Landing craft boats

One deficiency was lack of inter-service preparation for combined operations. Sir Ian Hamilton, the general in charge at the Dardanelles, was ignorant of the existence of the armoured landing craft that Fisher had ordered for service in the Baltic until told of their existence by naval officers of the Mediterranean fieet. These specialised vessels were not available to him until over three months after the first landings on the Gallipoli peninsula. Most troops went ashore in open boats towed by lighters, and consequently suffered heavy casualties from enemy fire. 

As the combat period approached, Colonel Unmacht and his stafiF turned their attention from numerous projects in gas warfare defense and decontamination to the nontoxic chemical weapons and munitions. Their work on the flame thrower tank, and later on stabilized flame thrower fuels, was the outstanding overseas development work of the worldwide CWS. Unmacht was a strong proponent of the use of the 4.2-inch chemical mortar with high-explosive shell, and the development, testing, and combat supply of a landing craft mortar mounting for Pacific amphibious operations represented one of his achievements in the field of combat support. The mortar gun boat development was also a noteworthy example of Army-Navy co-operation. 

The detachment from the ist Platoon, which landed on the right flank of Red Beach, was led by Capt. Sam Kesner, assistant chemical officer of the 3d Division. For some reason the landing craft dropped its amphibious tanks some 1,000 yards from shore. Consequently, Kesner s party, which remained in the LCT, had to unload its pots the hard way. Some were thrown into two 6-man rubber boats and towed to the beach. The rest of the smoke munitions were tossed overboard and floated ashore in their crates, an expedient made necessary by the pressure of enemy small arms fire. The situation was made more difficult because the LCT had landed 400 yards to the right of its assigned area in order to avoid mines. The smoke plan called for four positions on the beach, a number soon increased to twelve because of the adverse winds. The smoke detail soon pushed inland about loo yards, suffering four casualties in the early hours. 

Research into the impact of the spills has been aided by the passage of the US Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which included a provision establishing the Oil Spill Recovery Institute (OSRI). OSRI provides funding to support oil-spill related research as well as education and technology development for dealing with oil spills in the Arctic environment. The results of research it supported and other research, such as that funded as part of litigation activities, has been summarized in the 2002 National Research Council report Oil and the Sea Inputs, Fates and Effects. This report also puts into perspective the small contribution of tanker and pipeline spills as compared to other sources of ocean oil such as land-based runoff, polluted rivers, small boats and water craft, as well natural seeps from the sea floor. 

In May 1943 the theater asked the Chief, CWS, to comment on Its tentative plans for a smoke installation at Milne Bay, which, as had been foreseen, was now a more exposed harbor than Port Moresby. These plans, which included the employment of generators both on land and on water to conceal shipping activity in the harbor, suffered from a lack of power boats on which to mount the generators which were to be waterborne. The theater requested the War Department to send several craft suitable for this purpose along with the two smoke companies requisitioned earlier in the year. ... 

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