serve in the United States’
Armed Forces. Learn more…
May 27, 2019 – Memorial Day (Decoration Day)
A day set aside to commemorate all who have died in military service for the United States. Typically recognized by parades, visiting memorials and cemeteries.
The coloring books include pages for Mother’s Day.
LINK – Coloring page for military children
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Military Humor –
Military Contractors
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Farewell Salutes –
Louis J. Abshire Sr. – Amelia, LA; US Navy, WWII, PTO
Courtesy of Dan Antion @ https://nofacilities.com/
Theodore “Bud” Benard – Payson, UT; US Army, WWII, PTO, 96th Infantry Division
Ray Cline – WV; US Navy, WWII, USS Biddle (DD-151)
Owen R. Dievendorf – Fort Plum, NY; US Army Air Corps, WWII, PTO, Medical Corps, x-ray tech, Sgt.
Glenn Francis – Santa Monica, CA; US Navy, WWII, PTO, Quartermaster, USS Natoma Bay
Edgar L. Galson – Syracuse, NY; US Army, WWII, ETO, Field Artillery, radio/forward observer
Charles Haughey – Chicago, IL; Civilian, WWII, Dodge B-29 engine plant
Charles ‘C.C.’ Lee – Lexington, KY; US Navy, WWII & Korea, Chief Flight Deck Electrician, USS Corregidor & Block Island
Luther H. Story – Americus, GA; US Army, Korea, Cpl. A Co/1/9/2nd Infantry Division, KIA (Sangde-po, SK), Medal of Honor
Olive Thompson – ENG/CAN; WRoyal Naval Service WREN, WWII
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Higgins Boats
Higgins boat
President Eisenhower said: “If Higgins had not designed and built those LCVPs (Landing Craft, Vehicle and Personnel), we never could have landed over an open beach. The whole strategy of the war would have been different.” And as Colonel Joseph H. Alexander, USMC (Ret) said, “The Higgins boats broke the gridlock on the ship-to-shore movement. It is impossible to overstate the tactical advantages this craft gave U.S. amphibious commanders in World War II.”
Clearly, the half-wood half-steel “smallboat” meant a lot to the War. These assault or LCVP boats would land troops and material on invasion beachheads. Their designer, Andrew Higgins, was positive there would be a need among the U.S. Navy for thousands of small boats—and was also sure that steel would be in short supply. In an common moment of eccentricity, Higgins bought the entire 1939 crop of mahogany from the Philippines and stored it on his own.
Higgins boat diagram
Higgins’ expectations were right, and as the war progressed he applied for a position in Naval design. Insisting that the Navy “doesn’t know one damn thing about small boats,” Higgins struggled for years to convince them of the need for small wooden boats. Finally he signed the contract to develop his LCVP.
Employing more than 30,000 for an integrated workforce in New Orleans. Higgins employed blacks and women among them, which was uncommon practice at the time. This force eagerly began mass-producing the “Higgins boats,” which were 36’3” in length and had a beam of 10’10”. Their displacement when unloaded was 18,000 lbs., and they could maintain a speed of 9 knots. They were defended by 2 .30 caliber machine guns, and could carry 36 combat-equipped infantrymen or 8,000 pounds of cargo. For a detailed picture of a Higgins boat’s anatomy, see the image below. Along with the help of other American factories, Higgins produced 23,398 LCVPs during the War.
In the United States, Andrew Higgins evaluated the Fox boat and felt it was too weak to survive mishap in emergency operations. In November 1943, Higgins assigned engineers from his company to make a sturdier version with two engines. Higgins Industries, known for making landing craft (LCVPs) and PT boats, produced the A-1 lifeboat, a 1½-ton (1400 kg), 27-foot (8 m) airborne lifeboat with waterproof internal compartments so that it would not sink if swamped or overturned. Intended to be dropped by modified Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress it was ready for production in early 1944.
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Military History – Navy Style –
The Navy’s version of Sad Sack
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Farewell Salutes –
John Adams – Rockingham, NC; US Army Air Corps, WWII, PTO, Co. B/675 Artillery/11th Airborne Division
Howard Blanchard – DE; US Navy, WWII, destroyer escort / Korea
William Cason Sr. – Charlotsville, VA; US Merchant Marines
Steven Donofrio – Middlebury, CT; US Navy, WWII
Barbara Bower Johnson – Pleasant Hills, PA; US Navy WAVE, WWII, telegrapher
Albert Moon – Jacksonville, FL; US Navy, WWII, USS Hamlin
Robert Oelwang – Hornell, NY; US Navy, WWII, Seaman 1st Class
William Robertson – MI; US Coast Guard, WWII, PTO
John Sutton – Pittsburgh, PA; US Navy, WWII, PTO, Signalman
Richard Wynn – New Britain, CT; US Navy, WWII
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Pacific Paratrooper 