Welcome to the AFMM New Newsletter 10/31/2012 The Fall 2012 Newsletter is here! Check out the new LCI 713 Hat!

The Amphibious Forces Memorial Museum is an Oregon Non Profit organization dedicated to the restoration and preservation of the USS LCI 713.

The Amphibious Forces Memorial Museum is an Oregon Non-Profit organization dedicated to the restoration and preservation of the USS LCI 713. Our Mission is to preserve the history of the Amphibious Forces in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, to educate the public on the rich naval maritime heritage that the Amphibious Forces have played in our nation's history, and the importance of preserving historic naval ships for future generations.

The USS LCI (L) 713 is a World War II era Landing Craft Infantry. Its mission was to place up to 200 soldiers onto almost any beach in the world. The LCI was a joint British-American design of a new type of ship that would be capable of landing soldiers on hostile enemy shores. Within a 2 ½ year period, 951 LCIs were constructed in ten small shipyards in the United States. Two of those shipyards, Albina Engine and Machine and Commercial Iron Works were in Portland, Oregon.

The LCI 713 was built at the Lawley Shipyard in Neoponset, Massachusetts. Commissioned on September 18, 1944, it was assigned to the Southwest Pacific area controlled by the US 7th Fleet. Assigned to LCI Flotilla 24, this vessel participated in two amphibious combat landings. The first combat landing was on March 10, 1945 at Red Beach Zamboanga on Mindanao Island in the Philippines. It involved landing troops from the 296th Port Company of the 41st Infantry Division, the Oregon National Guard. The 296th Port Company troops were negro ammo handlers and supply quartermaster troops (153 total). The second amphibious assault occurred on June 10th 1945 and involved landing troops of the Australian 9th Division at Brunei Bay on the island of Borneo in the Dutch East Indies (today Indonesia). With the war’s end, the ship remained in the Southwest Pacific until the end of 1945 when it made the long trip home to America. The LCI 713 was decommissioned on October 6, 1946 and released to the Maritime Commission for sale.

The LCI 713 is on the National Parks Service National Register as a historic vessel. At the end of World War II the Navy had over 5,500 commissioned ships in service. Of that total, over half of those ships were amphibious warfare vessels. Today, out of the many WWII Navy ships listed in the National Register, the LCI 713 is the sole representative of that half of the fleet.

We have a dedicated volunteer crew that spends each and every Saturday working on the restoration effort.

Thanks for your interest!

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