A World War II landing ship that carried troops onto Omaha Beach during the D-Day invasion has docked at Sanders Ferry Park in Hendersonville, opening its steel decks to visitors through Tuesday before continuing down the Cumberland River to Ashland City and Clarksville. USS LST-325, now operating as a floating museum, offers self-guided tours daily from 9 a.m. until the last admission at 5 p.m., giving Middle Tennessee residents a rare chance to walk the deck of one of the last operational Landing Ship Tanks from the war.
The ship is maintained in its original World War II configuration. The other surviving vessel, USS LST-510, now runs as a commercial passenger ferry between Orient, New York, and New London, Connecticut. As reported by WSMV, LST-325 was commissioned in 1943 and went on to participate in the Allied invasions at Gela, Sicily, and Salerno, Italy, before taking part in the Normandy landings at Omaha Beach.
A D-Day Workhorse With Two Battle Stars
A D-Day Workhorse With Two Battle Stars During the initial invasion on June 6, 1944, LST-325 took part in the Normandy landings and later made more than 40 supply runs across the English Channel between England and France. The ship earned two battle stars for its World War II service. Decades later, between 1951 and 1961, the vessel was reactivated as USNS T-LST-325 under the Military Sea Transportation Service, taking part in Operation SUNAC to help build Arctic radar outposts along the coasts of Canada and Greenland as part of North America’s early warning defense line, per NavSource Naval History.
The station’s report on the ship’s history notes that LST-325 later served in the Greek Navy from 1964 through 1999, known during that period as the HS Syros. That chapter set up one of the more remarkable footnotes in the ship’s story: its journey back to American hands.
Twenty-Nine Veterans Brought The Ship Home
In late 2000, a volunteer crew of 29 American military veterans averaging 72 years old, led by Captain Bob Jornlin, repaired the decommissioned ship in Crete and sailed it 6,500 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to Mobile, Alabama, arriving in January 2001, according to Chronicle Media. Evansville, Indiana, became the ship’s permanent homeport in October 2005, a choice tied to the city’s wartime heritage as the nation’s largest inland producer of LSTs. The National Park Service notes that Evansville built 167 Landing Ship Tanks and 35 other military vessels at a 40-acre riverfront shipyard during the war, a legacy that earned the city an official American World War II Heritage City designation in 2022…