Landing craft
History: In the days of sail, the ship's boats were used as landing craft. These utility boats were sufficient, if inefficient, in an era when Marines were effectively light infantry, participating mostly in small-scale campaigns in far-flung colonies against less well-equipped indigenous opponents.
In order to support amphibious operations during the landing in Pisagua (1879) by carrying significant quantities of cargo, and landing troops directly onto an unimproved shore, the Government of Chile built flat-bottomed landing craft, called Chalanas. They transported 1,200 men in the first landing and took on board 600 men in less than 2 hours for the second landing.: 40

Origins: During World War I, the mass mobilization of troops equipped with rapid-fire weapons quickly rendered such boats obsolete. Initial landings during the Gallipoli campaign took place in unmodified ship's boats that were extremely vulnerable to attack from the Turkish shore defenses.
In February 1915, orders were placed for the design of purpose built landing craft. A design was created in four days resulting in an order for 200 'X' Lighters with a spoon-shaped bow to take shelving beaches and a drop down frontal ramp.
The first use took place after they had been towed to the Aegean and performed successfully in the 6 August landing at Suvla Bay of IX Corps, commanded by Commander Edward Unwin.
'X' Lighters, known to the soldiers as 'Beetles', carried about 500 men, displaced 135 tons and were based on London barges being 105 feet 6 inches long, 21 feet wide, and 7 ft 6 inches deep (32.2 m × 6.4 m × 2.3 m deep). The engines mainly ran on heavy oil and ran at a speed of approximately 5 knots (9.3 km/h; 5.8 mph). The boats had bulletproof sides and a ramp at the bow for disembarkation. A plan was devised to land British heavy tanks from pontoons in support of the Third Battle of Ypres, but this was abandoned.
The Imperial Russian Navy soon followed suit, building a series of similar landing motor barges of the so-called Bolinder-class, named after the supplier of the diesels installed in them. These, however, proved too small and unseaworthy for their intended Black Sea theater — they were intended for the planned Marmara Sea landings. Instead, a new class was designed, based on the widespread pattern of the Black Sea merchant steamers. These were typically very light at the bow, having all their machinery concentrated at the stern, which allowed easy beaching on any gently sloping coast, and often were equipped with a bow ramp for fast unloading. This resulted in a 1300-ton, 1500 hp Elpidifor-class, named after the Rostov-on-Don merchant Elpidifor Paramonov, whose eponymous grain carrier served as a pattern on which they were based. With a 1.8 m loaded draft, and equipped with the ballast tanks and reinforced hull for safe beaching, they were able to land 1000 troops with their train at virtually any available beach. While the landings for which they were created never happened, the ships themselves turned out quite useful and had a long career, supporting the Caucasus Campaign and later as minesweepers, gunboats and utility transports.
Spain purchased 26-28 X-Lighters. During the Rif War, they were used in the Alhucemas landing, arguably the first major amphibious landing in which tanks were disembarked in large numbers.

During the inter-war period, the combination of the negative experience at Gallipoli and economic stringency contributed to the delay in procuring equipment and adopting a universal doctrine for amphibious operations in the Royal Navy.
Despite this outlook, the British produced the Motor Landing Craft in 1920, based on their experience with the early 'Beetle' armoured transport. The craft could put a medium tank directly onto a beach. From 1924, it was used with landing boats in annual exercises in amphibious landings. A prototype motor landing craft, designed by J. Samuel White of Cowes, was built and first sailed in 1926.: 11  It weighed 16 tons and had a box-like appearance, having a square bow and stern. To prevent fouling of the propellers in a craft destined to spend time in surf and possibly be beached, a crude waterjet propulsion system was devised by White's designers. A Hotchkiss petrol engine drove a centrifugal pump which produced a jet of water, pushing the craft ahead or astern, and steering it, according to how the jet was directed. Speed was 5-6 knots and its beaching capacity was good. By 1930, three MLC were operated by the Royal Navy.
The United States revived and experimented in their approach to amphibious warfare between 1913 and mid-1930s, when the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps became interested in setting up advanced bases in opposing countries during wartime; the prototype advanced base force officially evolved into the Fleet Marine Force (FMF) in 1933.
In 1939, during the annual Fleet Landing Exercises, the FMF became interested in the military potential of Andrew Higgins's design of a powered, shallow-draught boat. These LCPL, dubbed the 'Higgins Boats', were reviewed and passed by the U.S. Naval Bureau of Construction and Repair. Soon, the Higgins boats were developed to a final design with a ramp – the LCVP, and were produced in large numbers. The boat was a more flexible variant of the LCPR with a wider ramp. It could carry 36 troops, a small vehicle such as a jeep, or a corresponding amount of cargo.

Second World War: 

Specialized infantry landing craft: In the run-up to WWII, many specialized landing craft, both for infantry and vehicles, were developed. At the start of World War II, the Japanese led the world in landing craft design.
The Daihatsu-class landing craft was lowered to disembark cargo upon riding up onto a beach. After reviewing photos of a Daihatsu landing craft, this was adopted by American landing craft designer Andrew Higgins in developing the Landing Craft, Personnel (Large) (LCP(L)) into the Landing Craft, Personnel (Ramped) (LCP(R)) and later the Landing Craft, Vehicle and Personnel (LCVP). However, the Daihatsu landing craft was more seaworthy than an LCVP due to its hull design. It was constructed of a metal hull and powered by a diesel engine. Victor Harold Krulak, a native of Denver, who joined the Marines after graduating from Annapolis in 1934, witnessed the Japanese use small vessels like the Daihatsu-class. In 1937, a lieutenant in an intelligence outfit during the 1937 Battle of Shanghai, when the Japanese were trying to conquer China, he used a telephoto lens to take pictures of Japanese landing craft with a square bow that became a retractable ramp,  Krulak noted that the boats' droppable ramps enabled troops to quickly disembark from the bow, rather than having to clamber over the sides and splash into the surf. Envisioning those ramps as answering the Marines' needs in a looming world war, Lieutenant Krulak showed the photographs to his superiors, who passed on his report to Washington. But two years later, he found that the Navy had simply filed it away with a notation saying it was the work of “some nut out in China.” He persevered, building a balsa wood model of the Japanese boat design and discussing the retractable ramp concept with the New Orleans boat builder Andrew Higgins. That bow design became the basis for the thousands of Higgins landing craft of World War II. As according to  Victor H. Krulak "the Japanese were light years ahead of us in landing craft design".
In November 1938, the British Inter-Service Training and Development Centre proposed a new type of landing craft. Its specifications were to weigh less than ten long tons, to be able to carry the thirty-one men of a British Army platoon and five assault engineers or signallers, and to be so shallow drafted as to be able to land them, wet only up to their knees, in eighteen inches of water. All of these specifications made the Landing Craft Assault; a separate set of requirements were laid down for a vehicle and supplies carrier, although previously the two roles had been combined in the Motor Landing Craft.

J. S. White of Cowes built a prototype to the Fleming design. Eight weeks later the craft was doing trials on the River Clyde. All landing craft designs must find a compromise between two divergent priorities; the qualities that make a good sea boat are opposite to those that make a craft suitable for beaching. The craft had a hull built of double-diagonal mahogany planking. The sides were plated with "10lb. DIHT" armour, a heat treated steel based on D1 steel, in this case Hadfield's Resista 1⁄4.
The Landing Craft Assault remained the most common British and Commonwealth landing craft of World War II, and the humblest vessel admitted to the books of the Royal Navy on D-Day. Prior to July 1942, these craft were referred to as "Assault Landing Craft" (ALC), but "Landing Craft; Assault" (LCA) was used thereafter to conform with the joint US-UK nomenclature system.