The Landing Craft Tank (Rocket) or LCT(R) was developed from the

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

Mk.2 and Mk.3

Landing Craft Tank The Landing Craft, Tank (LCT) (or tank landing craft, TLC) was an amphibious assault craft for landing tanks on beachheads. They were initially developed by the Royal Navy and later by the United States Navy during World War II in a series of ver ...

(LCT) during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. It was designed to saturate beaches with either 972 or 1,044

rockets A rocket (from , and so named for its shape) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using any surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entirely fr ...

prior to the landing of troops. Used by both British and U.S. forces, the craft saw service in the

Normandy landings The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on 6 June 1944 of the Allies of World War II, Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during the Second World War. Codenamed Operation Neptune and ...

, the

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and the

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Design

The front loading door was welded shut and an additional deck installed above the tank storage bay to provide a mounting for the rocket launching racks. The resulting storage space below the deck (formerly the tank deck) was informally subdivided with canvas sheets to provide additional crew space. These were later updated with wooden partitions. The craft was also fitted with a Type 970

radar Radar is a system that uses radio waves to determine the distance ('' ranging''), direction ( azimuth and elevation angles), and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It is a radiodetermination method used to detect and track ...

set whose primary use was for rangefinding, but was also successfully used for

navigation Navigation is a field of study that focuses on the process of monitoring and controlling the motion, movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another.Bowditch, 2003:799. The field of navigation includes four general categories: land navig ...

. Generally propulsion was provided by Paxman

diesel engines The diesel engine, named after the German engineer Rudolf Diesel, is an internal combustion engine in which ignition of diesel fuel is caused by the elevated temperature of the air in the cylinder due to mechanical compression; thus, the die ...

, however, others were used due to availability. Some U.S. craft were fitted with petrol (gasoline) engines.

Application

The batteries of rocket projectors carried by each LCT(R) fired salvoes of rockets in rapid succession, triggered electronically by an

officer An officer is a person who has a position of authority in a hierarchical organization. The term derives from Old French ''oficier'' "officer, official" (early 14c., Modern French ''officier''), from Medieval Latin ''officiarius'' "an officer," fro ...

located in the bridge wheelhouse. The remainder of the seventeen man crew took shelter, at the point of firing, in the below-deck space described above. The projectors were

cordite Cordite is a family of smokeless propellants developed and produced in Britain since 1889 to replace black powder as a military firearm propellant. Like modern gunpowder, cordite is classified as a low explosive because of its slow burni ...

-filled tubes, firing

high explosive An explosive (or explosive material) is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure. An exp ...

heads. As the individual LCT(R) moved towards the beach or other target area the approximately twenty-four salvoes could in theory blanket an area of up to in depth.

Notes

External links

* * {{Cite web , url= http://www.combinedops.com/US%20LANDING%20CRAFT%20ROCKET.htm , title=U.S. Navy Landing Craft Tank (Rocket) , work=combinedops.com , accessdate=14 January 2011 LCT Rocket artillery Military vehicles introduced from 1940 to 1944 English inventions