The Second World War brought forth a number of innovations to warfare that were developed over the years and finally outlived their usefulness. One of the more long-lived was the LST. Developed to bring in needed equipment, troops and supplies after a beach-head had been secured, the LST was really little more than a floating box.

Able to carry tons of equipment in several decks as well as hundreds of troops, these ships were flat bottomed, slow, and considered by those who developed them to be expendable.

Fortunately for those who sailed them and those carried within, the LST was to prove to be less than totally vulnerable to destruction with less than 10% of those built actually lost due to combat or other causes during WWII.

Author Gordon L Rottman covers the development and deployment of these vessels as well as all the various modifications made to them over the course of the conflict. The LST was used in every Allied amphibious landing after Guadalcanal and continued to be used and developed after the war. Indeed, the last US Navy LST (though a much different ship from the originals) was decommissioned in 2002, leaving the job to other ship types. Though undoubtedly due to limited space, there is almost no information provided about post-war LSTs and only one image.

Superbly illustrated by Tony Bryan, there are profiles of at least one of every LST type and derivative provided. Those of us fortunate enough to have had the opportunity, can visit an LST. One of the last vessels of the type afloat, LST-325, was brought from Greece a few years back by ex-LST sailors and is now (or soon will be)  home-ported in Evanston, Indiana. It has made several ports-of-call along Mississippi river towns over the last few years.

If you are not able to visit a real LST, then this latest publication from Osprey is the next best thing.

November 2005

 For more on the complete line of Osprey books, visit www.ospreypublishing.com or contact them at Osprey Direct, PO Box 140, Wellingborough, Northants, NN8 2FA, UK

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