Andrew Jackson Higgins and the Boats that Won World War II Paperback – Illustrated, 30 October 1998

Just arrived, very pleased & looking forward to learning more about this great man.

It is easy to see why Marine Corps Lt. Gen. "Howlin' Mad" Smith and Andrew Higgins were great friends. Both were dynamic men of genius who suffered the bungling of lesser men, often times, the same group of bunglers. But neither man would suffer in silence. Smith, along with other farsighted Marines, understood quite early the nature of the coming war in the Pacific. It would be a bloody contest of island hopping across the Pacific to the very shores of the Japanese home islands. The taking of those islands would necessarily require the landing of assault troops on defended beaches and the United States lacked proper amphibious craft for the task. There was a critical lack of troop transports, cargo transports and a satisfactory landing craft to bring both ashore had yet to be designed.From the bayous and backwater swamps of Louisiana, boat builder and designer Andrew Higgins produced a boat far superior to other designs, the now famous Higgins Boat. Incredibly, the Navy's Bureau of Construction and Repair (BCR), as early as 1934, preferred to ignore this boat. Even more incredible, in sixty-one hours he designed and built a tank lighter which far exceeded the design produced by the Bureau of Ships. Both craft were largely ignored in spite of their superior performance in multiple government tests. But the men who would use these craft first, the service men who formulated the "Tentative Landing Operations Manual" in 1934 became Higgins strongest allies and chief among them was H. M. Smith. The Marines saw the worth of the boats he designed and fought for them. They fought for the best landing craft which would carry their Marines ashore under enemy fire. But the battle against the Bureau of Ships would not be won until after widespread pettiness and favoritism was exposed by Higgins before the Truman Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program in 1942. One man, Andrew Higgins, took on the Washington and military bureaucrats, the leaders of the eastern shipping industry and won. In short order, he took on a vicious labor racket, profiteering from the war by so-called "labor suppliers". He beat them too.Remarkably, in September of 1943 the American navy totaled 14,072 vessels. Of these, 12,964 or 92% were designed by Higgins industry. Higgins designed and built high-speed PT boats, antisubmarine boats, dispatch boats, freight supply boats and specialized patrol craft. He produced several types of landing craft, including the famous Higgins boat (LCVPs) and the tank lighter (LCMs).Of Higgins, General Eisenhower stated in 1964, "He is the man who won the war for us."Strahan has penned a fine tribute to a truly remarkable man. Strahan's strength, like his mentor, Steve Ambrose, is his prodigious research skills. One wonders what he would have produced had he stayed in history in stead of venturing off to run Lucky Dogs in New Orleans.

All good, very happy with service.

An excellent biography of a most impressive man. Higgins had insight, guts, drive and the arrogance to take on the US Navy...and win!"Wars are won in the factory" Stalin once said - given that Higgins build over 12,000 (90% of all naval craft) boats for the navy in WW2, it's a good thing he was so persistent. Andrew Jackson Higgins had a fast learning curve, was an aggressive salesman with a phenomenal memory. He not only mass produced more craft than anyone else, he did so with an eye to those on the factory floor. He took care of 'his' people - indeed, the workers built their own community calling it Our Town.Higgins was not afraid to bend rules - if he didn't exactly have the legal rights to expand his factories into the neighboring cemetery, well, he was sure he would soon get approval (he did). If he needed critically short supply high quality steel, his men could 'liberate' it and later repay for it (he did).Ironically, the company he founded was lost, not to inability to change from war time to peace time production, but for labor disputes created by a multitude of unions fighting amongst themselves over who would represent the workers. Also revealing questions regarding whether or not returning war vets should have priority of jobs vs. those who did not serve.I would have preferred to see some diagrams, cut-aways, blue prints of the craft under discussion, but this is a biography of Higgins, not a technical manual of what he designed. There is enough detail for the layman to understand and this book is fantastic enough without them. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn more about a powerful, self made man, WW2 logistics and the 'can-do' patriotic spirit that existed in WW2.

Higgins was another of these remarkable men that war throws up. A hard-drinking Irish-American from Nebraska, he set up a factory in New Orleans that manufactured landing craft, with a design derived from rum-running boats that, obviously, were good at quick landings on beaches.At one time his wooden LCVP "Higgins Boats" landing craft and PT torpedo boats were a quarter of the US Navy by number. This involved deforesting chunks of Florida.He was also famous for employing blacks and even women at equal pay rates-the first in Florida. Of course, he was violently anti-union, so this may have been a device to keep wages down.After the war, as these great characters seem to, he went bust.This is the well-written story of what he did and who he was.