LST-325: The Warship That Refuses to Become History
There are museums where you can look at history through glass.
There are battlefields where you can stand where history happened.
And then there is LST-325.
Here, you can climb aboard it.
You can walk its steel decks, descend into its massive tank deck, pass through the spaces where sailors lived and worked, and stand aboard a ship that carried American troops and equipment toward the shores of Europe during some of the defining battles of World War II.
This isn’t a replica.
It isn’t a movie prop.
This is the ship.
And more than eight decades after she went to war, LST-325 can still sail.
BORN FOR AN INVASION
The keel of LST-325 was laid at the Philadelphia Navy Yard on August 10, 1942, while World War II was raging across the globe.
Just 78 days later, on October 27, 1942, she was launched.
On February 1, 1943, LST-325 officially entered service in the United States Navy under the command of Lt. Ira Ehrensall, USNR. (Naval History and Heritage Command)
She belonged to a revolutionary class of vessel known as the Landing Ship, Tank — LST.
The idea behind these ships was audacious.
An army normally needed a harbor to unload heavy equipment from ships. But what happens when the enemy controls the harbors?
You bring the harbor with you.
An LST was essentially an ocean-going invasion ship capable of carrying tanks, trucks, artillery, troops and supplies across open water and then approaching an enemy-held coast, beaching itself, opening enormous doors in its bow and lowering a ramp.
Then the army could drive directly out of the ship and onto the battlefield.
LST-325 stretched roughly 328 feet long and 50 feet across the beam. Fully loaded, ships of her type displaced more than 4,000 tons. Twin diesel engines turned twin propellers, pushing the flat-bottomed vessel through the water at roughly 10 knots. (Ibiblio)
They weren’t glamorous.
They weren’t fast.
Sailors even joked that LST stood for something besides Landing Ship, Tank:
“Large Slow Target.”
But what these ships could do would help change amphibious warfare.
And LST-325 was about to prove it.
SICILY — 1943
Only months after entering service, LST-325 was in the Mediterranean.
In July 1943, Allied forces launched Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily.
At the time, it was the largest amphibious invasion yet attempted. More than 3,000 ships and landing craft were involved as American, British and Canadian forces attacked the island. (Naval History and Heritage Command)
LST-325 was among them.
The ship participated in the Sicilian campaign, carrying the machinery of an advancing army toward hostile shores.
This was no training exercise anymore.
The young ship had gone to war.
And Sicily would not be the end of it.
SALERNO — INTO DANGER AGAIN
In September 1943, Allied forces struck the Italian mainland during the Salerno landings — Operation Avalanche.
The fighting was fierce.
German forces mounted powerful resistance and counterattacks against the Allied beachhead. The naval battle surrounding the operation became costly as ships endured bombs, artillery and air attack.
Historical documentation for LST-325 records that the ship made three trips to the Salerno beachhead. During the operation, German fighter-bombers attacked, and eight men aboard LST-325 were injured. (NPGallery)
She survived.
Then came another dangerous journey.
In November 1943, LST-325 departed North Africa in a convoy bound for England. On November 21, German aircraft attacked the convoy using Hs 293 radio-controlled glide bombs, an early precision-guided weapon. Several transports were lost.
LST-325 survived that, too.
On Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1943, she reached Plymouth, England. (NPGallery)
There was now an even greater mission ahead.
Its name was Operation Overlord.
NORMANDY
For months, LST-325 trained along the coast of England.
Something enormous was coming.
By June 1944, the Allies were preparing the greatest amphibious assault in history: the invasion of Nazi-occupied France.
On June 5, LST-325 departed England carrying men, vehicles, equipment and supplies as part of the enormous force assembled for Normandy.
Then came June 6, 1944 — D-Day.
Allied soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy.
LST-325 was assigned to the follow-up force supporting Omaha Beach, where American forces had suffered devastating resistance.
Her first Normandy load included 59 vehicles, 30 officers and 396 enlisted men. (Wikipedia)
The ship reached the Normandy coast and began unloading on June 7, the day after the initial assault. Because conditions prevented a conventional full beach landing on that first trip, men, vehicles and supplies were transferred using smaller craft.
Then LST-325 turned around.
But she didn’t return to England empty.
She carried 38 casualties away from France. (Wikipedia)
The ship designed to carry an army toward battle was now carrying wounded men away from it.
And then she went back.
Again.
And again.
And again.
44 TRIPS ACROSS THE ENGLISH CHANNEL
Normandy wasn’t one voyage for LST-325.
It became a highway.
Between June 1944 and April 1945, historical records credit LST-325 with 44 crossings between England and France, delivering men, vehicles and supplies to Omaha, Utah, Gold and Juno beaches and later to Rouen on the Seine River. (NPGallery)
On June 12, 1944, LST-325 was photographed sitting on the Normandy coast at low tide while unloading at Utah Beach.
That photograph still exists.
So does the ship in it. (LST Memorial)
Think about that when you stand aboard her today.
The steel beneath your feet isn’t representing a ship that supplied the Normandy invasion.
It supplied the Normandy invasion.
DECEMBER 1944 — 700 MEN IN THE WATER
LST-325’s wartime story contains another extraordinary chapter.
On December 28, 1944, the troopship Empire Javelin was torpedoed off the coast of France.
Men needed to get off the stricken vessel.
LST-325 helped rescue approximately 700 men from the doomed transport. (NPGallery)
It was another role for a ship originally built to put men into battle:
Saving them from the sea.
THE WAR ENDS — BUT 325 ISN’T FINISHED
Germany surrendered in May 1945.
LST-325 departed Europe and reached Norfolk, Virginia, on May 31, 1945.
Her World War II service had taken her from Sicily to Italy to Normandy and through dozens of dangerous Channel crossings.
The U.S. Navy credits LST-325 with two battle stars for World War II service. (Naval History and Heritage Command)
She was decommissioned on July 2, 1946.
For many warships, that would have been the end of the story.
Not this one.
NORTH TO THE ARCTIC
In 1951, LST-325 returned to service with the Military Sea Transportation Service.
Her next battlefield wasn’t against an army.
It was against the environment.
The ship traveled into northern waters supporting construction and operation of radar installations in Canada and Greenland — part of America’s expanding Cold War defense network.
A vessel designed to drive tanks onto enemy beaches was now hauling men and equipment into some of the harshest waters on Earth. (LST325)
In 1961, she was again removed from U.S. service.
Still, her travels weren’t over.
A SECOND NAVY
In 1964, the United States transferred LST-325 to Greece.
There she received another identity:
Syros — L-144.
For approximately 35 more years, the former American World War II landing ship served with the Greek Navy.
Finally, in 1999, she was decommissioned for the third time. (LST Memorial)
After surviving World War II, Arctic operations, decades of naval service and two nations’ fleets, the old ship seemed to have reached the end.
Except some American veterans had another idea.
BRING HER HOME
In 2000, a group of American veterans and supporters acquired LST-325 in Greece.
What happened next sounds almost like the plot of a movie.
Volunteers traveled overseas to resurrect an aging World War II ship.
The work was daunting. Equipment needed repair. Machinery had sat idle. Systems had to be made operational again.
Yet they got her running.
Then a volunteer crew — many of them elderly veterans — climbed aboard the ship and did something extraordinary:
They sailed her across the Atlantic Ocean.
The voyage from Greece to the United States covered roughly 6,500 miles.
On January 10, 2001, LST-325 reached Mobile, Alabama.
The warship had come home. (LST Memorial)
WHY EVANSVILLE?
Eventually LST-325 needed a permanent home.
Few American cities could have been more appropriate than Evansville, Indiana.
There is an interesting twist to the story:
LST-325 herself was not built in Evansville.
But Evansville was one of America’s great LST-building cities.
During World War II, thousands of workers poured into the Evansville Shipyard on the Ohio River. Men and women welded, riveted and assembled enormous landing ships around the clock.
By February 1945, the Evansville Shipyard had produced an astonishing 167 LSTs.
At its wartime peak, the yard was turning out approximately one ship every four days. (National Park Service)
Most of those ships disappeared after the war.
So when LST-325 arrived in Evansville on October 3, 2005, she became something larger than the story of one vessel.
She became a floating memorial to an entire class of ships — and to the sailors who served aboard them and the American workers who built them.
In 2009, LST-325 was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. (National Park Service)
AND SHE STILL SAILS
That may be the most remarkable part.
LST-325 hasn’t simply been tied to a dock and preserved as a static exhibit.
She remains operational.
Today, the USS LST Ship Memorial describes LST-325 as the only operational LST in World War II configuration afloat in U.S. waters. (LST Memorial)
Her engines still turn.
Her propellers still push her through the water.
And she still leaves her homeport to visit other American communities.
More than 80 years after young sailors took her toward Sicily, Italy and Normandy, people can still watch LST-325 come down the river under her own power.
WHEN YOU STEP ABOARD…
Remember what you’re actually standing on.
Somewhere aboard this ship, sailors once waited to find out what awaited them beyond the horizon.
Through her tank deck passed vehicles and equipment bound for a continent at war.
Her bow faced the beaches of Sicily.
She traveled to Salerno.
She crossed the English Channel during the Normandy campaign.
She carried wounded men away from France.
She helped rescue hundreds from a torpedoed troopship.
She worked in Arctic waters.
She served two navies.
She survived more than half a century of military service.
And when it appeared her story might finally be over, veterans crossed an ocean to bring her home.
Today, when those enormous bow doors are open, you aren’t simply looking at an interesting piece of naval engineering.
You’re looking through the doors through which history once moved.
That’s what makes LST-325 different.
You don’t have to imagine what one of these ships looked like.
You don’t have to study a model.
You don’t have to stare at a black-and-white photograph and wonder what it would have been like to stand aboard one.
You can walk aboard the real thing.
The steel is still here.
The decks are still here.
The ship is still here.
And somehow, after Sicily, Salerno, Normandy, the Arctic, Greece, three decommissionings, an Atlantic crossing home and more than eight decades…
LST-325 is still sailing.
Sources & Further Reading
U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command — LST-325 Ship History
USS LST Ship Memorial — Official LST-325 Website
USS LST Ship Memorial — History of LST-325
National Park Service — USS LST-325 National Register of Historic Places Documentation
USS LST Ship Memorial — Historical Archives & Virtual Exhibits
NavSource Naval History — USS LST-325 Photographic History
U.S. Naval Institute — LST-325's Return to the United States