The struggle between the bureaucracy and the lonely inventor lasted for a couple of years, but one way or another Higgins managed to force the Navy to let him compete for contracts—and the Marines loved what he produced, the LCVP. It was so far superior to anything the Navy designers, or the private competitors, could build that excellence won out over blind, stupid, stuck-in-the-mud bureaucracy.

Once he got the initial contract, Higgins showed that he was as much a genius at mass production as he was at design. He had assembly lines scattered throughout New Orleans (some under canvas). He employed, at the peak, 30,000 workers. It was an integrated workforce of blacks, women, and men, the first ever in New Orleans. Higgins inspired his workers the way a general tries to inspire his troops. A huge sign hung over one of his assembly lines: “The Guy Who Relaxes Is Helping the Axis!” He put pictures of Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito sitting on toilets in his factories’ bathrooms. “Come on in, brother,” the caption read. “Take it easy. Every minute you loaf here helps us plenty.” He paid top wages regardless of sex or race.⁶

Higgins improved the design of the LCTs and produced hundreds of them; he helped design the patrol boats (PT boats) and built dozens of them; he had an important subcontractor role in the Manhattan Project; he made other contributions to the war effort as well.

Mostly, however, Higgins Industries built LCVPs. It was based on the Eureka design, but substituted a square bow that was actually a ramp for the spoonbill bow of the Eureka. At thirty-six feet long and ten and a half feet wide, it was a floating cigar box propelled by a protected propeller powered by a diesel engine. It could carry a platoon of thirty-six men or a jeep and a squad of a dozen men. The ramp was metal but the sides and square stern were plywood. Even in a moderate sea it would bounce and shake while swells broke over the ramp and sides. But it could bring a rifle platoon to the shoreline and discharge the men in a matter of seconds, then extract itself and go back to the mother ship for another load. It fit the need perfectly.

By the end of the war, Higgins Industries had produced over 20,000 LCVPs. They were dubbed “Higgins boats,” and they carried infantry ashore in the Mediterranean, in France, at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and at other Pacific islands. More American fighting men went ashore in Higgins boats than in all other types of landing craft combined.^I

THE HIGGINS BOATS were carried across the Atlantic—and later across the Channel—on the decks of LSTs. They were lowered by davits. (One of Higgins’s arguments with the Bureau of Ships had been about length; he insisted that a thirty-six-foot boat was the right length to meet the requirements, while the Navy said it had to be a thirty-foot boat because the davits on the LSTs were designed for a boat of that length. “Change the davits,” Higgins thundered, and eventually that commonsense solution was adopted.) Together with the LCTs and other craft, they gave the Allies unprecedented mobility.

The Allies had other advantages to help solve their problems. The Germans, who had been pioneers in creating a paratroop force, had given up on airborne operations after suffering disastrous losses in the 1941 capture of Crete, and in any case they did not have the transport capacity to mount much more than a small raiding party. But the American, British, and Canadian armies had airborne divisions, and they had the planes to carry them behind enemy lines. Those planes were designated C-47s and dubbed Dakotas. Each could carry a stick of eighteen paratroopers. The Dakota was the military version of the DC-3, a twin-engine plane built by Douglas Aircraft in the 1930s. It was unarmed and unarmored, but it was versatile. It was slow (230 miles per hour top speed) but the most dependable, most rugged, best-designed airplane ever built. (A half century and more later, most of the DC-3s built in the thirties were still in service, primarily flying as commercial transports over the mountains of South and Central America.)

The men the Dakotas carried were elite troops. There were two British airborne divisions, the 1st and 6th, and two American, the 82nd and 101st. Every paratrooper was a volunteer. (Gliderborne infantry were not volunteers.) Each paratrooper had gone through a rigorous training course, as tough as any in the world. The experience had bonded them together. Their unit cohesion was outstanding. The men were superbly conditioned, highly motivated, experts in small arms. The rifle companies in the Allied airborne divisions were as good as any in the world. So were the other elite Allied formations, such as the American Rangers and the British Commandos.