https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/wo...ghost-boat
EXCERPTS: . . . Dunsdon wasn’t exactly surprised. After all, he had been the one to discover the boat on the shores of Shasta Lake in fall 2021, and he had been planning to retrieve it in the months since.
[...] The boat is, indeed, from World War II. It is an LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle and Personnel), known as a Higgins boat, for its designer, Andrew Higgins. These 36-foot-long wooden boats, which could maneuver in just 10 inches of water and land on beaches, had been a vital part of the Allied strategy. ... Once ubiquitous, Higgins boats are now rare, with fewer than 20 known to have survived...
[...] As the salvage crew he assembled ... prepared to refloat the 80-year-old boat in December 2021, they first lifted and secured its open ramp. That gave Dunsdon a clear view of the bow and the still-bold white numbers painted there: 31-17.
With that clue, part of the boat’s history immediately became clear. Higgins boat 31-17 was assigned to USS Monrovia, a Navy ship that was General George S. Patton’s headquarters when the Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943.
The boat was later involved in the Battle of Tarawa in the Pacific. With additional archival research, Dunsdon is sure he’ll discover more about the boat’s wartime engagements. “The Monrovia had seven D-Day invasions in World War II—every invasion was known as D-Day in World War II—so potentially this boat went through seven D-Day landings, survived all of that and somehow came back,” he says.
The mystery that will be harder to solve is how the boat made its way to Shasta Lake, 100 miles from the Pacific Ocean, and thousands of miles and eight decades away from the Pacific Theater of World War II. Dunsdon speculates that 31-17 may have been refitted at a West Coast naval base after the war and sold for surplus. “We really don’t know,” he says. “It’s as simple as that.” (MORE - missing details)
LCVP Higgins boat 1944 U.S. Navy landing craft training film ... https://youtu.be/4Mx8HDJx4ZI
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/4Mx8HDJx4ZI
EXCERPTS: . . . Dunsdon wasn’t exactly surprised. After all, he had been the one to discover the boat on the shores of Shasta Lake in fall 2021, and he had been planning to retrieve it in the months since.
[...] The boat is, indeed, from World War II. It is an LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle and Personnel), known as a Higgins boat, for its designer, Andrew Higgins. These 36-foot-long wooden boats, which could maneuver in just 10 inches of water and land on beaches, had been a vital part of the Allied strategy. ... Once ubiquitous, Higgins boats are now rare, with fewer than 20 known to have survived...
[...] As the salvage crew he assembled ... prepared to refloat the 80-year-old boat in December 2021, they first lifted and secured its open ramp. That gave Dunsdon a clear view of the bow and the still-bold white numbers painted there: 31-17.
With that clue, part of the boat’s history immediately became clear. Higgins boat 31-17 was assigned to USS Monrovia, a Navy ship that was General George S. Patton’s headquarters when the Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943.
The boat was later involved in the Battle of Tarawa in the Pacific. With additional archival research, Dunsdon is sure he’ll discover more about the boat’s wartime engagements. “The Monrovia had seven D-Day invasions in World War II—every invasion was known as D-Day in World War II—so potentially this boat went through seven D-Day landings, survived all of that and somehow came back,” he says.
The mystery that will be harder to solve is how the boat made its way to Shasta Lake, 100 miles from the Pacific Ocean, and thousands of miles and eight decades away from the Pacific Theater of World War II. Dunsdon speculates that 31-17 may have been refitted at a West Coast naval base after the war and sold for surplus. “We really don’t know,” he says. “It’s as simple as that.” (MORE - missing details)
LCVP Higgins boat 1944 U.S. Navy landing craft training film ... https://youtu.be/4Mx8HDJx4ZI