At Cincinnati's public landing on the Ohio River. This Landing Ship Tank (LST known as "The ship that won the war") is the last of it's kind remaining. It was launched on 27 October 1942, at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and among many other things made more than 40 Normandy landings at Omaha Beach. When the Navy was done with it, it was sent to Greece on 1 September 1964 where it served in the Hellenic Navy as RHS Syros (L-144) from 1964 to 1999. Just before it was to be scrapped out, the USS LST Memorial, Inc., a group of retired military men, acquired Syros in 2000. At their own expense, these men spent seven months making it seaworthy again. The Hellenic Navy had several other LST's that were scheduled to be scrapped from which they donated parts needed to repair the 325. The men sailed her back to the States in January of 2001. She is now an LST memorial museum located in Evansville, Indiana as a tribute to the town that during WWII built 167 LST's as the largest inland shipyard producing LST's in the USA. During Summer months, the ship travels around under it's own power so that more people will get to see and pay homage to her.
Visiting this ship was particularly important to me because my father was captain of a LSM (the smaller Landing Ship Medium" during the war and my godfather was on a LST. Shortly after the war a LST and a LSM came to Cincinnati and moored where the 325 was yesterday and we got to go aboard to see what our fathers had sailed on. Since I was only 3 or 4, I don't remember much, but I do have images of the experience in my head. My father's ship was scrapped in 2013 and no more LSM's are known to remain.
Loading contexts...
