D-Day Tribute: Andrew Jackson Higgins

Let me first be very clear, there are no braver men than those who ran up those beaches in a hail of German machine-gun fire on June 6, 1944. They road boats across turbulent seas, the door then dropped, and they immediately faced hell on Earth. The question of whether freedom would survive for another year…would be answered by their steady courage on the sands of Normandy that day. We remember them with deepest reverence.

When I was a youngster, I would go to the Bearden Public Library and get every WW2 biography that I could get my hands on. So, WW2 has been on my mind a long time. The 24 hours of D-Day were the fulcrum from which the 20th century would pivot. Our very freedom hung in the balance as the motors of those landing craft churned towards the beaches that fateful early morning.

I would like to take a moment to talk about the man who designed and built the boats who got our boys to those landing beaches.

There is no greater teacher than experience. I think maybe you have heard that a few times on this blog. Andrew Jackson Higgins was a youngster when his dad passed away. Higgins would move to Omaha with his mom where he would start a lawn cutting business in order to help make money for the family. That young entrepreneur would learn lessons that would get our boys to the beaches at Normandy.

Many times he lost his company and savings to hurricanes and hard times. He never lost focus of his goals. ~ Andrew Jackson Higgins National Memorial

Prior to WW2, Higgins anticipated a shortage of steel, and purchased the entire crop of mahogany from the Phillipines. When the Navy tasked contractors with building a landing boat, Higgins developed a craft which was built, in large part, from….wood! It was highly maneuverable, buoyant, and even better, he already had the supply of wood to build it. At first, many influential contractors mocked the little boat’s design. Other designs were too large and cumbersome. Other designs lacked the agility, shallow draft, and speed to get the beach before enemy artillery could pinpoint them. The US Navy went with Higgins.

Higgins was never one to back down from a fight. In fact, he often rubbed people the wrong way, but he had a knack for getting to the truth. His tenacity and ideas had won they day. The Higgins boat was born.

The Higgins boat could carry 36 fully outfitted troops into shallow water with its nearly flat hull. A staggering 23,000 would be built between 1942-1945. By 1943, the company had grown from a handful of people to over 20,000 employees! The beauty of the Higgins boat is that it didn’t gobble up strategic resources, and was perfect for the task. It would serve on the battlefields of Normandy, Guadacanal, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. Indeed, it changed the very face of warfare. Dwight D Eisenhower, a serious man with a serious calling, said that Andrew Jackson Higgins won the war for the Allies w/ his boat production and design.

So today, Rob’s Innovation in Education honors a truly great innovator who never gave up, even when all hope seemed lost. By the end of WW2, the President knew his name and spoke endearingly of his invention.

May we never forget such men.

“Andrew Higgins”…Eisenhower said, “is the man who won the war for us” “…if Higgins had not designed and built those LCVPs, we never could have landed over an open beach. The whole strategy of the war would have been different.” ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Great website (w/ photos) of the Higgins boat: http://www.robertsarmory.com/Higgins-Boat.htm

Of Note: Below is the landing scene from Saving Private Ryan which brings into full focus the bravery of those men and the importance of those boats/equipment functioning properly. Beware, the reel is not for the faint of heart.

Licensed thumbnail photo of Utah Beach, Normandy, France, by Jens Otte