Stanley Barish, 90, of Squirrel Hill, has traveled to Alabama and Indiana to visit his old World War II ship, but this time the big vessel is coming to him.

LST 325, the last functioning Landing Ship, Tank in the world and one that saw action during the invasions of Sicily and Normandy, will arrive in Pittsburgh on Wednesday from its base as a floating museum in Evansville, Ind., and dock on the North Shore for tours from Thursday through Sept. 7.

Mr. Barish, the former engineering officer and an amateur photographer who took copious pictures during the war, will once again board her for a reception and remember how she was 65 years ago.

He recalls the nickname Navy men gave these massive transports, more than 1,000 of which were built during the war to deliver tanks, trucks and troops directly onto the beaches through a pair of giant bow doors.

"We said LST stood for 'Large Slow Target,' " he joked last week while perusing his photo albums.

But he has affection for her, as most sailors do for their ships. After the Italian campaign in 1943 and D-Day in June 1944, he was transferred to another LST off Normandy that July and wasn't happy about it.

"I didn't want to leave," he said. "I was part of the original crew that commissioned that ship. We felt a bond, I guess."

On either craft, though, he did his duty and served his country. "I was proud to be a Navy officer."

LST 325 was in the thick of the D-Day battle as a backup transport for troops going ashore at Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, and on the next day anchored off Omaha to unload men and vehicles into assault craft. She later shuttled supplies from England to the beachheads and returned with wounded men and German prisoners, making 44 trips in all. (Mr. Barish made 13 of those trips before his transfer).

LST 325 is the last of its kind. There's another one in Michigan, LST 393, that is also a museum, but it doesn't go anywhere. A few others have been converted for other use, such as dredges, but LST 325 is the only one that is still operating. It makes two tours a year with an all-volunteer crew.

The ship left Evansville earlier this month on its way up the Ohio and will head to Marietta, Ohio, after it leaves Pittsburgh. Although it's longer than a football field, it can fit into the locks on the river and under all the bridges as long as the water level stays as low as it has been this summer. The Wheeling Suspension Bridge was an initial cause for concern, but it hasn't proved to be a problem.

The crew of 50 has been gratified at the crowds that have turned out along the way.

"Coming up the river, we have people at every town and at every lock waving at us and waving flags," said the captain, Bob Jornlin, a Navy veteran who served aboard LSTs in the 1960s.

Among his crew is Ad Mumford, 88, of Florida, who served on a Coast Guard LST in World War II. He works in the engine room, where temperatures can reach 115 degrees.

"He's my chief," said the captain. "And I want to tell you, he doesn't look 88. He could be 55."

The trip has generated lots of media interest, which is good for a museum that needs cash to literally stay afloat.

"Mainly it's a money-making thing," said Capt. Jornlin, who was part of a nonprofit group that obtained the ship from the Greek navy 10 years ago and sailed it Mobile, Ala., where Mr. Barish saw it for the first time since the war.

This is the ship's first visit to Pittsburgh, where many LSTs were built. On its way up the Ohio, LST 325 will pass Neville Island and Ambridge; at Neville Island, Dravo Corp. built 146 LSTs, and American Bridge Corp. in Ambridge built another 119. The shipyard at Evansville produced 167 of the ships, more than any other shipyard, which is why the museum was established there.

LST 325, however, was built in Philadelphia, where Mr. Barish remembers arriving while it was still being painted and welded.

Life on the ship wasn't too bad for him. He had his own quarters -- "second-best next to the captain's" -- and was in charge of the 32 men of the "black gang" who kept the huge diesel engines running.

After practicing beach landings in North Africa, the ship supported the invasion of Sicily, delivering supplies and transporting Italian prisoners of war. In Tunisia, she also came under fire; four men were wounded during an air raid on Sept. 6, 1943. A little more than a week later, four more crew members, along with four British soldiers, were wounded in another air raid off Salerno, Italy.

In October, Mr. Barish endured his most harrowing moment when German bombers unleashed their new radio-controlled glider-bombs on his convoy in the Bay of Biscay off the French coast. Although he was supposed to be below decks, he stayed above and watched as the gun crew manning the 3-inch cannon on the LST's stern opened fire on a plane and its just-released bomb. When the plane swerved, the bomb also swerved and then splashed into the water, narrowly missing a destroyer escort.

"I could see that bomb falling," Mr. Barish recalled. "I could feel my blood pressure rising, muscles tensing."

Despite the dangers, the crew usually didn't have much time to be scared.

"I can't say we were afraid," he said. "You did wonder what might happen. But you didn't think too much about that stuff. You had a lot to do."

In addition to its service at Normandy, LST 325 distinguished itself in December 1944, when the crew helped rescue more than 700 men from the troop transport Empire Javelin, which had been torpedoed off the coast of France. The skipper, Lt. Cmdr. Clifford Mosier, was awarded the Bronze Star for the rescue.

As a class, LSTs were tough and seaworthy. They suffered relatively few losses considering their numbers and the dangerous waters they entered. Of the 1,051 built, only 26 were destroyed by enemy action; another 13 sank in storms and accidents.

LST 325 lost just one man in the war -- a sailor who plunged to his death off the side of a drydock in England.

"A lot of us were lucky," said Mr. Barish, who ran a photography store on Murray Avenue for decades after the war and raised three children with his wife. "The ones who weren't lucky were the ones who didn't come back."

In the postwar years, LST 325 helped install radar posts in Greenland and Canada, and in the 1960s it was transferred to Greece as part of a lend-lease program. It served in the Greek navy until 1999.

The ship will be mostly empty when it arrives here, but its huge cargo hold does contain a few items of interest, including the jeep from the original "M.A.S.H." movie and some other vehicles that appeared in "Flags of Our Fathers," a 2006 movie.

"It's a nice historical treasure," said Wanda Engstrom, 63, of Evansville, whose husband John, a Vietnam veteran, is one of the volunteers aboard. "These World War II vets are dwindling."

Costs for tours are $10 for adults, $5 for children 6 to 17. Families (mother, father and minor children) can go aboard for $20. There's no charge for children 5 and under.

The website for the museum, www.lstmemorial.org, includes a video tour and a GPS tracker that allows viewers to follow the ship's journey.

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