US Army Liason aircraft launched from a ship WWII

[kyhistorian01]

Here is a WWII period official photo I have in my archive showing US Army Liason aircraft being launched from a ship at sea. Can anyone tell me more about this photo as there is nothing written on the back except Army Signal Corp Photo. Sorry about the mistake in typing Navy photo on the topic title.

 

Robert

[37thguy]

They are L-4 (Piper Cubs) launched off of a Jeep Carrier IIRC. Seems to me it was an easy way to get them where they were needed and then flown to shore for duty. can't remember where this was taken. I want to say the Pacific, but I can't recall.

[J_Andrews]

That's no "jeep carrier". It is an LST with a flight deck of wood laid over the real deck. While I cannot be sure of THIS photo, such was done for the Southern France invasion, with the FA spotter planes of the 3rd, 45th and 36th Inf Divs. (Each FA Bn had two L-4s, and each HHB DivArty had another two.)

[General Apathy]

 

Hi Robert, here is another shot of a liason aircraft LST it might possibly be the same craft as yours but I am not certain. The credit with mine is ' 3rd Division '.

 

Cheers Lewis

[Gregory]

That's unofficial class of the USN aircraft carriers -- "L-Birds carriers". Were they used also in Normandy? In his fundamental "Spearheading D-Day" Jonathan Gawne mentions nothing about this sub-version of the LST although this book has very good chapter dedicated to all variants of landing crafts.

 

Best regards

 

Greg

[hbtcoveralls]

That's unofficial class of the USN aircraft carriers -- "L-Birds carriers". Were they used also in Normandy? In his fundamental "Spearheading D-Day" Jonathan Gawne mentions nothing about this sub-version of the LST although this book has very good chapter dedicated to all variants of landing crafts.

 

Best regards

 

Greg

 

No in Normandy, the L-birds came ashore in trucks, the surf was thought to be too rough to effectively launch these aircraft. Re-read his chapter on field artillery, there is a wonderful shot of an L-4 disassembled and placed in a 2 1/2ton GMC hard cab.

T. Bowers

[Paul]

There´s an almost identical photo in "Those Legendary Piper Cubs" by Carrol V. Glines and he says it´s LST 906, but he doesn't mention the location.

 

/Paul

[33rdsignal]

This was done exclusively in the Med. Sicily Salerno Anzio, Southern france A set up like that could not venture far out to sea, the invasions in the Med were all "Short" hops. Anzio was a perfect example, the batteries were on shore, but the planes were not until they landed. Solution...mini aircraft carrier.

[Teamski]

I can't find a photo of it, but there were trapeze ships as well, that could launch and recover liaison aircraft. The planes would be suspended from a cable alongside and above the ship. The plane would then accelorate and unhook itself from the cable and fly off. The opposite would be done to recover the plane. It seemed to work pretty well.

 

 

-Ski

[Gregory]

No in Normandy, the L-birds came ashore in trucks, the surf was thought to be too rough to effectively launch these aircraft. Re-read his chapter on field artillery, there is a wonderful shot of an L-4 disassembled and placed in a 2 1/2ton GMC hard cab.

T. Bowers

Thank you for your reply.

 

As can be seen there were interesting differencies between Northern and Southern France invasions. From the MTO side L-Birds were used a little other than from ETO side. I have never heard that float L-Birds were used in Normandy but from MTO side they served the same as wheeled variants.

 

Below -- float L-4 on Italian waters, 1944.

[HerbG]

I Googled "LST-906" and up some information from Wikipedia:

 

"While in the Mediterranean, Seabees converted LST-906 into a makeshift aircraft carrier sporting a custom-built mesh airstrip above deck. She was the base for 6 USAAF L-4B Grasshoppers flown as artillery spotters for the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division during the Invasion of southern France in September 1944.[2] LST-906 was one of six LSTs so converted. (^ The others being USS LST-16, USS LST-158, USS LST-337, USS LST-386, and USS LST-525. See Rottman, p. 47)"

 

 

Also the mechanism referred to by Teamski was the "Brodie device." It has to be one of the most interesting contraptions dreamed up by the Allies during WW2 and saw use at Iwo Jima and Okinawa:

 

http://aerofiles.com/brodie-rig.html

 

http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/...cretweapon.aspx

 

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa44...7/ai_n27899265/