Florida on the Home Front: Homegrown Armor: The Alligator
While living in Florida, Donald Roebling, son of a wealthy New York industrialist, designed a revolutionary amphibious vehicle that helped to win the war in the Pacific. Named the "Alligator" by Roebling, the Navy later christened it the Landing Vehicle Tracked, or LVT. A later version was nicknamed the "Water Buffalo."
In the early 1930s, at the urging of his father, Roebling began work on an amphibious tracked vehicle that could be used to rescue survivors of floods and hurricanes. He spent eight years perfecting his design, with initial development taking place at Dunedin. Life magazine ran an article on the Alligator in 1937, which drew the attention of the U.S. government. Three years later, Marine Corps officials obtained funds to purchase a prototype for further testing. Shortly thereafter, Roebling signed a contract to build 200 additional vehicles. The military received the first production models shortly before Pearl Harbor. Eventually, more than 15,000 were produced, with most used to land Marines on hostile shores in the Pacific.
Marine and an LVT (Landing Vehicle, Tracked) on a Pacific island. Roebling's invention proved very successful in the amphibious island-hopping campaign in the Pacific.
(Dunedin Historical Society)
