Above: Canadian troops on board LCI(L) 306 en route to France, D-Day. (Photo: Gilbert Alexander Milne / Canada. Dept. of National Defence / Library and Archives Canada / PA-137014)
How many landing craft were used on D-Day? The British naval official history states that Allied naval forces for the Normandy Landings consisted of 6,939 vessels of all types, including 4,126 landing ships and landing craft. However that is not the only number given in wartime records to answer that question. The report of the Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief on the invasion of Normandy gives a different figure of 4,266, while the US official history of Operation Neptune uses the figure of 4,021. The exact number depends on the assumptions or definitions lying behind the question.
D-Day, 6 June 1944, was of course just one day (though the expression is often used to refer to the whole Normandy campaign). The figure of 4,126 given above represents the total number of landing craft involved in Operation Neptune (6 to 30 June 1944). Therefore it includes some craft that were initially undergoing maintenance (a very small number), or that were held in reserve then used to replace damaged vessels. There were also some that on D-Day were not yet ready for operational use (or had not yet reached the south coast of England), but joined the campaign later. Therefore the number of landing craft used on D-Day alone was less than 4,126.
The answer to the question “how many landing craft were used on D-Day” also depends on what is defined as a landing craft. The figure of 4,126 actually includes 310 landing ships, among which were 68 troop-carrying transport ships (such as LSI or APA types) and over 230 LSTs. That number also includes 72 Rhino Ferries, 424 landing barges of all types, and 35 fuelling trawlers which were minesweeping trawlers converted for refuelling landing craft. Strictly speaking, none of these were landing craft, even though wartime documents sometimes did refer to many of them as such, and their work was closely related.
The purist might say that the true figure for the number of landing craft involved was just over 3,500: this includes those carried on board larger ships (such as troop transports and LSTs) as well as those that crossed to Normandy under their own power.
Another factor is that the 4,126 figure only covers the period of Operation Neptune. That was the assault phase of Operation Overlord, the plan for the landings in North West Europe, which is usually summed up as the Battle of Normandy. That campaign stretched from D-Day to the last weeks of August (there is no one universally-agreed agreed end date). Some landing craft and landing ships only took part in the later stages of the campaign, after 30 June, but clearly should be added to the total taking part. One example is LST 921, which was not commissioned in the USA until 23 June 1944. On 14 August, LST 921 was torpedoed by a U-boat while crossing from the United Kingdom to the Normandy coast, with the loss of forty-three US sailors.