The innovation of two Lehigh graduates helped Allied forces storm beaches in Normandy and the Pacific in World War II. The Dravo Corporation of Pittsburgh, a shipbuilding company founded by brothers Francis Dravo (Class of 1887) and Ralph Dravo (Class of 1889), designed and built a new kind of attack landing craft, the landing ship tank (LST).

In the early 1940s, the Dravo Corporation produced hundreds of LSTs, 328-foot cargo ships capable of carrying and landing 160 soldiers and more than twenty tanks and trucks directly on a beach. LSTs enabled armored support of landings without the need to capture a port, made it difficult for enemies to defend against the landings, and increased the Allies’ choices of invasion locations.

Dravo House, built in 1948 and home to 258 first-year students, honors the contributions of the Dravo family to Lehigh.