LVT-4 Water Buffalo

The LVT(4) was the most numerous of the US Landing Vehicle Tracked, or Amtrac, family of the Second World War, also widely known as the Water Buffalo. The series grew from Donald Roebling's aluminium Alligator swamp vehicles, developed in the Florida Everglades in the 1930s, which caught the attention of the US Navy and Marine Corps. After the war began Roebling received a contract for 200 steel-built examples, and the design evolved through cargo carriers to armoured and turreted assault vehicles.

Design

The LVT(4) was essentially a redesigned LVT(2). Its key improvement was a rear ramp for loading and unloading, made possible by moving the engine forward to sit just behind the driver's cab. This also removed the driveshaft from the cargo area and, together with a slightly longer hull, greatly increased cargo space to 451 cubic feet. A typical 9,000 lb (4 tonne) load was 30 troops, a jeep, an anti-tank gun or howitzer, or crated supplies; a 105 mm howitzer just fitted, with its trails hanging out of the back.

The crew of three comprised a driver and an assistant driver/radio operator in the front cab and a commander or load officer at the back. Power came from a Continental W-670 seven-cylinder air-cooled radial engine, the same unit used in the M3 Stuart light tank, through a five-speed synchromesh gearbox and controlled differential. Top speed was about 20 mph (32 km/h) on land and 5 mph (8 km/h) in water, where the vehicle was driven and steered by its tracks, fitted with W-shaped aluminium grousers. Sealed side pontoons, under-floor ballast tanks and electric and hand bilge pumps kept it seaworthy.

Vehicles left the factory unarmoured with four .30 calibre machine guns. For combat about 3,000 lb of bolt-on armour was added and the two front guns were replaced by .50 calibre weapons.

Production and use

Production was handled by the Ordnance Division of the Food Machinery Corporation from 1943 to 1945. More than 8,000 were built: about 6,000 for the US Army, 1,500 for the Navy and Marines, and the rest under Lend-Lease, mainly to Britain. Amtracs first saw combat at Guadalcanal in 1942 and then in Operation Torch, and the LVT became a key assault vehicle in the Pacific island campaigns and, to a lesser extent, in Europe.

An archive correspondent describes a well-known episode around 9 October 1944 during the battle of the Scheldt, when a convoy of 97 Buffalos carried about 2,000 Canadian troops along a Dutch canal and coast and over a dike to land behind the German-held Breskens pocket. The vehicles, each carrying around 30 men, moved at only about 8 km/h and were overtaken on the canal by Dutch cyclists. Their aero-type engines whined so loudly that German anti-aircraft gunners at Flushing are said to have fired into the sky at phantom aircraft.