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Dan Weikel Memorial Library

Preserving the Records Behind the Stories

Aboard the USS LST 393 Veterans Museum, history lives in steel, machinery, photographs, letters, manuals, and the memories of the people who served. The Dan Weikel Memorial Library was created to preserve that history and make it useful. The library serves as a growing research collection devoted to LST 393, Landing Ship Tanks, the United States military, World War II, veterans, naval history, and the people whose lives intersected with these ships.

More Than a Room Full of Books

Museums preserve objects. Libraries preserve the information that gives those objects meaning. A ship’s technical manual can explain a machine sitting three decks below. A wartime newsletter can put names and personalities behind a hull number. A veteran’s memoir can tell us what an official report never recorded. The Dan Weikel Memorial Library brings those pieces together. Our goal is to create a working historical resource for researchers, veterans, families, students, museum volunteers, historians, and anyone trying to understand the story of LSTs and the people who served aboard them.

The Collection

The library is continuing to grow. Our collection focuses on material connected to naval, military, veteran, and LST history, including:

Original and reproduction LST technical manuals
USS LST 393 records and historical material
Ship histories and cruise books
World War II books and reference works
Veterans’ memoirs and personal histories
Navy manuals and technical publications
Photographs, maps, diagrams, and plans
Unit histories and military reference books
LST Association publications and newsletters
Museum and historic ship publications
Oral histories and veteran interviews
Material relating to amphibious warfare and naval operations
Local Muskegon military and veteran history

Some materials are rare, fragile, or still being cataloged. Access may depend on the condition and location of individual items.

The LST Research Collection

One of our priorities is building a strong collection devoted specifically to Landing Ship Tanks. More than a thousand LSTs were constructed during World War II, carrying tanks, trucks, ammunition, supplies, and troops directly onto hostile shores. Their crews served from Europe and the Mediterranean to the Pacific. Today, only a handful of these vessels survive.

The Dan Weikel Memorial Library seeks to preserve the paper trail behind those ships: manuals, photographs, newsletters, crew information, reunion material, ship histories, technical records, and personal accounts. Every surviving document helps reconstruct a fleet that has almost disappeared.

Original Technical Manuals

LST 393 has preserved several original manuals and technical documents associated with the ship and its equipment. These records are valuable far beyond our own museum.

As historic ships age, crews and volunteers often face the same problem: the machinery survives while the people who understood it firsthand are disappearing. Original manuals can provide specifications, operating procedures, diagrams, maintenance instructions, and details that may help other museum ships preserve their own vessels. One goal of the Dan Weikel Memorial Library is to encourage greater cooperation among historic ships by identifying material that can be shared with fellow museum crews and researchers.

A Library Built for Research

The library is being developed as a working research space, not simply a display. Students can explore veterans' experiences. Families can search for information about relatives. Museum volunteers can research equipment aboard LST 393. Historians can examine technical and operational material. Other historic ships can compare records with their own collections. And sometimes a visitor arrives with nothing more than a name, a ship number, and a story they heard from their grandfather fifty years ago. That is often where good history begins.

Help Us Build the Collection

We are actively looking for material that can strengthen the Dan Weikel Memorial Library. We are especially interested in LST material, naval publications, military manuals, veteran memoirs, newsletters, ship histories, reunion publications, photographs, technical records, and books relating to the Second World War and American military history. We are also interested in back issues of publications produced by other museum ships and veterans organizations. Material does not always need to be donated permanently. In some cases, we may be able to scan or digitally preserve historically important documents while returning the originals to their owners.

Have something that belongs in the archive?

CONTACT THE LIBRARY

VIEW OUR COLLECTION

Tell Us What You Have

Before throwing away old military papers, manuals, photographs, newsletters, letters, or reunion material, contact us. A box that looks ordinary in an attic may contain the only surviving copy of a document connected to a ship or sailor.

Please include as much information as possible:

Name of veteran or donor
Ship or military unit
Dates of service
Description of material
Approximate number of items
Contact information
Photographs of the material also help us determine whether it fits the collection.

Research Requests

Looking for information about an LST, veteran, crew member, military unit, or piece of equipment? Send us a research request (Please understand that the Dan Weikel Memorial Library operates as part of the USS LST 393 Veterans Museum, and our research capacity depends heavily on staff and volunteer availability). The more information you provide, the better our chances of finding something useful.

SUBMIT A REQUEST (Coming Soon)

Volunteer With the Library

A historical collection does not organize itself. We need people interested in books, archives, military history, genealogy, photography, scanning, cataloging, and research. You do not need to be a professional historian. Sometimes the most valuable work involves identifying photographs, entering information into a database, organizing newsletters, scanning documents, or spending an afternoon figuring out why three Navy manuals give slightly different answers to the same question. If that sounds like your kind of afternoon, we would like to hear from you.

BECOME A VOLUNTEER

Keeping the Fleet Connected

The Dan Weikel Memorial Library also hopes to strengthen relationships between surviving historic ships. LST 393 does not exist in isolation. Ships such as LST 325, along with other historic naval vessels across the country, preserve different pieces of the same enormous story. Sharing manuals, newsletters, research, photographs, restoration knowledge, and institutional history helps every ship. When one museum discovers something useful, the entire historic fleet can benefit.

Visit the Library

The Dan Weikel Memorial Library is located aboard the USS LST 393 Veterans Museum in Muskegon, Michigan. Library and research access may require an appointment, particularly during the museum’s off-season or when staff members are working elsewhere aboard the ship.

USS LST 393 Veterans Museum

560 Mart Street

Muskegon, Michigan 49440

CONTACT THE LIBRARY

VIEW OUR COLLECTION

History Survives Because Someone Saves It.

Ships disappear. Paper gets thrown away. Photographs lose their names. Veterans pass away. Then one day somebody asks a question and discovers that the answer vanished twenty years earlier. The Dan Weikel Memorial Library exists to prevent as much of that loss as we can.

Preserve it. Research it. Share it.

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