LCU 1466-class landing craft utility

The LCU 1466 class is a design of landing craft utility that Avondale Shipyards of New Orleans built for the United States Navy, with the first boats delivered in 1954 for service with the Army. A landing craft utility is a boat that amphibious forces use to carry wheeled and tracked vehicles and troops from assault ships to a beach or pier. Avondale's hull list gives the type as 115 feet long and 34 feet in the beam, at 180 tons displacement, and shows 63 boats of the type. The Navy's 1466, 1610 and 1627 classes of landing craft are described together as self-sustaining craft, with living space and a mess for a crew of thirteen, a bow ramp for loading, a welded steel hull rated for deck loads of 800 pounds per square foot and two engine rooms divided by a watertight bulkhead so that one can keep working if the other is disabled. They are normally carried to the operating area aboard larger amphibious ships such as dock landing ships. The larger 1610 class that followed led the Navy to build the Anchorage class of dock landing ships. Avondale is now part of Huntington Ingalls Industries.