Inland Navy

The U.S. Navy was also on the Rhine.* Along with the Royal Navy, the U.S. overland fleet had hundreds of vessels in action./- For months, on U.S. and United Kingdom streams, Navy crewmen had practiced a trick new to them--maneuvering their cumbersome, 50-ft.-long, 14-ft.-beamed LCMs (Landing Craft, Mechanized) in swift river currents. For weeks, in Belgium, khaki-clad, Army-helmeted sailors had worked like hairy-eared engineers to get the 26-ton LCMs and the 36-ft.-long LCVPs (Landing Craft, Vehicles, Personnel) safely transported over shaky bridges and damaged roads, through narrow village streets, to hiding places near the Rhine.

Among the U.S. crews were many veterans of D-day in Normandy, where the big problem had been surf and tides. Not since then had an operation in the European Theater required so much careful preparation. Vice Admiral Alan G. Kirk's landborne outfits were ready at H-hour. On the Twenty-first Army Group's north front, soon after the first troops had crossed in assault boats, the Navy's ramp-bowed craft came rolling up to the Rhine on mammoth trucks and were quickly launched. Soon a stream of LCVPs and LCMs were ferrying men, tanks, guns, bulldozers, hundreds of drums of gasoline to the east banks. Power launches and other small craft shuttled the Rhine in such profusion that amazed U.S. correspondents mumbled that the place looked like the Poughkeepsie Regatta.

At Remagen the Navy had steamed up in trucks 48 hours after the bridge seizure, and helped mightily in getting the heavy stuff across. At the Third Army's crossings, about 250 miles from the nearest ocean, the Navy carried most of the freight, most of the passengers. There crewmen dubbed their operation: "U.S.S. Blood & Guts." Lieut. General George S. Patton beamed his approval.

* It was not the first time the Navy had helped out the Army at a river. In 1863 Admiral David Farragut sailed monitors, frigates and gunboats up the Mississippi, gave vital help to General Grant in the siege of Vicksburg.

/- Thus providing the dateline of the week (see PRESS).

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