Existing comment:
"Build 'em right, fit to fight."
-- SM Alexander, Commander USN, October 2, 1943
On June 4, 1999, fifty-five years after the Wilmington-built LSTs assisted in the Normandy invasion, the Riverfront Development Corporation of Delaware dedicated Dravo Plaza to the thousands of Wilmington boatyard workers. The Plaza's "Points of Remembrance" compass rose is inset with names of destroyer escorts and landing ships built at Wilmington.
Above: The National Archives caption reads, "Out of the gaping mouths of Coast Guard and Navy Landing Craft, rose the great flow of invasion supplies to the blackened sands of Iwo Jima a few hours after the marines had wrestled their foothold on the vital island." Closely following the initial assault waves, these specially designed landing craft carried tanks, trucks, heavy ordnance and supplies in support of the attack. The nation's very first Landing Ship Medium, LSM 201, had been built by Wilmington Dravo workers and launched on the Christiana River on February 26, 1944 in an icy driving rain, a portent of the ships' stormy combat future.
Left: LST 21, built in Wilmington and named "Blackjack Maru" by her crew, served as a flagship for group of ten LSTs. Her Captain Charles M Brookfield recalled "[We] cruised over 25,000 miles, operating in all three theaters of war. We ... earned two Bronze stars on our ribbons, visited eight countries, four continents and sailed through seven different seas." During the Normandy invasions, the LST 21 was fitted with rails on her tank deck to carry railroad cars across the English Channel. At the beachhead, soldiers and cargo poured out through doors and on a ramp in the bow of the ship. LST 21 was decommissioned in 1946 and scrapped in 1948. |