US Navy Landing Ship Tank on D-Day - Anthony Cowland

A Tank Landing Ship of the US Navy off-loading a Sherman Tank onto a Normandy beach on D-Day,  June 1944. Barrage balloons are overhead as an anti-aircraft gun opens up on the prow.

 

The Landing Ship Tank (LST) was designed as an ocean-going ship with the capability to deliver large vehicles and troops from shore to shore.

 

Designed at Churchill's request in the US in 1941, LSTs were amongst the US Navy’s most successful ships and 1051 were built, with more than a thousand surviving WW2. Their crews nicknamed the LSTs “Large Slow Targets”.  They were extensively used for the Allies’ D-Day assault on Normandy in June 1944.  

 

This painting was used to illustrate the cover of the book The US Navy and the War in Europe, by Robert C Stern