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| Andrew Higgins |
Excerpt from 'D-Day:
The Climactic Battle of
World War II'
by Stephen E. Ambrose
The
first time I met General Eisenhower, in 1964 in his office
in Gettysburg, where he had called me to discuss the possibility
of becoming one of the editors of his official papers,
he said at the end of his conversation, "I notice
you are teaching in New Orleans. Did you ever know Andrew
Higgins?" "No sir," I replied. "He
died before I moved to the city." "That's too
bad," Eisenhower said. "He is the man who won
the war for us." My face must have shown the astonishment
I felt at hearing such a strong statement from such a
source. Eisenhower went on to explain, "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."
Excerpt from
a C-SPAN interview with
Stephen E. Ambrose:
AMBROSE: We're building a museum in New
Orleans, The National World War II Museum, . . . It's bigger
than just honoring Higgins' industry. It's going to honor
all of American industry because you've got similar figures.
We had no landing craft at all -- none -- in 1940. We
had 30,000 in 1944. We virtually didn't have an air force
in 1940. By 1944 we were building 8,000 planes a month.
Some of these were big four-engine bombers. So we want
to honor American industry for what it did to make D-Day
possible, and Higgins is the man we center our attention
on. But there was Henry Kaiser and there was Henry Ford
and General Motors, and everybody pitched in -- and then
the men of D-Day, of course, and what they did. So we're
building this museum in New Orleans. It will be the only
museum in the United States that is devoted exclusively
to World War II and the only museum in the world that
has as its central theme one day in the world's history.
But what a day.
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The
Higgins Boat Project
The
Higgins Boat Project is an all-volunteer,
non-profit organization using original plans
and original material specifications to build
an authentic Higgins boat (LCVP) for display
at The National World War II Museum in New Orleans,
La. |
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