CSI: UWSP Archives?
History Detectives in Action...

In the summer of 2004, a crew from the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) series History Detectives visited the UWSP Archives and other local and Wisconsin locations to do research on part of a forthcoming episode aimed at uncovering the history of a World War II-vintage Landing Craft Tank (LCT) rumored to have been part of the Normandy invasion fleet.  The episode aired on PBS and Wisconsin Public Television stations at 8pm CST Monday, July 5th, 2004.  Local celebrities who were filmed and interviewed for the show include Ruth Wachter-Nelson, University Archivist, and Wendell Nelson, local historian, author, and Reference Librarian at the Portage County Public Library.

So what's the mystery?  History Detectives, as described on its Web site, "is devoted to solving historical mysteries, searching out the true facts (and falsehoods) behind local folklore, family legends and interesting objects."   The "case" of the craft, currently operating out of Bayfield as the "Outer Island," was selected from over 6,000 suggestions sent in by viewers.  Researchers are trying to uncover the full story of Outer Island.  Believed to be the Navy's "LCT(5)-103" in World War II, it was thought to be the only LCT still in active operation out of 1,500 built during the war.  The craft supposedly served at Omaha Beach where its ramp was blown apart by German mortar fire.

Why UWSP and Stevens Point, you ask?  As it turns out, Outer Island was for many years used to haul logs from the Apostle Islands' Outer Island and elsewhere for the Lullabye Furniture Company in Stevens Point.   Lullabye turned the logs into cribs and other furniture items for children's rooms and nurseries.  Another World War II connection is the fact that Lullabye's Pluswood Division, in Oshkosh, produced peeled hardwood veneers laminated to plywood and used as skins for the Royal Air Force's Mosquito bombers.  Pluswood also produced airplane propellers.  In addition to the interviews with our local experts, newspaper clippings, company ledgers, photos, catalogs and brochures from the research collections of the Portage County Historical Society (housed and curated by the UWSP University Archives) were all used to help solve the puzzle.

In the meantime... 

Outer Island hauling logs for Lullabye Furniture (1959 Lullabye Catalog).

Outer Island (named after one of the Apostle Islands) is a working vessel in the Bayfield area, used for dredging, setting and building docks, hauling rocks and other marine construction.   LCTs were large, shallow-draft craft used to land heavy vehicles, such as tanks, on invasion beaches.  The vessel was apparently built for the Navy, sold to the Lullaby Furniture Company after the war, and then sold in 1964 for $50,000 to Bayfield businessman and former mayor Ed Erickson.  It is now owned by Ken Dobson and berthed at the former Erickson Marina in Bayfield. The barge spent four years in Racine helping lay the city's water line from Lake Michigan.  In 1972, it was nearly crushed by early winter ice in the Straits of Mackinac. Outer Island itself has also played major roles in historic preservation and research.  It served as the platform for a 2001 project led by Wisconsin’s Underwater Archeology Program to replace the 15,000 pound boiler taken in 1961 from the wreck of the schooner Pretoria.  The Pretoria was lost in 1905 during a storm off Outer Island (for more on this fascinating story see Wisconsin's Great Lakes Shipwrecks).  In 1970 Outer Island served as the work platform for a research team led by the University of Wisconsin and the U.S. Coast Guard Oceanographic Office working on the Keweenaw Current Project (the Keweenaw Current is the Gulf Stream-like current of Lake Superior).

A  Landing Craft Tank, LCT-528 on Utah Beach, Normandy, June 15, 1944 (National Archives photo).

Was Outer Island really one of the LCT's that supported amphibious landings during the war? Did it really see action off the beaches of France? Well, the July 5th, 2004 episode of History Detectives unraveled the mystery. As it turns out, the Outer Island was actually LCT 203, not LCT 103---an “LCT 103” was never built--- but it did play a very significant role in “Operation Dragoon,” the second largest invasion of World War II, off the coast of France eight weeks after the Normandy invasion. To read more about this interesting tale, visit the PBS Web site at http://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/pdf/203_LCT.pdf for a complete transcript of the program.