Landing Craft, Infantry and Fire Support Book Review

By Michael Benolkin

Review

Here is an interesting title hot off the press from Osprey - Landing Craft, Infantry and Fire Support. When many folks think of landing craft, they remember the LCVP, the small landing craft from which troops would storm ashore. These were widely used craft to transport soldiers from the troop carriers to the shore under hostile fire, but how did the tanks, trucks, and other combat vehicles, supplies, etc., get ashore?

The author has compiled a 'short course' on allied landing craft in World War Two, many of which are sizeable vessels. These ships could carry the heavy tonnage into the combat areas and keep the Army and Marines supplied with all of the essentials.

In addition to landing craft, dedicated fire support vessels were also developed to provide covering fire for the troops going ashore. Many times you see movies of the battleships and other main combatants providing that fire, but while the combatants would shoot and scoot off to screen against a naval counter-attack, these dedicated fire support vessels were designed for providing fire support as long as the enemy was with effective range of the vessels' weapons.

The coverage of this title is broken down in the table of contents as:

• Landing Craft, Infantry - Development
• LCI(L) Construction
• LCI(L) Description
• LCI Variants
• Landing Ship, Medium
• Operational History
• The Vessels Remembered

The book contains a nice range of black and white photography of the variety of landing craft. In addition, there are numerous color profiles illustrating the range of naval 'Measure' camouflage schemes carried by these vessels.

This book is a must-have for the amphibious warfare historian and military analyst to understand how this weapon was designed and employed during the Second World War. This title is recommended!

My sincere thanks to Osprey Publications for this review sample!