Bell Bottom Trousers: Life aboard an Attack Transport in the Pacific during World War Two

This story tells of the experiences of a young sailor during World War II, aboard an Attack Transport in the Pacific theater. For the first time in our history we would be fighting a two front -conflict. The war fronts were widely separated and would require different types of fighting and planning. Europe would require a large scale amphibious attack (the Normandy landings) because most of the continent was held by the enemy. But in the Pacific theater, with its many islands, both large and small, the conditions necessitated an almost continuous amphibious war, for which we were not prepared.

The United States had not fought an amphibious battle since the 1898 Spanish American War. We were a little rusty in this type of warfare, to say the least. Our British Ally had not fought an amphibious campaign since their ill-fated Gallipoli campaign in Turkey during World War I, a battle in which they had suffered a disastrous and humiliating defeat.

Neither we nor our Allies possessed suitable landing craft for large-scale amphibious operations of this type. But in this aspect of the war we “lucked out”, for a man by the name of Andrew J. Higgins, founder and president of Andrew J. Higgins Industries New Orleans, Louisiana, had developed a prototype landing craft that would win the war for the Allies--- the famed Higgins boats of World War II.

But as good as these landing craft might be, they could not cross oceans or other large bodies of water under their own power. These boats required mother ships (transports and cargo ships) capable of carrying troops and all their equipment and supplies and all the other things needed for a successful invasion. Just any old ship wouldn’t do; amphibious operations required a special type of ship. These transport and cargo ships needed to be able to load and unload all their troops and all the troop’s equipment using only their own boats and their own crew members as stevedores, thus giving birth to the Attack Transports (APAs) and Attack Cargo Ships (AKAs). Later, LSTs (Landing Ship Tanks) and LCIs (Landing Craft Infantry) were added to the mix. Warships could shell enemy positions and warplanes could bomb enemy positions, but in the Pacific theater it took ground troops (Army or Marines), carried there by APAs and AKAs, to finish the job. Although, we never received the recognition and glory given the “Glamour Ships”, we wore our Bell Bottom Trousers with just as much pride and luster as our comrades who served on the warships.