Restored D-Day Landing Craft Opens To Public

The last remaining landing craft that delivered tanks to the beaches of Normandy on D-Day in 1944 has been opened to the public. 

Renovated from a barnacle-covered wreck, the Landing Craft Tank (LCT) spent years rusting and submerged in Birkenhead Dock before it was rescued.

The restoration work included new internal and external paint, a fully restored funnel, electrical works and the fitting of replica guns and rocket launchers.

A £4.7m grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund made the restoration possible, and now the LCT is being opened to visitors after being installed outside the D-Day Story museum in Southsea, Hampshire.

The 800-tank carrying landing craft became a floating clubhouse and nightclub from the 1960s to the 1980s before it fell into disrepair.

Retrieved from the dock in 2014 and brought to Portsmouth Naval Base, the renovations also included recreating the bridge, wheelhouse, and the crew’s living space so visitors can get an impression of what life was like on board the landing craft.

Wally Beall, 96, was a Royal Navy crewman on a different landing craft, LCT 795, which carried American troops from Dartmouth to Utah Beach on D-Day.

Reminiscing about his D-Day experience he talked about his time on the landing craft.

"We had, I think it was nine, Sherman tanks and the crew, which is 45 men, and also we carried 50 airborne engineers and their job was to blow the tank obstacles up off the beach before we got there.

"Weather was atrocious… and as we got towards the beach about a mile off we could hear the shells sizzling over, the explosives on the beach and so on, and the Yanks didn’t want to get off because they'd been seasick.

"You could understand it really, but they didn’t want to get off. There were 50 of them but in the end, they managed to get off."