Andrew Jackson Higgins

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Andrew Jackson Higgins statue
Into the Jaws of Death : View from a Higgins boat on D-Day , Americans land on Omaha Beach

Andrew Jackson Higgins (born August 28, 1886 in Columbus , Nebraska , † August 1, 1952 in New Orleans , Louisiana ) was the founder and owner of Higgins Industries in New Orleans. He developed the so-called Higgins boat. This is an LCVP , a landing craft that was used by the US Army when it landed in Normandy on D-Day . Because of this, Dwight D. Eisenhower called Higgins "the man who won the war for us."

Life

In 1906 he left his hometown of Columbus to work in the lumber industry in Mobile , Alabama . Four years later he became the manager of a German company in New Orleans that imported lumber and in 1922 he founded the Higgins Lumber and Export Company, which imported hardwood from the Philippines , Central America and Africa and exported pine and cypress wood . He built a fleet of sailing ships that was the largest in the United States at the time. To maintain the fleet, he also built his own shipyard . In 1926 he created the so-called Eureka boat, a boat with little draft that was used by oil explorers and trappers on the Gulf Coast and in the lower reaches of the Mississippi . By sinking the drive propeller in a half-tube in the hull, this boat could be operated in shallow waters where other types of construction were useless. Higgins also developed a special bow shape for this boat, which made it possible to drive the boat onto a sandbar without any problems and then pull it back down again. Within a decade, he perfected the boat to the point where it could reach very high speeds in shallow waters and turn it practically on the spot.

Fierce competition, the recessive world trade and the increasing use of steamers pushed the Lumber and Export Company out of the market. However, Higgins managed to keep his Higgins Industries shipyard, founded in 1930, in business by building motor boats, tugs and barges not only for companies and private individuals, but also for the US Coast Guard .

In addition, the US Marine Corps began to take an interest in the Higgins boat. In tests by the US Navy and the Marine Corps, the boat exceeded the performance of the Navy’s own development and was tested again during fleet landing exercises in February 1939. While it was convincing in most areas, a major disadvantage was that soldiers and equipment had to be unloaded over the side of the boat, exposing them to enemy fire in a combat situation.

At this point, observers from the Navy and the Marine Corps had established that the Imperial Japanese Navy had been using landing craft with a bow hatch in the Second Sino-Japanese War since 1937. When a photo of these boats was presented to Higgins, he contacted his chief engineer, described the Japanese design to him on the phone, and arranged for him to develop a model of such a boat until his return to New Orleans.

Within a month, tests of this new Eureka boat with bow hatch in Lake Pontchartrain showed that such a boat could be used. It was then further developed into the well-known LCVP .

During World War II , Higgins Industries developed a wide range of equipment for the Navy. These included landing craft, motor torpedo boats , torpedo tubes , gun turrets and smoke generators. Over 20,000 boats were built during the war. The company was closed shortly after the war.

Higgins held a total of thirty patents. After his death he was buried in the Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans.

In 1987 an oil tanker was named USNS Andrew J. Higgins in his honor. In addition, an eleven-kilometer stretch of US Route 81 south of his hometown Columbus was named Andrew Jackson Higgins Expressway. In 2019, Higgins was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame .

literature

  • Jerry E. Strahan: Andrew Jackson Higgins and the Boats That Won World War II. Louisiana State University Press, 1998, ISBN 0807123390

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Inductee Andrew Jackson Higgins. National Inventors Hall Of Fame, accessed February 4, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Higgins, Andrew Jackson
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American boat designer and entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH August 28, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Columbus, Nebraska , USA
DATE OF DEATH August 1, 1952
Place of death New Orleans , Louisiana