Memorial to WWII boat designer and Nebraska native Andrew Higgins may soon rise on Utah Beach in Nor

[Omaha Steve]

REBECCA S. GRATZ/THE WORLD-HERALD
The Andrew Jackson Higgins National Memorial in Columbus, Neb., includes a water-lying steel replica of a Higgins boat with the ramp down and statues of soldiers running out. Andrew Jackson Higgins, a Columbus native, created the boats that ferried U.S. soldiers onto beaches during the Normandy invasion.

http://www.omaha.com/news/military/memorial-to-wwii-boat-designer-and-nebraska-native-andrew-higgins/article_2648b888-004f-5567-8c17-d6182821bbc1.html

By Joseph Morton

WASHINGTON — There’s a break in the sand dunes at Utah Beach where American soldiers stormed through on D-Day and overwhelmed German positions.

A marker indicates it as the very spot where France’s liberation began on June 6, 1944.

That’s where a memorial to Columbus, Nebraska, native Andrew Jackson Higgins will stand if the efforts of a Nebraska congressman, a British military historian and the residents of Columbus prove successful.

A hard-charging Irishman and a genius of naval architecture, Higgins designed the iconic landing craft that ferried wave after wave of troops onto the Normandy beaches

FULL story and more photos at link.

[oneshooter]

1. He also designed and built a 78' PT Boat.

Applied automotive type assembly lines to building wooden boats.Hired Blacks and Women and paid all workers equally.

http://www.nationalww2museum.org/assets/pdfs/higgins-in-new-orleans-fact.pdf