During D-Day and Operation Neptune, the United States Coast Guard played a vital role in the Normandy invasion despite serving in smaller numbers than the Army, Navy, and Merchant Marine. Coast Guardsmen served individually on naval and merchant marine vessels and also crewed their own craft, including five attack transports, eleven Landing Ships Tank, and twenty-four Landing Crafts Infantry (Large), carrying up to 200 troops at a time. Many of the smaller Higgins Boats that took men to the beaches on June 6, 1944, were manned by Coast Guardsmen, and many took wounded soldiers from the water and the beach and carried them back to safety. These forces helped ensure the success of the invasion, and fifteen Coast Guardsmen lost their lives. In vessels lost or damaged, June 6 was the costliest day in U.S. Coast Guard history. After the initial invasion, the Coast Guard continued transporting supplies and reinforcements, and it also operated Rescue Flotilla One, a group of sixty 83-foot cutters unofficially called the Matchbox Fleet, which served across the invasion zone and by the end of Operation Neptune had rescued more than 1400 soldiers, sailors, and airmen. Its service became a model for similar operations in the Pacific War.