BRIEFING ROOM
FOR THE first time, an original Landing Craft Tank (LCT) will be on display at the D-Day Museum in Portsmouth. This has been made possible thanks to an investment of £4.7m from The National Lottery and is planned to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the landings in 2019.
The D-Day Museum is an affiliate of The National Museum of the Royal Navy, which is managing the project. Due to reopen in 2018 following a complete refurbishment, the D-Day Museum will offer an in-depth narrative of the events that took place on 6 June 1944 and looks specifically at the Royal Navy and how its crews operated that day. More than 800 LCTs, with the capacity to carry 10 tanks or equivalent armoured vehicles, were involved in the naval element of Overlord, Operation Neptune. The largest amphibious operation in history, it involved 7,000 ships and craft disgorging 160,000 soldiers on the beaches of Normandy.
LCT 7074, acquired by the National Museum of the Royal Navy in 2014 thanks to £916,149 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, is believed to be one of only 10 survivors from this extraordinary armada. As she arrived at Gold Beach, near midnight on D-Day, she carried o…
