Dravo Shipyard: Building the LSTs

It seems unlikely that some of the most important ships of World War Two were built hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean, but that is exactly what happened here. The Dravo Corporation's shipyard on the Ohio River employed more than sixteen thousand workers and produced roughly one hundred forty-five Landing Ship Tanks, the flat-bottomed vessels designed to drive directly onto beaches and disgorge men, vehicles, and supplies in the middle of battle.

Dravo pioneered the construction techniques for these ships, and other inland yards adopted their methods. Together, the inland yards produced a large share of the more than one thousand LSTs the United States built. When Allied forces landed in North Africa, Sicily, Normandy, and across the Pacific, the LSTs that carried them to the beach were often built right here on the Ohio River by workers from western Pennsylvania.