LCI713 WW2 Landing Craft tour

okay so welcome to the LCI 73 amphibious forces Memorial Museum we have a website called www amphibious forces. org this is a World War II landing craft it's 158 ft long weighs 200 tons of displacement and it's about 21 ft wide the beam this is a flat bottom ship it was designed to pull up onto the Beach open the bow ramp through those doors you see the clamshell doors right there on the three and uh so I'm going to take you on a walkthrough tour and you can see what it was like to be on a World War II landing craft so this here is our Treasurer Mark Stevens hi Mark say hi Mark's got paint got to buy more paint because um because a World War II ship needs needs to be painted a lot so we're just walking back here to the gang plank the brow hopefully I won't fall off so this was built to uh carry 200 troops onto the beach and uh they would stay down below in bunks the original version just had like a ferry benches like a ferry boat so the first thing we'll see is the uh the number one gun deck up here on the fil this is a 20 mm Cannon you see here the uh I think it's a Mark I gun mount for the 20 mm you can elevate it and depress the gun with the Big Spring here can turn it around and point it the gun is down below and then you can see the the white numbers on the Splender Shield which are for the relative bearing in case like a enemy targets coming in from this direction then the lookout sees it and he calls to all the Gunners you know it's coming from 90 and everyone points their gun this right here is a ammunition ready service storage locker and inside of it would be eight 60 round drums of ammunition for the 20 mm Cannon this right here is a barrel cooling tube and when the gun barrels get too hot after you shoot about 300 rounds you would grab the barrel and dunk it in the tank and cool it off that would be full of water normally and then that round pipe is so you can stand on so you could depress The Gun Barrel and also you won't trip on the spent shells that are rolling around on the deck so there's an anchor up on here on the bow you see right there going through the house pipe and there's another one on the stern so you could basically uh let the anchor out when you came into the beach and pull yourself off the beach backwards now you can also see the other gun tubs there's number two number three and then back behind the the big uh Pilot House is the number four and number five so they would have had 5 20 mm cannons so we're going down here to the well deck and we have a winch right there it's a gasoline powered engine winch again used to haul in the anchor or the landing ramp here's the landing ramp right here this is called the fil and you you uh see the there's the clamshell doors right down there you can open that up and then pull the ramp out so the troops can run down and hit the beach you have the uh troop head and a sea anchor and those black cans are Arrow foam which is uh for putting out oil fires she makes a foam then over here you go down there and let me see that hatch goes to a uh bosen Locker where we keep lines and fenders and stuff like that and now this is troop compartment number one and there would have been 43 troops down here and we've got this all fitted out to where it's completed now this would have been 43 troops in these four high bunks and it's really cramped down here as you can see there's a tank under there we're working on these tanks um there would have been oil in those tanks like diesel fuel or fog oil and then you can see in here these bunks the troops wouldn't have had mattresses they would have just had these fold up these are called pipe racks and we got all these couple of hundred of life jackets so right here this is kind of interesting is the uh voice tube communic a system see it's kind of hard to see with the so there's a bell right here and then this push button that rings a bell up on the bridge and when they want to talk to us they they ring this Bell and then we answer the voice tube right here and they can communicate back and forth and then if we want to talk to them we ring the bell and then they answer the they answer the voice here so anyway uh we just finished fixing up this painting it and insulating it so it's uh pretty much the way it would have looked um this is a flat bottom boat so it would be rocking and rolling a lot and so all the troops that came on the ship most of them got seasick as you can imagine cuz a flat bottom ship rocks and rolls a lot anyway so we're going back to the deck house where the crew mess is and uh some other compartments so we're going in here going to come in here so this right here shows a picture the vertical Services of this ship when it came back from from the war to Los Angeles unless I got that's a what's that town in Los Angel Angeles where that was no uh no it's the oil they have a lot of oil wells there anyway I can't remember so uh we happen to have uh two World War II LCI veterans here we've got Gordon Smith he was on LCI 43 was a Quarter Master and we have Tom Barnett and Tom you were a cook right ships cook cook I class AC com and your LCI was LCI 727 727 okay so uh it was a g 727 so a g I haven't explained to them what that means a g means they took all the troop all the troop compartments out and they filled it with they had a bunch of guns and ammo so they could support The Landings on the beach from close in right what crew 65 pardon your crew yeah what 61 double 61 so you were in the Pacific right and Gordon you were in the Mediterranean right and anio okay we were supposed to go in ahead of the anry right and clear the beaches right okay so this compartment that we're in is called the forward Cruise mess or the only Cruise mess actually and so there's these tables that fold down from the from the bulkhead the wall and you can see this one here is one of those tables and you can also see a model of one of these lcis and you can see the four gun mounts on it see the 20 mm cannons on there got here and here and you can see the ramp is open so uh we're also a proud member of the US LCI National Association in fact we're having a we're hosting a convention here this September and you can also see over here is the uh helmets and gas Mas supposed to be on this show also if you look up you have all these life jackets up in the overhead what they do is you can sponsor a life jacket like a brick in the museum right and uh you pay certain amount of money you can uh you can sponsor your own life jacket with your own uh you know words on there to like dedicated to somebody anyway so we're going in here and didn't want to pass we also have the troop officers now if they would have had 200 troops a rifle company size and there would be officers associated with the rifle company and so the they would stay in here instead of down there in the compartment with the troops so there would be nine officers or room for nine and also the ship's doctor would stay in here who would be an enlisted man he'd probably be a pharmacist mate and he also knew how to type so he would be the ship secretary when you had a crew of 25 guys the the regular rcraft only had 25 crew and that includes the officers yeah those and then down here you've got a couple of uh troop compartments another one it's number three right there that holds 65 and then this is troop compartment number two which also holds 63 let me turn on the lights here so we've got here right there it says uh this is 62 men see so this would be just as crowded as that first one except we removed all the stuff because we're we're trying to fix it up like a museum right so here we are have our new donor board people that have donated money $100 donors and then we've got some uh 20 mm Cannon magazines that hold 60 rounds each that hang on these racks these clips on the on the bulkhead and then also there's different kinds of lcis as you might have seen you have this one here which is made for the British it's a square con and then you have this one which is similar to ours except it doesn't have a bowel ramp it has a side ramp then you've got this kind which is a round con Center ramp hope you can see that and then they also took the same hole and they put a bunch of guns on it and took off the Val ramps completely and then this was uh LCS landing craft support so it's the same length that's 158 ft but they carry like 3in cannons 40 mm so here we are back in here this is a picture of a LCI being boarded by by about 37 troops and all those guys would stay down in one compartment plus more and here's our LCI flag again United States LCI and National Association and then over here this is kind of dedicated to the 41st division which is a army division that they landed off of this ship in Zamboanga Phil phines and this is the landing diagram of where they landed hopefully you guys can see this it's not out of focus so they landed on uh I want to say it was red Beach 2 they were in the Seventh Wave you can see the Seventh Wave there anyway so the sunset division 41st division still around I think and um they're all based in Washington and Oregon States and uh they had a uh patch on their shoulder that says it's like a sunset right and it was called the sunset division well there's Highway 26 which is in Portland Oregon and it's named the Sunset Highway after the sunset division so it's kind of cool anyway over here is uh another model of another LCI this is an LCI sailor's uniform you can see that red patch on his shoulder right there it's an anchor with an eagle and a Tom Tommy Gun and uh that's the amphibious forces uh patch I think uh if you were amphibious Landing group like a you know a troop you would be uh have a it would be blue so the Navy guys would wear the red patch like that now this is kind of like Tom ship it's a LCI gun the 470 you can see instead of 20 m mm cannons they had 40 mm bers there in number two and three and in number one gun positions and they had Rockets they took off those side ramps and they put rocket launchers you see those rocket launchers right there and then the the back end was the same as this one so down here this is kind of like an impromptu Museum and uh we have uh this is Gordon Smith's ship's flag is this battle flag from the LCI 43 they landed at anzio beach in Italy and uh that is a streamer pennant they call it and that was the one they flew during anzio which is kind of neat the old 48 star flags and you can see it's flown and got you know torn up by the wind this is a army uniform that you can see the the troops that would land would wear these inflatable light vests they're kind of like a belt and they have this the cartridges or a mouth inflation tube right here I think this is actually upside down so just to see what the guys would be wearing this is a captured Japanese flag that was captured right at the end of the war from the vicinity of Shanghai and it was on a m sweeper and the guys that got it was uh Richard Adair and his sons Tom and Ken actually um donated this flag to us so it's kind of cool because they captured this they just rode their boat this is like the day after the war like September the 3rd 1945 they they rode their little dinghy over there to where the Japanese were still on their ship and they just didn't say a word Japanese crew was still on it they walked right up lowered their flag threw it over the shoulder rode back to their ship now this is the uh I think this was the yeah Bob Heath got this one and his son's Craig Don and Gary donated it this is LCI flotilla 13 this is the Black Cat flotilla now they were flotilla has like 12 LCI ships or maybe even 24 on some of them and uh they landed in the Pacific like palao and pelo places like that anyway they would raise this flag up which meant they were the command ship and when you raise up the black cat flag that would meant it was time to go hit the beach so it was like a Battle Flag it's kind of cool and then we have another lcvp cuz it's an amphibious ship or a landing craft a lot smaller this would only carry like 35 guys and and then we got a Vietnam era PCF which is like John Kerrey was on you know and he was he served in Vietnam and uh anyway so the PCF there's a there's a boat down in um San Diego which they have just finished fixing up and um there's uh you can if you're down in San Diego Go to The Maritime Museum and check out their PCO anyway so that's it for the uh this would have been full of bunks there would have been like I said 62 bunks down here but we have it sort of as an impromptu Museum now here again you can see the call Bell so you can uh communicate with the bridge through the voice tube right right there the voice tube is supposed to have a cover over [Music] it and we're coming up [Applause] here hello hi so I'm just uh walking through the I'm filming the thing anyway so this over here is the uh right off of the Cru mess and this is the EXO and engineer State room and he had a desk and a port hole and bunk beds so two guys in here they would have been like an ensen or maybe Lieutenant JG and in here oh yeah you can see this picture here that shows these guys sitting there at this fold up table see it folds up against the wall and they're just uh writing letters home looks like then in here is the radio room let me turn on the light so the radio room is kind of cool I'll let the lights warm up come back to the radio room so this is called the messing and clipping room and uh we have a surgery light here so you could uh possibly do surgery on people see the uh the light there so you can point it and uh this whole table if you look at it just simply has a hinge right there it's got a hinge right there and it like folds up against the [Music] wall anyway so you can see throughout the ship we have all these life jackets that have been sponsored by people so you should get in on this action cuz it's it's really cool we only have a limited amount left he then in here is the radio room so the radio room has a locking door on it the Locking door is important because you know you have secret information in here communication security so anyway this is also the chart board the chart storage in those drawers and this is a uh map of D-Day this is uh Omaha Beach East from cville Sur didn't say that right but anyway so you have uh easy red right here Fox green Fox red easy green so uh lcis were used to land on D-Day uh at Omaha Beach and over here is the radios so you've got Collins TCS radio transmitter and receivers and also some ships entertainment radios you also have a typ wrer because you would have to type all the stuff that all the messages yeah and then you know there would be like Morse code and uh voice you could use so that's the radio room and then uh down here is the cruise quarters so it's directly below the Miss messing and clipping room and the radio room right is the cruise quarters so the cruise quarters I'm going to turn on the lights now they have a little bit better nicer accommodations because they stayed on the ship all the time whereas the troops didn't so this would have had 25 troops down I mean crew down here they have lockers and everything so here's a locker a whole Bank of lockers there and then you can see these these bunks there's only three of them not four so it's a little bit nicer and they actually had mattresses and uh you know sheets the whole deal and these would be uh also pipe racks you know with the canvas this is canvas and it's just sort of tied in there and uh yeah so there would have been 24 bunks we just have 12 of them set up right now but the other 12 would be right over here in this empty space and we actually have the bunks we just have to put them in and over here is the gyroscope now uh this is a uh I don't know what Mark and make it is but it it like it's on gimbals and you know gyroscope so it would tell you uh the compass Direction even when we're at se now one thing is we went back to Stevenson Washington and said cuz this ship used to be like a derelict on the beach there and we took it well another guy that got it first but you know people went on the boat and they took stuff well we put a newspaper ad in Stevenson's paper and said hey remember that old ship if there anyone has anything from that ship we'd really like it back and so we got this Locker back and we got some silverware and stuff so inside of it we still have there's still a couple of pinup girls this one here and this one here I think that's like a Gypsy Rose Lee I'm not really sure who that is but anyway um so we added some other famous pinup girls like you know bety grael and Jane Russell anyway and her I don't know her name but uh anyway so yeah it's kind of cool down here and uh so this right here is the exhaust stove pipe so it would keep it warm from the boiler and going up we're going to go over to the officers well actually the the captain this is the captain State [Music] room and he was uh they originally had set set it up with two bunks in here but you know the captain being the captain normally would not do that and he would just take the extra bunk out and we put some uh donated uniforms that were we going to display in here anyway so see the old uh Captain's helmet and and the pit helmet up there and so yeah it was pretty nice and the captain had his own call Bell and a voice tube he could talk to the bridge on this one could talk to uh the other stations on here anyway so got that now in here is the officer's wardro where the officer's eating area was now if you look right here you can see this picture where they're all sitting around and you see theyve got that got that toaster I'm really big on toasters if you have seen my other videos anyway so these guys are sitting around and they got some table cloth and some stuff on this looks like bread and butter some cereal so anyway we have found some recent additions where we got you know the silverware on there and you can can see the toaster see it right there so it's a toast well it's really cool and yeah so the officer had a pretty nice eating area and then in here is the officer's head now the officer's head is a bathroom right so uh they had their own toilet they had their sinks and a shower and I believe this might have been a freshwater shower or it might have been a saltwater shower there I am in the mirror so anyway they have their drink holders and we're trying to get this Plumbing all connected that would be really cool right now is just sort of there it's not connected so in here is a plan of the ship you can look at it you can see all the compartments so there's two decks there's the main deck here and then the hold and the hold is split up into like all the trip compartment trip compartment one two three Cruise quarters engine room trip compartment number four and Rudder room and um over here is the gall galy is the word for a kitchen on a ship and this one we got uh we're supposed to have a couple of diesel stoves in here right so if you know where a diesel stove is that looks like this where look see it's uh I don't even know who makes it but they're like cast iron and they've got a blower see there's a air blower right there and they're uh drip supplied with uh gravity feed I think for diesel fuel now we have that that's the right there see that diesel fuel tank that's for the stove and it just drips down and over here you can see a bunch of guys standing around eating baloney sandwiches looks like in the gley and you can see behind this guy is the Smoke Stacks from the two stones it's called The Charlie Noble and uh yeah so this was the center of activity on most lcis and you see the old uh old utensils and frying pans and such and then we have the uh they call this the the the sink the dresser so you could uh do food preparation on here and uh it's supposed to curve around and there's supposed to be a door right there that goes to a walk-in refrigerator we have the door we just need to cut the hole and put it there you can see we're we're missing a big coffee maker see this coffee maker supposed to be right there now there's a whole bunch more um you know utensils that we got from Stevenson Washington right there those are all the Navy cooking utensils anyway so what they would do is they would close this door and the guys will come up with their trays see I get you a tray here these old steel these old steel trays see and so you would uh take your tray kind of like in a cafeteria and you put your tray there and the cook would slop the stuff from the stove onto your tray and then you go sit down and eat so that's the that's the theory so it's a Dutch door anyway so you come in here and you can see the the drop um Leaf there you know it's like a serving line hey Woody hey Jerry taking a video good anyway back here is the after Cruise head and there are some deep deep sinks in here like these guys and uh this is an old washing machine you can see see with the agitator and the ringer so the way you would operate this ringer is you press this button and those two rollers would go and squeeze all the water out so you wouldn't want to get anything caught in there cuz it might hurt anyway so there's supposed to be another sink right there then back in here is another couple of sinks so you could like I guess you could shave then there's a sink there now curiously missing in the crew head is the um you know the latrine there would have been two of them the heads that you would sit on and they would be right in this area here now we have a photograph we got a lot of these photographs from the same ship so there's some guys sitting on the head which is kind of funny they would sit three to a to a head yeah kind of interesting and uh anyway so you come in here and this is the walk-in refrigerator which is you know it's just a tool storage area now and then you come down down here to the uh troop compartment number four and this would have held 26 guys so we're using as a tool storage area and it's really loud in the engine room but I'll look through the hole here so you can see right down there is the big hole there's two of them for the big quad diesel engine and there's the old DC switchboard with the knife switches you see them all see all those knife switches then we have a CO2 hose reel with the twin CO2 tanks and we have a we have a generator there and a generator over there so uh they would have supplied the ship with DC power although we have it fitted for AC anyway so you can see this knife switch is a basically it's a the way it would have been but it's a false front we don't actually energize all those open knife switches cuz that's kind of dangerous and I don't want to shock Myself by operating this thing so but it looks exactly like it would anyway so that's the engine room then you come in here and we've got this is kind of cool see this all right if you look at that oh wait let me turn off yes it do passageway oh no there it is so if you look at this hey hey Rick oh wait I got it never mind just hold it right there okay so you see these guy this was taken like the day before D-Day these guys or troops about to land on D-Day right now if you look in the background see over this guy's head there's a door frame and you look there see same door frame so I think they took that picture from right about here so if we we had four guys with Uniforms on we could have them reenact this Photograph anyway so yeah it's kind of cool and I think that guy right there kind of looks familiar like he's a famous movie star maybe looks like Frank Sinatra I don't know anyway so yeah now this would have had 20 26 bunks down here so it would have been pretty crowded anyway you come in here and this is our ammunition locker and it would have had a flooding system see the flooding system right here and uh so you could flood it with firan if it got too hot then over here is the dry storage compartment and uh we have uh well we have stuff in here but there would have been food like cans of food you know like green beans and stuff like that and then back here in the very back is the very AF end of the boat is the uh oh I hope it's unlocked well it's the rudder room and it's locked so there's the electric Rudders that are back there okay so now I'm going to go up to the bridge so go up this the ladder here you see we've got this ship pretty well fixed up on the inside and out it's looking really good since we uh got it so up here is the ladder that goes to the bridge now this is that conning Tower and so inside here would be several huh must have burned out that light bulb anyway there would be uh two watch standers if you look right here at this picture see the guy sitting there he's sitting on a stool and he's got his hand on the steering wheel now it's an electric steering like I said so here's the stool and there's the electric steering so basically it's a motor that goes back and forth and turns the rudder and he would look at the rudder angle indicator which is right up there and tell you which direction the rud is pointing then he could also look at the inclinometer and the barometer and the clock there and there and then also we have a gyro repeater remember the gyro I showed you down in troop troop birthing I mean Cruise birthing so this is the the repeater it's like a compass now this is a magnetic compass you see the the two big balls on either side that's those are made out of iron so they can correct for the magnetism of the ship and uh we're supposed to have this mounted here in a little holder box and this is a um magn sign Compass the actual magnet sign Compass power supply is right there and then the actual sensing unit is up on the Mast so now this is the heart of the ship where you have the Communication Center this is also the watchstander desk so he would have a chart here of where he's going remember we had The Invasion chart of D-Day so this is the same chart and then uh oh I forgot this is the uh engine order Telegraph right here so you go ching ching and you would tell the guys down in the engine room what how fast you want to go right and then the guy that the Helmsman would sit here and steer the boat steer the ship now the communications thing with the voice tubes right so you've got all these push button button so I can talk to the engine room or the Radio Room The Troop officer State Room the EXO State Room the co State room or I could come down here and talk to the steering room or any of the four troop compartments right so I press these buttons and a bell rings then I open the voice tube and yell at them or I can yell at the troop spaces through this one so it's two separate voice tubes now these are the uh light for the navigation lights and right here if they if they buzz me like one of the troops buzzes me this is an enunciator and it drops down and tells me who is buzzing me and the buzzer is right there it's just an electric buzzer so you hear that buzz and then you go hm who buzzed me and then you know which voice tube to answer they also had sound powerered phones which are these things you have to talk into them and your voice actually makes them work vibrates a little diaphragm and causes an electric current anyway so this is kind of neat um so we can just walk outside onto the deck and remember this is gun compart or guns number four and five and then back here I mean that's number two and three I'm sorry this is number four and five I'm going to show you the uh the stern so we have a Stern anchor and uh the stern anchor is there and then right underneath that tarp is a big gasoline powered winch that we Ed to pull in the stern anchor so we can pull ourselves off the beach which is kind of neat and there's some life some life boats here there's a raft and that's a uh little rowboat there and then again you can see the uh you can see the depression rails that you can stand on and the gun cooling tube over here is the flag bag which we're having a Boy Scout and he's going to make us a new one because this one's kind of rotten now up here is the the con now the con's kind of cool cuz this is where the officer and the signalman would sit and steer the boat now if you look at this thing it's a Venturi so the air would go up and go up through there and it would be blasted out here straight up and it'd be like an invisible windshield especially when the ship was moving through the water you have constant wind so this Invisible Shield of air would keep the wind from blowing in your face theoretically now you have these two seats there's that one there for the signal one you see The Crows Nest where you can crawl up and do his little signal flags and then over here is the conning officer's seat that's so he would sit here and he could yell through a a voice tube like a megaphone that goes down where that coffee can is there's a voice tube and then there's two other voice tubes right there we're supposed to have a desk right here which comes out and it's covered over with a tarp you see these hooks those are for grommets so you can turn on this red light at night and look at the map you know stick your head underneath the tarp it's kind of like a little tent with a head hole so you stick your head head in there and look at the the map and then uh you know to to steer the ship you basically just sit right up here and say turn right you know so yeah this is here this is kind of like the the conning officer's view of the ship so you got you can see up there where we started there's the number one gun mount and then the the well deck and if you come up here you can see number two and number three gun tubs see if I can show you that better yeah there's number two and that's number three two's on the P then we come back here and you can see the engine room exhaust ventilator right there the scoop for the galy and gun tubs number four and number five and then the the stern with the the flag the engine anyway right here we've got the Howards which we would normally have some signal flags flying from and then this one right there is straight up on the stern well on faces towards the stern and that was where the uh they would fly their uh national tin when we're underway so come down here and go up to the front so we're always looking for more volunteers oh yeah guess what this is you've seen this before this is another ammunition ready Service ammo Locker for the uh 20 mm cannons so coming down here and and wrap up here and I just wanted to thank you for going on the tour and uh hey Tom say goodbye to the guys to the people on the on the YouTube okay all right so uh hopefully we're we're going to have a lot of people that donate money to the to the afmm right and uh so hopefully a lot of people will see that this is what the inside of a real LCI looks like okay well thanks a lot everybody and we'll see you later by

Channel: Jerry Gilmartin

Views: 60,212

Keywords: WW2, US Navy, Landing Craft, LCI, Amphibious Assault Ship, Ship tour, Walk through, 20mm Oerlikon Cannon, Zamboanga, US 41st Div, Australian 9th Div, Brunei Bay, Borneo, Naval History, 24th Flotilla, Black Cat Flotilla, Anzio, D-Day, Normandy, Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, US National LCI Association

Id: 2m8HyfDa1ZQ

Length: 41min 58sec (2518 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 10 2014