BBC The Boats that Built Britain_6of6_The LCVP
Transcript
00:00Britain is an island, surrounded by a cold and unforgiving sea.
00:07For centuries, it protected us from attack.
00:10But to prosper and thrive, we would need to do more than just hide behind her saltwater shield.
00:17Britain needed brave men, willing to venture out into the unknown,
00:21and she needed good boats to take them there.
00:25I've spent my life at sea.
00:27Now I'm going to take passage on six boats that together tell the story of modern Britain.
00:33Built for exploration, war, fishing, industry and our very survival,
00:40these are the boats that built Britain and changed the way we live forever.
00:48And this time I'm going to be aboard an LCVP landing craft.
00:52The vessel that spearheaded the D-Day invasion
00:55and played a vital part in the final victory of Britain and the Allies in the Second World War.
01:02LANDING CRAFT
01:21This is an LCVP, a landing craft vehicle and personnel,
01:26built to do a specific job to land troops on a hostile beach in the teeth of enemy fire.
01:33Lord knows she ain't pretty, and those sharp corners make a seaman's heart bleed,
01:37but she was the right boat at the right time. In our hour of greatest need,
01:42this boat saved Britain, and there are not many boats can claim that.
01:47Developed from a Louisiana swamp boat, the LCVP is one of the strangest craft
01:56ever to take to the water. 36 feet long and powered by a 250 horsepower Detroit diesel,
02:05she's capable of carrying a platoon of men and all their kit ashore at 12 knots flat out.
02:18By the end of World War II, over 20,000 of these extraordinary little craft had been built,
02:23using production methods that revolutionized boat building.
02:29Designing a boat like this called for radical thinking, but cometh the hour, cometh the man,
02:35and Andrew Higgins, a hard-drinking, straight-talking American shipbuilder,
02:39proved that this boat was the answer the Allies had been looking for.
02:44But just how did this design come about, and what was it about Higgins that made its creation
02:50possible? Because, make no mistake, this is an extraordinary boat that goes against almost
02:58every rule of design, doing what no boat really wants to do, leave the water and drive straight
03:05up the beach. It's an extraordinary boat, and it's one of the most beautiful boats in the world.
03:14Ask any sailor where he does not want to be, and he will tell you, on the beach,
03:26where the sea meets the land, that's where the real danger is. But at the end of World War II,
03:32that is precisely where he had to be, getting thousands and thousands of troops ashore,
03:38right here, on this very beach. So, how do you go about designing a boat that can sail for hours
03:46across the English Channel, and then deliver a platoon of almost 40 soldiers straight into the
03:52teeth of enemy fire? It's a huge challenge, and one the Allies could ill afford to get wrong.
03:59Nowadays, we're so used to the idea of amphibious landings, that we take it for granted that
04:04military craft can motor up a beach and deliver troops at full speed. But between the wars,
04:12when military chiefs first considered the problem, they faced a serious hurdle.
04:20Traditionally, the ships were built on the coast of the English Channel,
04:24but when the time came to step off and fight your way ashore, the high sides and V-shaped
04:30hulls of conventional craft meant that the men ran into all sorts of difficulties.
04:42Back in the early days of World War II, we took a serious drubbing. We managed to get
04:48the British Expeditionary Force off the beaches at Dunkirk, with a ragtag navy of little boats
04:53begged, borrowed and stolen from goodness knows where. But if we were going to win the war,
04:58a few years later, we had to get back onto those French beaches, and this time,
05:03it was a different story.
05:08Now, the Germans would be waiting. Dug in, their machines ready, and ready to go.
05:14Now, the Germans would be waiting. Dug in, their machine guns zeroed, their mines laid,
05:21just looking for the chance to shoot up anything that came their way.
05:26It was a daunting prospect, but one that needed addressing and fast
05:30if launching the huge D-Day invasion was to be successful.
05:38The problem facing shipbuilders goes to the very heart of boat design.
05:43Most ships tended to have deep V-shaped entries, great for keeping you upright in the water
05:48and cutting through the waves, but a disaster when running aground.
05:54What was needed was a whole new type of boat.
06:04I've come here to meet an old shipmate, Ian McGilvery. Ian is every inch a sailor man,
06:11but the difference between him and me is that he is also an expert boat builder.
06:18And to help illustrate the problem, Ian's going to build a couple of very basic models
06:23that will show us the two extremes of hull design.
06:29The first is a flat-bottom boat, a box, really,
06:34and the second, its more usual V-shaped opposite number.
06:38Each offers advantages and disadvantages compared with the other.
06:43But to understand fully what these are, we'll have to float these boats in the water,
06:48starting with the traditional V-shaped hull.
06:53Do you want to give it a go? OK, here we go.
06:56Oh, look at that. Useless.
06:59That's no good, then, is it? It's no good for a landing craft or anything else.
07:03Put some ballast in it, a few old nuts.
07:05But once we add a bit of ballast, as you'd get in a boat of this type,
07:09things improve dramatically.
07:10The boat settles in the water, suddenly, she's remarkably stable.
07:20And with all that boat in the water, she'll also handle well.
07:23Her draft will stop her being blown off course,
07:26and the V-shaped hull will chop readily through the waves.
07:30If it's a landing craft, it's got everything you want.
07:32If it's a landing craft, it's got everything you want,
07:34except for the fact that when you put it on the beach,
07:39it falls over.
07:40No good.
07:41No good at all, is it?
07:42Let's have a look at this one.
07:46We'll start with it on land, which is what it's for.
07:49Not on.
07:50For, can't beat it, can you?
07:52No, not at all.
07:52If we put it on the water, it's pretty good on the water as well, on the face of things.
07:59What happens if we put some weight on the side?
08:01It's absolutely amazingly stable.
08:04You put a lot of weight on, and it stays stable,
08:06and it's got to go a long way, a long, long way before it tips over.
08:12In fact, even then, it comes right way up.
08:16So it's not got a stability problem.
08:18Just as an idea, load carrying ability, that's a lot of nuts there.
08:22A lot of weight.
08:23Look at that.
08:24That's huge, isn't it?
08:25Of course, it's doing that because it's got so much displacement, isn't it?
08:29So far, so good.
08:30But you really wouldn't want to take this design to sea.
08:34The problem it has got, I think, is that if there's a sea running,
08:40it's going to pound something awful.
08:42All right, come up over a wave, the bottom is just going to bang.
08:45It would be an awful thing to steer because there's no keel in there.
08:48There's nothing to stop it going sideways on the breeze.
08:50No, I mean, that's the shape a landing craft has to be,
08:53because starting from the land, there's no choice.
08:56But it's not going to work like that.
08:58It's got to be more sophisticated than that.
09:00The flat bottom boat has a lot going for it,
09:03but Ian and I suspect there are going to be some serious disadvantages out on the water.
09:09To find out what these may be,
09:11we're going to have to test our tiny wooden model on a human scale.
09:17However, I wasn't quite expecting this.
09:23I've sailed on hundreds of boats over the years,
09:26but this is the first time I've ever set sail in a skip.
09:30But Ian thinks she'll float, so here goes.
09:36It'll be very interesting to see what happens now.
09:38I've got my life jacket on, so I'm ready for anything.
09:40A lot of ballast in the bow here, and we're starting to float.
09:45And how are we floating?
09:47She's feeling my weight, but she's pretty good fore and aft, actually.
09:52Just about right.
09:53And she's blowing about like a crisp packet, as predicted.
09:57What do you think?
09:57I was hoping it wasn't going to start, so we didn't have to go, but never mind.
10:02Feels more or less okay so far, but how's she going to handle under power?
10:05All right, well, shall we give it some...
10:07You've got to be a bit careful we don't duck the stern under.
10:10We've got this fore and aft trim issue,
10:11but if I go here and you put some power on, will she squat and work?
10:16There she goes. That's it. So we're off.
10:27The good news is the skip floats.
10:30The bad news is it handles like a dog.
10:34Back in World War II, those guys really had their work cut out.
10:39The first problem is direction.
10:42There's nothing gripping the water.
10:43We're just about getting away with it here on the river,
10:46but throw in a few waves and our square metal box will be all over the place.
10:51But there's another problem, even worse.
10:54It's called cavitation.
10:57Every time we try to open up the engine,
10:59we lose power because the flat bottom lifts
11:02and channels air, not water, down onto the propeller.
11:07On a V-shaped boat, the propellers would be deep down in the water
11:10and you wouldn't get this problem.
11:12But you can't have them there on a landing craft.
11:14They'll snag on the beach.
11:16But you can't have them there on a landing craft.
11:19They'll snag on the beach.
11:21It's a catch-22,
11:23and it's one the boat designers of World War II
11:26are going to have to solve fast
11:28to have any chance of coming up with a successful landing craft.
11:32Somehow, those guys had to find a way of feeding water onto that propeller
11:36without putting the propeller so low down
11:38that it was going to graunch itself onto the beach as they were driving in.
11:46It's clear to me now that what they needed
11:49was to combine the best of the stability and load-carrying box design
11:53with the sea-keeping qualities of the V-shaped hull.
12:16By 1939, Britain's designers had already been developing a boat
12:21called the LCA that combined these features.
12:25It did the job, but it had some serious drawbacks.
12:29With only 130 horsepower under the bonnet,
12:32it wasn't notably fast or powerful.
12:35And with the narrow door at the front,
12:37she could only carry men, not machines.
12:40And with our shipyards under constant German aerial attack,
12:44Britain would never be able to build enough of them
12:46to equip a massive invasion force either.
12:51Luckily, our biggest ally, America, faced no such problems
12:55when it came to building their own design of landing craft, the LCVP.
13:02Gerry Stratham has written the definitive history of the American landing craft
13:06and its maverick designer, Andrew Jackson Higgins.
13:10Higgins was not your normal industrialist.
13:13He was hot-tempered.
13:15He was brilliant.
13:17He had the ability to take wild ideas and turn them into reality.
13:20He worked hard.
13:22He drank hard.
13:23He swore hard.
13:25He grew up on the docks in the timber industry.
13:27So he was like the kind of guys that he had working for him in the shipyard.
13:31But he was also educated and articulate enough to where he could go to Washington
13:36and have conversations with President Roosevelt or with generals and admirals.
13:40Higgins was the right man for the job.
13:42But he also happened to have the right boat,
13:44which he designed himself to haul timber in the shallow swamps around New Orleans.
13:50In order to get the timber out, Higgins built a boat he called the Eureka,
13:54which was a shallow draft boat.
13:56This is one of the original Higgins Eureka workboats.
13:59And it could go over sandbars.
14:00It could pull up on the side of a bayou.
14:03It could pull then turn around, pull back over the sandbars
14:06and leave the same position.
14:07The same kind of qualities that later would be needed in a landing craft.
14:11As its name suggests, the Eureka boat was a huge breakthrough.
14:16By shaping a shallow but immensely strong keel to the boat's flat bottom,
14:20the Eureka managed to combine the sea-keeping qualities of a more traditional boat
14:25while still being able to take the ground like a flat-bottomed craft.
14:30And by placing the boat's propeller into a tube inside the keel,
14:34Higgins also managed to craft it.
14:37The Eureka was designed to counteract the tricky problem of cavitation.
14:42The Eureka could operate at full power in only a few inches of water.
14:48Higgins knew his design was the answer.
14:51There was only one issue.
14:52The age-old problem of getting the men off the boat and onto the beach.
14:57Undeterred, Higgins set about redesigning his whole structure
15:01to turn the entire bow section into a ramp.
15:04The boat could unload its troops in seconds and carry jeeps and guns, too.
15:09With this problem solved, the LCVP was born and the orders started flooding in.
15:17All Higgins had to do was work out how to build the LCVPs fast enough.
15:23Up till now, boat building had always been done one vessel at a time.
15:28But Higgins had a better idea.
15:30Taking his cue from Henry Ford, he decided to build on four construction lines.
15:36This meant his factory could turn out over 100 boats a week.
15:42Higgins went from 50 employees in 1937 to 20,000 by 1943.
15:49He was the design and production genius.
15:51War, you didn't worry about the cost, and he didn't.
15:54He was worrying about the product.
15:55He wanted to make sure that the soldiers hitting the beaches
15:58had the best available boat that they could possibly have.
16:02This is from the inside of one of his plants showing the landing craft being produced.
16:06I don't believe this.
16:07This is Four Cross. It's called a bay, a production bay.
16:11And they would move on a movable assembly line.
16:15Just like a car, like a little tiny motor car.
16:18Absolutely.
16:18And then once they got to the end of the bay, at the end of the plant,
16:21they would then be loaded on railroad cars and taken away.
16:24So he was mass producing them just like you'd produce an automobile.
16:27Oh, me.
16:28And actually, I rather like this picture,
16:29because you can see exactly the shape of the hull here.
16:32You can see how it's working.
16:33You can see it's almost a three-point landing, isn't it, right?
16:36And you can see how each individual has a specific task
16:39that they have to do as the boat moves along.
16:43Higgins also covered the factory with slogans to encourage the workers.
16:48The message, the guy who relaxes is helping the axis,
16:51hanging in the main production hall.
16:54With the boss's production genius and forceful personality,
16:57Higgins Industries turned out over 20,000 LCVPs.
17:01But today, there are less than five still functioning,
17:05and only one in the UK.
17:10She's here, 100 miles from the sea, in Nottingham.
17:16Boat builder Nick Gates is one of the few men
17:18who actually knows how to handle an original LCVP.
17:24And I'm keen to hear his thoughts on this strangest of craft.
17:30Well, here it is.
17:31Yeah, here it is, an LCVP.
17:34Yeah, it's a funny thing, you know.
17:37I know it does the job, but it just...
17:40It does afend my eye as a seaman.
17:41Well, you're right, it's not pretty.
17:43It's not pretty, but it's a fantastic piece of kit.
17:46My first impressions are of the box-like nature of the craft.
17:50But that was how it had to be.
17:52It was designed to carry 36 troops or small fighting vehicles,
17:56and for the D-Day landings, these boats were packed to the gills.
18:01It still looks very square in the water, just like the skip we tested,
18:05but Nick assures me there's a lot more subtlety to the design.
18:10Because although we just think, oh, it's a pretty basic box,
18:12a basic box is actually a very hard shape to keep strong,
18:15because if you imagine an empty shoebox,
18:17you take the lid off, it's actually quite fragile.
18:19If you take the lid off, it's actually quite floppy.
18:21If you cut the end out, it's even worse.
18:23So this is actually very clever.
18:25There's a lot of reinforcing in the corners, on the deck,
18:27and below the hull,
18:29and it's actually a very hard shape to keep stiff.
18:31You know, it does look like an ugly box,
18:33but actually it's a very, very fine piece of marine design.
18:37Yeah.
18:39Nick's clearly a fan, but what about the men
18:41who actually had to drive these boats back on D-Day?
18:44Roy Nelson was 19 when he skippered an LCVP
18:47during the Normandy landings,
18:49and I've invited him back to drive this LCVP today.
18:55Well, this must bring back some memories for you, Roy.
18:57Oh, you can say that again.
18:59It's...
19:03I've got mixed emotions.
19:05I'm excited,
19:07apprehensive...
19:09Yeah.
19:11..and, of course, nostalgia.
19:13How long has it been since you were on one of these boats?
19:16I've not actually been on one of these LCVPs
19:19for 65 years.
19:22The end of 1944.
19:24So it's a long time,
19:26and I think of the chaps
19:29who aren't around anymore.
19:31Yeah.
19:37On June 6th, 1944,
19:40175,000 troops set out across the Channel
19:43to recapture Europe,
19:45with 1,500 of Higgins' boats in the front line.
19:52Obviously, we knew we were training
19:54to land on some beaches somewhere,
19:57presumably France,
19:59but we didn't know where,
20:01and we didn't know up until nearly the time.
20:05When we finally did set sail,
20:09it was amazing.
20:12I'd never seen anything like it before or since.
20:16The vast armada of all types of shipping,
20:21all shapes and sizes,
20:23all going across the Channel,
20:26and ships as far as the eye could see.
20:32And you think, well, this is big.
20:34This is it.
20:36When you're actually on the way,
20:39you realize this is it.
20:45It was a mixture of excitement and apprehension.
20:49Of course.
20:51What's going to happen, et cetera.
20:53But generally, it was accepted.
20:57You knew you were trained for it,
20:59and this was the job, and you were going to do it.
21:10Now, after all those years of development,
21:13the LCVP was facing the ultimate test of its ability.
21:30And today, we're going to discover for ourselves
21:34how this boat really handles.
21:44As soon as we pull away
21:46and the throated Detroit two-stroke diesel starts to roar,
21:50all my preconceptions about this vessel are blown away.
21:55She's got effortless power from her 250-horsepower engine,
21:59and in a unique way, she's graceful too,
22:02a testimony to Mr Higgins and his revolutionary hull.
22:09And so simple to drive,
22:11with a steering wheel that can be operated with one hand
22:14while you control the gear shift and throttle with the other,
22:17so that the driver can perform complex manoeuvres
22:20with speed and confidence.
22:25This boat really is a truly wonderful vessel.
22:42There is so much racket from that diesel back there
22:45that I've had to come forward to talk.
22:47But the amazing thing about this boat is that she really does manoeuvre,
22:52and I'm astonished at the acceleration.
22:54There's a lot of power there.
22:56Take a lot of men in here, vehicles pushing up the beach.
23:00I can see how it's going to happen now.
23:02And what really does impress me
23:04is the way Nick was able to spin the boat round in the river.
23:17Higgins had taken his Eureka boat
23:20and transformed it into a perfect amphibious landing craft.
23:27From humble beginnings,
23:29the Allies now had a boat they could absolutely trust
23:32to do the job it was specifically designed to do.
23:38Now I'm keen to see for myself
23:40just how this boat delivers in the ultimate test,
23:44leaving the safety of deep water and running up the shore.
23:51Well, the boat's impeccable.
23:54A masterpiece of design.
23:56But this isn't the sort of shore she was built to come up.
24:00She was designed for sterner stuff,
24:03the beaches of Normandy, under heavy fire,
24:06driven by men like Roy.
24:1065 years on, Roy is clearly enjoying being back on an LCVP.
24:14He's got a lot of experience,
24:16But on the eve of D-Day,
24:18the emotions he and the other soldiers were feeling
24:21would have been very different.
24:25Now the landing craft were on their way.
24:29The weather forecast for the day was good,
24:32a force three westerly.
24:34But of course, as so often happens,
24:36that wasn't what was served up.
24:38Instead, it blew a lot harder,
24:40and it was a force three west.
24:43Instead, it blew a lot harder,
24:46and as the LCVPs came into shore,
24:49they had five-foot slammers coming in right under their bows.
24:53Horrible conditions that would test any boat,
24:56let alone one charged with putting men ashore
24:59onto a beach under a hail of lead.
25:12Right here, on this beach,
25:14is where the Allies were finally going to find out the truth
25:17about the Higgins landing craft.
25:19Was it going to work under fire?
25:23The official record of that day states
25:25that within ten minutes of the ramps being lowered,
25:28the leading companies had become almost incapable of action.
25:33Every officer and sergeant killed or wounded.
25:37But in the face of such desperate adversity,
25:40the LCVPs kept on pushing up the beaches,
25:44and gradually, the men they brought ashore
25:47overcame the German positions.
26:00Looking out at this peaceful beach today,
26:03it's hard to imagine thousands upon thousands
26:06of these brave little landing craft
26:08coming in from England over the horizon in the morning,
26:12loaded up with what to the defenders
26:14must have looked like a whole population of soldiers on board.
26:18The boats did their job.
26:20My word, they did.
26:22And now, it was up to the guys.
26:34Almost 5,000 British, American and Canadian troops
26:38lost their lives that day.
26:41And the cemeteries of Normandy still bear witness
26:44to the sacrifice they made on the windswept beaches below.
26:51No war is without its losses,
26:53but these brave men and the LCVPs that carried them
26:57had launched the attack that would ultimately bring about
27:00the fall of Nazi Germany and the liberation of Europe.
27:10And today, the LCVP is still going strong.
27:14It's faster and better equipped with a 21st-century design,
27:18but it's still recognisably based on the boat
27:21produced by Andrew Higgins all those years ago.
27:25In fact, the LCVP is such an essential part
27:29of Britain's modern armed forces
27:31that huge ships are now built to launch them from anywhere in the world.
27:37This is HMS Bulwark,
27:39one of the Royal Navy's biggest and best-equipped ships.
27:43She's almost 600 feet long and displaces over 20,000 tonnes.
27:49But the real reason for her existence is hidden deep inside her hull.
27:55A huge dry dock that can be flooded at the touch of a button,
27:59ready to launch an armada of LCVPs towards the shore.
28:1165 years old and still going strong,
28:14the basic LCVP design has never been bettered.
28:18A boat perfectly designed for the job in hand.
28:22A little ship that saved Britain in our hour of greatest need.
28:27And you can't ask more of a boat than that.
28:37And our sea fever season concludes here on BBC4
28:41with Timothy Spall somewhere at sea at ten tonight.
28:44Next, though, uncovering the experiences of three people
28:47sectioned under the Mental Health Act in a brand-new programme.