WI: No Andrew Higgins?

DrakonFin

DrakonFin

In 1924, Andrew Higgins, a lumber merchant in Mobile, Alabama gets into a nasty accident: during the work to unload a ship bringing a teak cargo from South America an old rope breaks and a log falls on Higgins, who was overseeing the work but got unfortunately distracted at the exactly wrong time. A dock worker runs to get a doctor, but when the physician finally arrives, he has no option but to declare the man dead from a devastating blow to the head.

What, in your opinion, would be the possible knock-on effects and butterflies stemming from the premature death of Higgins, the OTL founder of Higgins Industries and the designer and builder of military landing craft and PT boats, among other things, for the US Navy and other buyers during the 30s and WWII?
 

Ian Hathaway

DrakonFin said:
In 1924, Andrew Higgins, a lumber merchant in Mobile, Alabama gets into a nasty accident: during the work to unload a ship bringing a teak cargo from South America an old rope breaks and a log falls on Higgins, who was overseeing the work but got unfortunately distracted at the exactly wrong time. A dock worker runs to get a doctor, but when the physician finally arrives, he has no option but to declare the man dead from a devastating blow to the head.

What, in your opinion, would be the possible knock-on effects and butterflies stemming from the premature death of Higgins, the OTL founder of Higgins Industries and the designer and builder of military landing craft and PT boats, among other things, for the US Navy and other buyers during the 30s and WWII?
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I'm not sure it would have made a whole lot of difference as there were a whole host of other types of landing craft designed by both British and American companies.

On D-Day LCAs (Produced by Thorneycroft) did the same thing and put troops ashore at Juno Beach, Gold Beach, and Sword Beach. The LCAs also landed the US infantry formations on either flank of Omaha Beach and the Rangers who assaulted Pointe du Hoc. The westernmost landings on Utah Beach and the pre-dawn landing on Îles Saint-Marcouf were also in LCAs.

Now I know that He had other designs as well and this was just one operation but I have a feeling the Higgins boat could have easily been replaced by another design produced by a different manufacturer with ease. I guess though that if there was to be an effect it would mainly be in the Pacific Theatre where they were used extensively.
 
DrakonFin

DrakonFin

Ian Hathaway said:
Now I know that He had other designs as well and this was just one operation but I have a feeling the Higgins boat could have easily been replaced by another design produced by a different manufacturer with ease. I guess though that if there was to be an effect it would mainly be in the Pacific Theatre where they were used extensively.
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I am not an expert on the issue, so you might well be right. There was, however, a quite high number of Higgins boats (LCVPs) built, in fact according to Wikipedia over 20 000 or, comparatively, ten times the number of LCAs between 1935-1950, of which the great majority during WWII.

Without the Higgins company existing, who would most likely design and build the same numbers of landing craft for the Americans/Allies? And how would the replacement options most likely compare to the OTL LCVP and its different versions? IOTL, the Higgins design was taken into use as the Navy's Bureau of Construction and Repair could not come up with as usable a landing craft.
 

Peg Leg Pom

Boats like those built by Higgens company will still be built, because there was a need for them. There may be some differnece in design but this is a case where form does really follow function. The only real difference is that some other firm is the buiding them.
 
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