Landing Barge, Kitchen
Open-knowledge reference entry
The Landing Barge, Kitchen or LBK was a landing craft used to support amphibious landings in North Western Europe during and after the Normandy invasion in the Second World War. Its primary purpose was to provide hot meals to the crews of the many minor landing craft not fitted with galley facilities. Constructed of steel, this shallow-draft lighter had storage and serving space to feed 900 men for one week. The kitchen capacity was able to provide 1,600 hot meals and 800 cold meals a day.
Origins
In early 1942, the Royal Navy found itself in need of much greater landing capacity in order to provide lift for the Allied 1942 and 1943 invasion plans; Round Up and Sledgehammer. The landing craft construction programme in Britain was incapable of providing sufficient craft so quickly, and US production had not yet come into full swing. Thames lighters were drafted into service to supplement the purpose-built landing craft. Thames lighters were known for their shallow draft and hold capacity, and they were soon fitted with some modest armour protection, engines, and ramps.
These landing barges were not intended for the initial assault, but to support the following build-up.
Design
Gordon Holman, referring to the Landing Barge, Kitchen as an LCK, described it as having "the appearance of a houseboat which somebody had attempted to turn into a factory.
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This entry incorporates text from “Landing Barge, Kitchen” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.