The unveiling: LST opens doors

July 25, 2007
By Robert C. Burns
Muskegon Chronicle

With creaks, groans and pops, LST-393's big tank landing doors swung open Tuesday for the first time since the end of World War II.

Dan Weikel, president of the LST-393 Preservation Association, had characterized the operation as "Letting all those ghosts out," and fittingly, the sound made by the 61/2-by-13-foot steel doors was eerily reminiscent of a haunted house.

About 50 onlookers, including several bicyclists passing by on Lakeshore Trail, cheered and clapped as first the port door on the left and then the starboard door were pulled into a fully open position with the help of a long steel cable attached to a front-end loader on shore.

"NOW it looks like an LST," said Sid Lenger of Grand Rapids, an LST veteran who has been taping various aspects, including this one, of the ship's transformation into a Naval and military museum.

The doors opened to reveal two American flags, supplied by Dave Eling of the Muskegon County Department of Veterans Affairs, to heighten the effect.

Next will come placement of a glass wall with human-size doors behind the ship's 24-foot-long landing ramp. After that, the ramp will be lowered onto a floating dock to provide the floating museum's main entrance for visitors.

The doors were sealed shut sometime before the ship that saw action in the famed D-day landing on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944 was converted into the carferry Highway 16 in 1948. The ship was idled in 1973 and remained so until restoration efforts began several years ago.

"We're preserving history here," Weikel said after the first door had been opened. "This is the most exciting thing I've done since I did my first solo." That was in 1959, when he was still in high school and just learning to fly.

Joan Gawron, mother of Muskegon Vice Mayor Steve Gawron, was all wrapped up in history as well.

Seeing the LST doors through which tanks and infantrymen once poured forth reminded her of being at the downtown Michigan Theater watching movie newsreels of the war.

"Having this here is awesome. It just brings back a lot of memories," she said.

Patrick Harker, the ship's restoration officer, did most of the preliminary work. Most recently it involved cutting away a steel covering over the door edges and the "dogs" keeping the doors fastened together.

On Tuesday, one of his assistants, Micah Blackshire, exerted added pressure by means of a steel lever to turn a port side worm gear that once was turned by a powerful electric motor.

"I got a workout on that one," he said.

Although its hinges were equally rusted, the starboard door opened much more easily because its gearing had been disconnected.

Start to finish, the job took from 2 p.m. until 3:30 p.m. to complete. It likely would have taken much longer, if not for the contribution of Mart Dock employee Jeff Whalen and his front-end loader.

Also on hand was Pete Crasher, maintenance foreman for Evansville, Ind.-based LST-325, which came to the states in 2000 after 30 years with the Greek Navy.

The two ships are all that remain of more than 1,100 tank landing ships built by the Navy for World War II.

With engines and doors still operable, Crasher said the LST-325 occasionally travels to other ports to give tours.

He said his ship recently welcomed a contingent from Muskegon's LST group, which inspected its door control mechanisms in preparation for Tuesday's grand opening.