ARMED FORCES: Dreamboat

The Navy's rocket-belching LSMR, improvised in the middle of World War II, was an efficient, lethal little vessel. As a curtain raiser to amphibious landings, it could briefly match the firepower of a modern cruiser with its close-in salvos of rockets. The enemy on the beach quickly came to respect its sting, but the unhappy crewmen aboard just as quickly discovered that the LSMR was not designed as a pleasure craft. In the calmest seas, it shook like a dog emerging from a bath; in hurricane weather, it performed better, sloughing wildly...

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