Landing Craft Assault (LCA) was a
landing craft
Landing craft are small and medium seagoing watercraft, such as boats and barges, used to convey a landing force ( infantry and vehicles) from the sea to the shore during an amphibious assault. The term excludes landing ships, which are large ...
used extensively in
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
. Its primary purpose was to ferry troops from transport ships to attack enemy-held shores. The craft derived from a prototype designed by
John I. Thornycroft Ltd. of
Woolston, Hampshire,
UK. During the war it was manufactured throughout the United Kingdom in places as various as small boatyards and furniture manufacturers.
Typically constructed of
hardwood
Hardwood is wood from dicot trees. These are usually found in broad-leaved temperate and tropical forests. In temperate and boreal latitudes they are mostly deciduous, but in tropics and subtropics mostly evergreen. Hardwood (which comes fro ...
planking and selectively clad with armour plate, this shallow-draft,
barge
Barge nowadays generally refers to a flat-bottomed inland waterway vessel which does not have its own means of mechanical propulsion. The first modern barges were pulled by tugs, but nowadays most are pushed by pusher boats, or other vessels. ...
-like boat with a crew of four could ferry an infantry
platoon
A platoon is a military unit typically composed of two or more squads, sections, or patrol
A patrol is commonly a group of personnel, such as Law enforcement officer, law enforcement officers, military personnel, or Security guard, secur ...
of 31 and five additional specialist troops, to shore at 7
knots (13 km/h). Men generally entered the boat by walking over a
gangplank from the boat deck of a troop transport as the LCA hung from its davits. When loaded, the LCA was lowered into the water. Soldiers exited by the boat's
bow ramp.
The LCA was the most common British and