Andrew Jackson Higgins and the Boats that Won World War II by Jerry E. Strahan

Abstract

858 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE nized, and thoroughly researched, this book should be useful to any scholar interested in the world history of medicine and disease. W. Wayne Farris Dr. Farrjs is currently professor of history at the University ofTennessee at Knox­ ville. He has written extensively on disease in premodernJapan, especially in Papula­ tion, Disease, and Land in EarlyJapan, 645-900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985). AndrewJackson Higgins and the Boats that Won World War II. By Jerry E. Strahan. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994. Pp. xvi+382; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95 (cloth). Historians of technology should know more, much more, about Andrewjackson Higgins (1886-1952). Higgins was probably the pre­ mier American designer and builder of small boats from the 1920s through World War II, best known for his design of shallow-draft landing craft used in large numbers by the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Army in amphibious operations during World War II. Hig­ gins’s design entailed a tunnel stern and an unusual keel that pro­ vided considerable propulsion efficiency despite its extremely shal­ low draft. It was a marvel of low-tech engineering and played a central role in the Marine Corps’s doctrinal and bureaucratic strug­ gles to secure amphibious operations as its raison d’être during the 1930s. Jerry E. Strahan’s study is the first book-length biography of Hig­ gins. Through personal acquaintance with members of the Higgins family, Strahan has assembled and organized the bulk of Higgins’s personal papers and conducted an extensive set oforal histories with many of the principal players in Higgins Industries. Tojudge from Strahan’s narrative, which follows Higgins’s career from the 1930s through the Korean War, Higgins was an extremely driven and shrewd businessman who possessed a flair for promoting his products and himself. Higgins’s use of media to pitch his designs with the military, for example, was extremely sophisticated for the time. With the help of George Rappleyea (a name that historians of science will recognize as one of the masterminds behind the Scopes trial as a ploy to bring some excitement and fame to Dayton, Tennes­ see) , Higgins generated a blizzard of promotional statements, per­ formance evaluations, and promotional films that proved extremely effective, especially among Marine officers. Much of the dramatic tension in Strahan’s story stems from Hig­ gins’s absolute faith in the superiority of his designs and his abilities. A great deal of the narrative revolves around Higgins’s friction with the Navy’s Bureau ofShips, which had official responsibility for small boat design, including landing craft for the Marine Corps. Eager to TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 859 keep costs down, as well as to protect its turf, the Bureau of Ships promoted its own design and opposed the adoption of Higgins’s design as standard until forced to do so by the Truman Committee’s looming investigation. While Strahan’s account is clearly sympa­ thetic to Higgins, the portrait of him that emerges from the bureau­ cratic wrangling surrounding this competition is that of a supremely confident but volatile and even occasionally paranoid individual. Higgins appears to have been constantly apprehensive about intri­ cate schemes by the Navy and large shipbuilders to lock him out of government contracts. While these fears were not completely groundless, Higgins had many such altercations with other govern­ ment agencies and corporations over contracts to build Liberty ships, aircraft, and engines. Strahan’s account of these tensions (as well as Higgins’s disputes with labor unions and the War Production Board) will be very useful to historians ofmilitary technology, especially those with an appreci­ ation for the importance of low-tech engineering. Higgins’s boats literally changed the face of battle in World War II by making am­ phibious operations technically feasible. Historians of wartime in­ dustry will also find the book compelling. As a result of the war, Higgins’s business exploded from a small-scale, New Orleans boatworks into one of the largest facilities for the production of small craft in the nation; Strahan draws apt parallels between Higgins and Henry Kaiser. As with numerous wartime corporations, the...