Andrew Higgins

Andrew Jackson Higgins (28 August 1886 – 1 August 1952) was the founder and owner of Higgins Industries, the New Orleans-based manufacturer of Higgins boats (LCVPs) during World War II. The company started out as a small boat-manufacturing business, but later became one of the biggest industries in the world with upwards of eighty thousand workers and government contracts worth nearly three hundred fifty million dollars. General Dwight Eisenhower is quoted as saying, Andrew Higgins ... is the man who won the war for us. ... If Higgins had not designed and built those LCVPs, we never could have landed over an open beach. The whole strategy of the war would have been different. Adolf Hitler recognized his heroic war efforts in ship production and bitterly dubbed him the New Noah.

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