LST doors may open next week

July 20, 2007
By Robert C. Burns
Muskegon Chronicle

Tuesday could be "Door-day" aboard the LST-393.

That afternoon, caretakers of the historic Navy tank landing ship hope to push open the two long-shut steel doors that disgorged tanks and infantrymen onto Omaha Beach during the D-Day invasion of World War II.

It should be quite a push. Each door measures 6 1/2 by 13 feet and weighs 16,000 pounds. With the ship's powerful electric door-opening motor long out of commission, some creativity may be called for.

Work began earlier this month to torch through the steel plates that were welded over the door edges when the ship was converted from a Navy ship to the Mart Dock-based car ferry Highway 16 in 1948, three years after the war ended.

It took four days of torch work to open the starboard (right) door and part of the port door. At that rate, the doors would be completely freed and ready to open sometime Tuesday, figures Dan Weikel, president of the LST-393 Preservation Association.

When the cutting is done, Weikel said they'll start by using manpower to push the doors open from the inside. The doors are mounted on brass bushings and thus aren't likely to be rusted shut, he said.

That's not to say that after being closed for nearly 60 years, the big doors are going to swing open like an Old West saloon.

If the port (left) door needs more persuasion, Weikel said a tractor may be used to pull it open from on shore. The starboard door may require the use of a hydraulic jack pushing from inside.

"With a little prying and pushing, they'll swing open," Weikel said. "We're going to let all those ghosts out."

Once the ghosts are out, the association soon hopes to let visitors in through the bow doors, which will remain open permanently. A glass wall with human-sized entrance doors will be installed in the bow, admitting visitors for tours of the ship, special onboard events, a gift shop and a variety of historic naval and military displays, many from Weikel's own collection.

In the course of cutting up and around the top edge of the starboard landing door, Pat Harker, the ship's maintenance officer, saw to another piece of long-unfinished business -- painting the last two digits of "393" high on the ship's bow.

The ship is one of only two of its kind still afloat out of more than 1,100 built by the Navy for the war.

© 2007 Muskegon Chronicle. Used with permission