Navy Story #2
Pole-Vaulting to the Beach
We were doing a landing
exercise at Sardinia, Italy, I think (it might have been Sicily).
This would have been in 1973. I was boat group officer, meaning I
was in charge of a small group of landing craft. My boat in this
case was an LCM-8. Here is a picture of an LCM-8:
This picture is of one of the
boats backing out of our well deck, getting underway. That's a
Marine vehicle of some kind in the boat. Look closely at the front
of the boat. That's a bow ramp that is lowered (on a hinge at the
bottom) when the boat gets to the beach.
We had a normal approach to
the beach. We were going pretty fast, which for one of these boats
means probably about 8 or 9 knots. Normally, these boats run up on
the beach and then lower the ramp so the troops and/or equipment can
run out onto the beach. Our boat was within probably 20 or 30 yards
of the beach, and for some reason the ramp opened. It didn't even
lower gradually like it normally does, it just dropped open. We were
close enough to the beach for the front end of the ramp to dig into
the sand, and because of our forward motion, the ramp folded under
the boat and snapped off. In the process of folding under, though,
it lifted the front of the boat several feet into the air, and then
when it snapped off, the boat splashed back into the water. That's
why I call this our pole-vault landing. Fortunately, we were close
enough to the beach that we didn't swamp or sink, but rather
continued on to touch down on the beach somewhat normally, although
without our ramp!
The ramp is of hollow
construction, so it floated awhile and drifted down the beach. But
it eventually sank. The Marines who were on the boat went ahead and
disembarked to their assignment, but the boat crew and I had to wait
for some Navy divers to come over and locate the ramp underwater. A
bulldozer was able to drag the ramp up onto the sand with a large
line or chain.
We were eventually given
permission to slowly make our way back out to the Pensacola, without
our ramp installed. We had to go slowly so we didn't take on water.
(The ramp wasn't at the front of the boat to keep out the water.)
But we made it back into the well deck. The ramp was later put on
board a much larger boat, probably an LCU, brought back out to the
Pensacola, and re-attached. One of the functions of an LSD is to do
boat repairs, so we had the welding equipment and whatever else it
took to fix it. Here's a picture of an LCU, which is what brought
the ramp back out to us:
And, of course, the captain
wanted to know what went on, so I had to go up to his cabin again and
explain. We weren't in any trouble, but he still wanted to know what
happened. I'm not sure they ever figured out exactly what went
wrong. There are some safety latches that keep the ramp from
dropping too soon, and there are also cables to lower it slowly.
Both systems failed. We were fortunate to make it back without any
injuries.