دانلود کتاب لندینگ کرافت و دوزیستان: کشتی های دریایی در قرن بیستم

As long as man has sought to explore and conquer there has been a need for landing craft. From ancient Persia to the Dardanelles, small boats, often impressed from civilian owners, were used to carry out seaborne raids and invasions. Experimentation and refinement of seaborne assets grew between the First and Second World Wars as their value as strategic assets was reassessed. The United States Navy and Marine Corps in particular looked at how best to utilize and manage what is the most ambitious and complex of all the combined military operations. By the mid-1930s specifically designed craft were slowly appearing in naval rosters, taking over from naval lighters. Like the lighters, these specialist craft were used to transport cargo and passengers from ship to shore and featured unique flat-bottomed or spoon-billed hulls. In the years leading up to the Second World War, an epoch of purpose-built landing craft and amphibians led by pre-war America in particular took place. The business of producing the perfect landing craft as well as the new concept of the amphibian became a race of applying new technology. All the while, the military began looking at how best to ally the new craft to successful doctrine and tactical development that inevitably followed. These new ways of thinking, coupled with ever-advancing technological developments, meant that the landing craft became more than a simple lowsilhouetted lighter or barge. It had to deliver, protect and defend its load, crew and itself from attack. Alongside the landing craft grew a veritable army of tracked and wheeled amphibians that would come ashore providing direct fire support, delivering logistics and removing the wounded. A DUKW amphibious truck with a load of medical supplies and personnel moves inland in the southern France invasion area on 26 August 1944, 11 days after the initial assault. USS LCI(L)-18 is beached in the centre background. Note the Amphibious Forces insignia painted on the side of the DUKW. (NARA) Surprisingly the amphibian was not a new concept and had been in use since the 1870 with the advent of the Alligator tug. This was a logging vessel manufactured by West & Peachey of Ontario, Canada that would use a chain to pull itself from water body to water body. Whilst not a true amphibian in the contemporary sense of the word, it proved the concept was feasible and as such it was developed from the late 1930s. By the end of the Second World War there several key amphibians in service with all the major belligerents. An iconic image: an LCVP from the U.S. Coast Guard-manned USS Samuel Chase disembarks troops of Company E, 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division who are wading onto the Fox Green section of Omaha Beach on the morning of 6 June 1944. On landing, American soldiers encountered the newly formed German 352nd Division, and two-thirds of Company E became casualties. (CPHoM Robert F. Sargent) After the war, new alliances, technologies and doctrines were shaped and the concepts mapped out in the Second World War further developed. The biggest for sea-borne assault was by far the hovercraft, or Landing Craft, Air Cushioned (LCAC) with the Soviets fielding the huge ‘Zubr’-class hovercraft as the zenith of the concept.