LST 325 tour

[Mobuck]

LST 325 (one of the last remaining functional LST's) was docked at Hannibal MO and the crowd was impressive. Walk through tour with a few of the sailors who had actually served on commissioned LST's explaining the features and answering questions. I guess the reason a tour of an LST was interesting to the Grandkids was my Dad was on an LST off the Anzio beach head when a Stuka dropped a bomb that penetrated the upper deck and exploded against the bottom hull sinking the LST in short time.

 

[contender]

Wow.
I would have enjoyed that tour as well.

 

[Mobuck]

Contender, check around the internet for next year's schedule. They take the ship on tours almost every year to different places. Crew is all volunteer. Some are well into their 70's and some only go on a few moves per year but some these guys are literally on the water in the old bucket for the entire summer. The not for profit organization rescued the ship from the Greek navy where it had been in service 37 years after being handed off by US Navy. The comment was they could only make 5 knots going up the Mississippi but close to 9 knots going downstream. Fuel consumption was around 8 gallon per mile.
One of the interesting items displayed was the extra barrels for the BOFORS 40mm guns. Talk about a barrel burner. The primary air defense consisted of several BOFORS in singe and twin mount gun tubs. I was explaining to Grandson how the gun mount worked and compared it to both of us holding his shotgun but he controlled the left/right and I controlled the up/down. One of the crew members stepped up and asked if I was a Navy veteran . I replied 'no, but why do you ask?' He said "well you seem to know a lot about a weapon system that's been outdated for 50 years and was really only used by the Navy before that.".
The line to enter the ship was growing by the minute and it took longer us to get off than to get on. Some one said that today is school tour day.

 

[Colonialgirl]

Back in the old days when my Dad was stationed in Hawaii we took a vacation to the Army Rest Camp on the big Island; Went from Pearl Harbor to the big Island on an LST; WHAM !!! into the waves, a big wave up over the bow and guess where the entry way was for the below decks area--- I also remember that she FLEXED in the middle !
AH YES !! Memories from when I was 6 or 7 years old !!
LOL.

 

[Bob Wright]

As to the 40mm Bofors AA gun, the Army used them as both single mounted towed artillery, and mounted on an M24 tank chassis in a twin mount. The primary difference was the Army's were air cooled, not water cooled. And of late, mounted in the side of a C-130 as a single mount.

And, during WW II these were used by the Germans as well.

Bob Wright.

 

[Watertender]

I see that it's a diesel propulsion system. A friend of mine who is now deceased was a Motor Machinist's Mate 1st Class. He served on a minesweeper and also a LST. The living history of people like him is dying. Just to listen to him was amazing. He was sent to school at Fairbanks Morse to learn diesels and learned them well. He ended up as a diesel mechanic and could repair a diesel engine in any conditions you can imagine. When you can operate machinery under fire almost any other condition is nothing to work in.

 

[GLGAR]

I had three years sea duty on two LST's (1955-1957) The Vernon County (1161) and Walworth County (1164). They had twin 3"50's mounted in three gun tubs and 6 deck mounted 20mm's. I was the lead Fire Control Technician and got to shoot at towed sleds and sleeves during gunnery practice. Sailed all around the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Caribbean on them. They were an interesting ride in rough seas.