Landing Support Ship Large
The ship type Landing Craft, Support (Large) (LCS (L)), later Landing Support Ship Large (LSSL), was developed as a landing support ship during the Second World War by the American Navy for direct fire support during landings and was used in the Pacific.
Due to the reduction in the number of ships after the war, many units of this type were taken over by the navies of allied states.
With a displacement of 350 tons, a maximum speed of 16.5 knots and a crew of six officers and 65 men, the ships had a range of almost 9,000 km when cruising at 12 knots. For a ship this small, it had impressive armament. As Bugkanone there was either a 3 in -Kanone with caliber length of 50 or 40 mm Bofors gun as a single or twin carriage. In addition, there were two 40 mm twin cannons, four 20 mm automatic cannons and four .50 caliber machine guns (12.7 mm). There were also ten Mark 7 rocket launchers between the nose gun and the front 40mm cannon. A total of 130 of these ships were built.
history
The landing at Tarawa on November 20, 1943 pointed to a problem in the amphibious assault operations of the US forces. Ships fired at the beaches before landing, but did not have the hoped-for effect on the Japanese defenders due to the flat projectile trajectories of the large ship artillery.
The time between the bombardment and the actual landing was enough for the defenders to regroup and receive the American marines with murderous fire on the beach. It was recognized that close range fire support was needed for the troops. For testing purposes, some large infantry landing craft (LCI (L)) were equipped with additional cannons and the LCI (L) (G) was thus developed. This conversion proved to be successful and on the subsequent landings at Cape Gloucester , further LCI (L) were equipped with various additional weapons. This is how LCI (R), LCI (M), LCI (D) and other "gunboats" were created. The letters attached stood for rockets, mortars or destruction (demolition).
As a result of the successes with these vehicles, a new fire support ship was designed. The hull of the LCI (L) got completely new superstructures and the interior was also redesigned. The shipyard George Lawley & Sons in Neponset built the first ship of this type. They were designed to provide fire support during landing, but also to intercept inter-island traffic. With their new armament, they became - for their size - the most heavily armed ships of World War II and had more firepower per ton of displacement than any other ship in the American Navy.
These vehicles were usually the lead ships in the attack. They usually made three attempts at the beach side by side. In the first attempt they fired rockets at 1,000, 800 and 500 meters. After the last rocket salvo, they opened fire with the bow guns to a few hundred meters and then turned in and fired across the broadside at every target. The landing craft followed them on the third attempt . As they approached the beach, they slowed down while the landing craft ran between them and onto the beach. The LCS (L) stayed close to the beach and gave fire support to the troops.
In Okinawa , the ships had the additional task of exploring the landing beaches and intercepting kamikaze planes. Since they also had extensive fire extinguishing equipment, they were also used to support wounded ships in the extinguishing work.
In 1949 the LCS (L), which were still serving in the US Navy, were reclassified to LSSL. In 1952 a large part was given up to allies, 53 went to Japan for the construction of a new self-protection fleet, others to France for use in Vietnam. The last surviving ship is LCS (L) -102, which was in service with the Thai Navy for over 40 years after the war. It returned to the USA in 2007 and is now largely in its original condition a museum ship in the Mare Island Historic Park in California.
literature
- Jürgen Gebauer, Egon Krenz: Marine Encyclopedia . Vienna 2003
- Jürgen Döscher: Short list of the categories from 1920 to 2000 . Hagen 2001 (not published)
