Chapter Seven
MGB 64 February – July 1941
Robert’s diary continues with his journey south to stand by MGB 64, building at British Power Boat’s yard at Hythe.
Monday, 3rd February. I had a good journey down from Inverness. I decided to stay a few hours in London and deposited my baggage at Browns Hotel, which seemed exactly the same as usual. London was wonderful I thought. Apart from a few horrid gaps, as though a building was being pulled down, it seemed exactly the same as ever, except for a sort of spirit of sadness. It all seemed so quiet, as though the great old town was in mourning. I shall hope to live to see her reinstated.
I bought Catherine a little present of scent and some books for Antsie at Hatchards, which seemed just as usual. I caught a train on to Southampton, which was very late. There I met Catherine and Antsie and we just managed to catch the last boat to Hythe. It was lovely seeing them once again. Poor Catherine is not looking well. I shall have to do what I can for her.
4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th February. These days present a memory of intense activity at Power Boats. Campbell and I straining every nerve to get things done and learn about our new engines and guns. All this interspersed with reading to Antsie in the evening at the hotel and talking with Catherine. A visit to Portsmouth rustling up missing stores, a day at Lucy’s getting my gear from there and then Monday the 10th, a terrific struggle storing the ship and getting as ready as possible for commissioning. We are to sail for Fowey as soon as we are ready! Glory be!
Tuesday, 11th February. I commissioned my first ship today at ten o’clock. The struggle continues. It is such a job getting everything in and anything like ship shape. Campbell works magnificently but gets over-enthusiastic and expects too much of the crew. This is inclined to lead to tooth-sucking by the sailors and I shall have to go carefully. It is over-eagerness by Campbell but tactless.
Wednesday, 12th February. Still striving to settle the ship in. Went to F.O.I.C.1 Southampton this afternoon and received orders to sail to Fowey tomorrow at 0900. Catherine and Antony went off today. Shall we ever get ship-shape?
Thursday, 13th February. Thick fog in the river2 this morning. No chance of sailing. It was flat calm however and obvious that the sun would disperse the fog by 1200 or 1300. Ideal for a fast run to Fowey thereafter. However at 1130 they cancelled our sailing and of course the fog cleared perfectly by 1300. Very annoying as I badly want to get down to Fowey as we may only have a short time there.
As a result of the extra day here I got a small lamp for my cabin and a lovely rotary pump and hope that will make all the difference to the job of changing the oil in the engines. I went ashore late in the evening to get this pump at dead low tide, to make sure of not missing it the next morning. I had a hell of a time and ended up by getting into the mud and water up to the ‘muddle’, like Doctor Foster. I just got pig-headed about it and determined to do it and not be stopped by the mud. Ended up by washing my trousers on deck in the gloaming in my pants.
MGB 64, along with two sister boats, 62 and 63, had just been finished by British Power Boats and given orders to join the Sixth MGB Flotilla which was forming and training at Fowey under the command of Lieutenant Peter Howes, RN,3 a young man of forceful personality and considerable ability. The full flotilla consisted of eight boats numbered 58 to 65, all except 64 and 65 commanded by RN lieutenants or sub-lieutenants. 65 was the last to join and was commanded by another RNVR officer, Lieutenant Alan Gotelee, known as Goaters.
Peter Howes had a difficult task. Over the previous five or six months two fast motor gunboat flotillas had been formed, the Third and Fourth, from boats requisitioned while building as MTBs for foreign navies. In these boats the British Power Boat design had been modified to provide a fast, light craft, carrying guns but no torpedoes, specifically tasked with the job of countering the threat posed by E-boats to the coastal convoys. Whether or not the Germans had foreseen the likelihood that they would capture ports in the Low Countries and on the northern French coast early in any conflict with Britain, they had designed and built their own fast light craft. Their impact on coastal convoys in night attacks had been very considerable. Recognizing the need to counter them with boats of comparable or greater speed, and which would represent a much smaller investment at stake than risking destroyers, the MGB had evolved. Unfortunately, the project, which was an emergency measure using such boats as were available, had not been thought through with the care that it deserved. The early MGB flotillas had had virtually no success, with a very high rate of self-inflicted wounds in the form of broken boats unfit for operations.
Small wooden craft, seventy feet long with powerful petrol engines, were a grave temptation in the hands of the young naval officers assigned to their command. Few understood the limitations on what could be expected of the engines, particularly if they were driven at full speed in any kind of a sea. Yet they were so driven, with the inevitable consequence of ruined engines and strained hulls, leaving the early flotillas extremely short of operational boats. They were also armed extraordinarily lightly. This was due to the unavailability of more suitable weapons, but to send boats like this to sea to fight E-boats, armed in some cases only with 0.303 machine guns, was asking a great deal of them. Another fundamental problem was the noise they made. Fighting almost invariably at night, due to the need for the cover of darkness to protect them from aircraft attack in coastal waters, the MGBs were so noisy that they could often be heard ten to fifteen miles away. This was unhelpful if they were seeking out an enemy who, himself, was reluctant to give battle even to these small and weakly armed adversaries, as his principal task was to attack convoys. Their small size also made them unstable gun platforms in any kind of weather. In such conditions they also could not use much of their speed.
Thus by February 1941 there were quite a few senior officers in the Royal Navy who were wondering whether the new MGBs had any utility at all in the fight to maintain control over the coastal convoy routes in the Channel and the North Sea. Peter Howes had the formidable task of trying to prove that the MGB could be a valuable tool in the right hands.
Rather than continuing with Robert’s diary, which in any case ends shortly, at this point the book he wrote during the war and never finished, We Fought Them in Gunboats, picks up the narrative of his introduction to MGBs.
MGB 62, under Lieutenant P. Whitehead, RN, and 63 under Lieutenant D. (Arty) Shaw, RN, were ready at the same time as 64 to sail for Fowey. The morning we were to go, the 14th February, dawned ominously, with a red sky and a gusty south-easterly wind. It really did not look good enough, but we were determined to go. We had to arrange R/T call signs before we left, and we discussed these on the deck of 63. Shaw’s was to be ‘Dave’, his Christian name, Whitehead’s ‘Percy’; I could not think of anything suitable for myself. ‘Why not ‘Hitch’? said Shaw in his slow way, and so it was; ever after in Coastal Forces I was known as ‘Hitch’.
We slipped and sped down Southampton Water at thirty knots. The wind was south-east, and when it is in this direction the full force of the sea is not apparent until well clear of the Needles on a course for Anvil Point. As we thrust out to sea through the narrow neck by Hurst Point, treading on the short steep waves kicked up by the ebb-tide, we could see the angry line of water several miles to the southward, sharp jagged peaks with breaking crests, and in between a seemingly smooth stretch of water under the lee of the Needles. But this was deceptive; though the broken water of the wind-whipped Channel was still some way off, the swell driven on by the sea running offshore was sweeping in quiet but steep undulations round the southern extremity of the Needles. We were all inexperienced and the height of the sea was hard to judge. On we sped at thirty knots until, suddenly, we reached the top of the first big swell. it was a breathtaking sensation as we dropped off it; the boats fell so sharply that men were left two feet in the air. There was a sickening drop as you left your stomach behind, and a shuddering bang as the fore-part of the boat hit the hollow of the wave.
We had none of us done this before. We were all pretty startled. Automatically throttles were brought down and the unit slowly pulled itself together at about twenty knots. In one case the harm was already done; 62 dropped farther and farther back, her lamp beginning to speak: ‘Coxswain’s back severely damaged, returning to harbour for immediate medical attention.’ The poor man, when coming down to earth, so to speak, had missed his footing. He was in hospital for many months.
My coxswain, Curtis, had also injured his leg and had to relinquish the wheel. It had been a surprise, but a useful one. We had learnt our lesson. 62 receded into the distance, 63 and 64 ploughed on, now right out in the full force of the sea. It was blowing hard and there was obviously worse to come, but luckily we had it on our beam and in a short while when we rounded St Albans Head it would be on our port quarter. Had the wind been ahead we should have had one of our worst trips.
Gaining confidence with the wind and sea well aft, we increased to twenty-four knots, and a wonderful sight those little boats were, close to the race off Portland Bill. The wind had risen to almost gale force, at least seven or eight; with the effect of the race on the sea, there were some very sharp and, for us, large waves. We jumped through them like porpoises, at one moment entirely hidden from each other by the crest of a wave, or by solid sheets of spray, at another exposed to view well down to the under-belly of the ship, with a third of the boat’s keel forward clear of the water, like a large fish leaping from a wave.
It was an exhilarating and satisfying experience. Slowly, as we plunged and thrust across West Bay, my admiration for the sea qualities of these little boats grew and grew. We were wet, yes, soaked, but what other little ship could go through this at twenty-four knots and not be drowned? The stability of the boats was wonderful, the way they adapted themselves to the tumbled surface of the sea a joy, and there grew up in me a confidence and pleasure in my gunboat that I have never lost.
As we neared Start Point the weather thickened and visibility reduced to a few miles. Presently we just caught a glimpse of the land, then it closed down again. Being a West-countryman I knew this coast well. Shaw stopped and asked whether I had recognised the land. I told him I thought I had sighted the entrance to Salcombe, a black gash in the high cliffs, all made indistinct by the driving mist, as though a veil had been partially torn aside. He suggested I should lead.4I went off confidently, shaping a course, as I thought, to clear Prawle Point, and suddenly saw towering above me the cliffs just to the southward of Dartmouth. In that glimpse I had mistaken the entrance of Dartmouth for the entrance to Salcombe.
‘Hard a port.’
We swung round into the teeth of the wind. Two or three shattering bumps in quick succession brought our speed down to a mere crawl, ten or twelve knots. We had indeed learnt our lesson. The sea was piling up in here, short and steep. Due to my mistake we had four miles dead plug into it before we could square away round the Start. Where were those Skerries Rocks? The rocks between the Start and Dartmouth. I slid down from the dustbin to the wheelhouse, my oilskin trousers having no means of support visible or invisible, slipping down and binding my legs as though I were a contestant for a sack-race. I hastily consulted the chart, looked blankly at the wheelhouse windows perpetually covered in sheets of spray, and hoped that my course would clear the danger; forced my way back into the dustbin, hitching frantically at my trousers, and saw with a sigh of relief the Skerries buoy close on the starboard bow.
This was sifting the crew already. My leading stoker, Punton, a wonderful man, later to prove the tiger of the crew, was on the wheel. Momentarily I considered why he was there, then seeing the quiet satisfaction in his face as he exerted his strength and skill, I wondered no longer. Start Point bore squat and solid on the beam. ‘Starboard Wheel.’ We could bear away at last and stop that maddening spray slapping, slapping into one’s eyeballs.
In a very few minutes, with a west-flowing tide, we were abreast of Prawle Point and, with one of those magical changes that are not infrequent in the West Country, the whole scene was metamorphosed. The driving mist was swept away for good. The wind dropped to a whisper, and, clear of the sheer black cliffs, the steep sea steadied out miraculously into a smooth undulation.
Tentatively we lifted the throttles, eighteen knots, twenty-four knots, soon we were sweeping west at thirty knots, bouncing and swooping, cleaving the waves in unending sequence and inevitable impermanence. Past the Eddystone Lighthouse, always to my mind like an enormous candle surrounded by a sea of its own grease, the latest droppings of which show white and foaming at the foot; until we could see the sheer black outline of the Dodman, tremendously impressive against the watery sinking sun. Where was the entrance to Fowey? As ever there seemed to be no opening in those grey Cornish cliffs. Ah, there was the Gribben day mark, like a man, a giant, silhouetted against the skyline. The cliffs closed in on us and we slowed to a crawl to pass the boom gates, a strange reminder of war in these, to me, intensely familiar surroundings.
We had made our first passage. The immediate need was to release Edwards. We had been warned that our Boulton & Paul turret, an electrically worked aeroplane turret housing four 0.303 Browning guns, our main armament, reacted extremely badly to salt water, that the base filled up and shorted all the power. So we had to insert the gunner and seal up all the openings with a special plastic compound and tape. This we had duly done and poor Edwards had spent the six hours of the trip sitting stiffly in his cramped seat, observing with some alarm the threatening approach of the steep quartering sea, and probably muttering to himself:
‘Christ, why did I ever leave a f*****g battleship.’
As we steamed slowly up the Fowey river, past the huddled grey houses rising steeply to the skyline, we ripped off the tape and released our gunner.
Howes greeted us with surprise; we were just a little bit proud of ourselves as another member of the flotilla, who only had to come from Dartmouth, had not been allowed to sail because of the weather.
I shall pass very quickly over our brief stay at Fowey. We thrashed about in the open waters off the Udder Rock, doing shoots and manoeuvres and learning to keep station, the most necessary qualification in a gunboat officer. Looking back on it the thing that strikes me most is the fact that we had no idea of what our fighting would be like, so that our preparation was mostly wrong; we had to learn our correct tactics in the hard school of night actions at sea.
Where we should have been devising and practising the correct formations and special tactics required for high speed, close-in fighting with E-boats, we were going solemnly through the various naval fleet formations, from Order 1, line ahead, to Order 6, sub-divisions in line abreast to starboard, columns disposed astern. We hauled flags up and down with the boats doing thirty knots over a long Cornish swell that every now and then gave us a rude jolt, and many were the concentrated panics aboard 64 when the appropriate flag couldn’t be found or worse still the leader’s hoist couldn’t be read or understood, while the sharp-eyed seagulls floated serenely along, keeping close station without moving their wings. So keen were we on flags that we even produced tin ones which could be held sideways to the wind, and so read at high speed! Mercifully in our case, all this make-believe was very soon to give way to the sterner realities of war.
One evening, after we had been there for ten days, there came the whispered rumour of a job. ‘All available gunboats to sail the following evening on a special job, half from Dartmouth, half from Fowey.’ That was the effect of it. Were we to go? The three of us that had recently arrived had done no night work as yet. Would we be allowed to take part? Luckily there were only one or two of the operating flotilla based at Fowey able to work, so they needed us. We sailed to Dartmouth that day, received our orders and prepared for action for the first time. Little did we think what arduous work we should have to go through before we had our first real fighting.
I shall never forget our get-away that evening. We were the only boat of the three tied up to the Kingswear jetty, the others having fuelled and moored to a buoy in mid-stream. We were slipping at dusk, and being T.A.C. (‘Tail arse Charley’ as we called the junior boat) I was to follow in behind the others as they sailed down the river. In good time I gave the order to start up. The self-starters ground. Nothing happened. This went on and on. Presently the First Lieutenant and others were delivering short and concise messages to the engine room; still nothing happened.
61 and 58 burst into throbbing life and let go. I could see them begin to slide slowly down past the town. I had no means of explaining my predicament; my feelings can be imagined. My very first operation and unable to join because the engines wouldn’t start, a thing that had never happened before. Nothing worse could occur to an untried C.O.; they might think anything of one. At the last moment one engine, by the grace of God the starboard one, the inside engine, started.
‘Let go!’
They would be out of sight in a minute; I had to risk manoeuvring on one engine. Turning hard aport with the starboard engine running we just managed to get round inside the line of ships moored the length of Dartmouth harbour, dragged in our other engines and, accelerating rapidly, took up our station as though nothing had happened. It is hard to define the reason, but it remains one of the most anxious moments of my life.
Our job for the night was to act as a covering force for some mine-laying destroyers which were distributing their deadly load somewhere on the enemy convoy route near the Isle Vierge along the north coast of France between Ushant and St Malo. We were to sweep down to the eastward of their course and the Fowey unit to the westward, until within a few miles of the French coast, then turn to the eastward, sweep along the coast and back fairly close to Pleinmont Point on the south-west corner of Guernsey.
This we did without incident, but how we managed to keep together as a unit I do not know. We had had no night experience and it came on to blow from the south-west force three to four with driving rain. Howes had not yet learnt the tips we subsequently practised of getting a unit off in difficult conditions and of giving warning of a turn; nor did we have a shaded stern light in the rain, which later would have been the case. We did thirty knots under way the whole time; I can still remember vividly the anxiety we went through in the blinding rain near the French coast when we seemed to have lost the leader at the turn. We hung on somehow and we had our compensations in the morning. There was the impressive high land behind the Start with a bright, clear dawn and a rapidly freshening wind, very beautiful to behold; and had we not accomplished our first operation successfully? And did we not anxiously spell out a semaphore signal from the S.O.,5 as the great hills of the Dart valley enclosed us once more, ‘Well done’? We had only achieved the least that was expected of us, but we had been inexperienced and he knew what we had been through.
The Fowey unit had not fared so well. After stopping for a while in the low visibility caused by rain, their S.O. had suddenly, with the minimum of signalling and no time to be sure that all engines had started, dashed off at thirty knots. The others, 62 and 63, had shot after him, creaming up his wake with wide open throttles, hoping to see him and having only an indistinct wake to follow. The S.O., finally noticing that his unit was not with him, stopped as quickly as he had started; 62 coming on him suddenly at thirty-six knots, swerved to starboard, slammed down throttles and stopped; 63, close behind, unluckily chose to swerve to starboard also on sighting the S.O., and rammed 62. 62 was seriously damaged, luckily above water, and had to limp home alone. This was very largely if not entirely due to lack of method in handling a unit at sea. It was a persistent fault of many of the young R.N. Senior Officers that they would not take sufficient care and precautions to enable the following boats to be handled safely. In this case, had the S.O. given his unit plenty of time to start up and gone slowly until he had seen that they were in formation, there would have been no accident. This should have been more especially his care since he knew that neither boat had had any night experience.
Subsequently the S.O.’s boat developed stern gland trouble and filled her engine room with water; 63 made endless efforts to tow her, which were fruitless in the increasing weather conditions. Finally a destroyer had to come for her and tow her in, finding her only after her dead reckoning position had been altered fifteen miles by a sight taken by a French officer acting as navigator, probably the only occasion when a sun sight has been taken and used successfully from a fast gunboat.
This, I should imagine, was a fairly good example of the type of operational result that made senior officers ashore dislike gunboats. Two seriously damaged, out of action for weeks, and a destroyer engaged for fifteen to twenty hours to assist, exposed the while to the danger of air attack.
We were held at Dartmouth for a week unable to rejoin the rest of the flotilla at Fowey on account of strong westerly winds. While there we were entertained at the College, and in return Howes arranged to take a large party of cadets out in the boats to show them what they were like. It was a fine evening with a strong westerly wind and there was a heavy swell sweeping round the Start across the entrance to Dartmouth. We each had about twenty boys aboard and when we were well outside, to my horror, Howes led right into the sea and opened up, evidently to show the little boys what we had to take. We started leaping and banging and taking the spray over heavily.
Many of the small boys began to turn peculiar colours, and some of them, having no room anywhere but on the open deck, were clinging on for dear life. I began to get really anxious, but was greatly heartened by the sight of C.E.C. Martin, the racing motorist, Number One of 59 which had joined us at Dartmouth, standing with his back to the turret aft with his arms outstretched ‘fielding’ for any of the passengers who might begin to be bumped sternwards.
The next day we returned to Fowey and immediately received our sailing orders. ‘The Sixth Flotilla to sail forthwith for Felixstowe.’ This was exciting news indeed. Many rumours began to circulate as always on these occasions. The East Coast convoys were having a bad time; the E-boats were swarming in that area; a destroyer had been sunk and they wanted the special anti-E-boat weapon. There was some truth in these whisperings. The East Coast convoys were suffering very severely at this time and the culminating blow that cut short our working-up period and caused us to be rushed to Felixstowe, was the torpedoing of the destroyer ‘Exmoor’, at the end of February, by E-boats.
The day before we sailed, a German aircraft, in broad daylight and with no opposition, dropped mines accurately in the narrow entrance to Fowey. Aiming at bottling up the gunboats, they had done this before with success;6 but early on the morning of the 6th March, 1941, in bright winter’s sunlight, we slid out close to the high black eastern cliffs and headed for our operational base.
Of the journey round there is little that needs telling. Suffice it to say that three boats of the five that sailed from Fowey arrived after several days. Two had fallen by the wayside, at Portsmouth to be precise, but the trip had shaken the crews still further into shape.
Quite incidentally also we had been under fire as a flotilla for the first time. As we were jogging past Anvil Point in flat calm and sunshine, all five of us in tight arrowhead formation, a stick of bombs came down with a sibilant sigh, just audible above the roar of the engines, and burst in the water a hundred yards astern. None of us had seen the aircraft dip suddenly out of the clouds. I remember poking my head into the wheelhouse and asking why the W/T was oscillating so, as the bombs whistled by. This little incident drew attention to two factors concerning attack by aircraft. One that, denied the normal method of detecting the proximity of ‘planes by the sound of their engines, we should have considerable difficulty in obtaining warning of attack; the other that, even when taken by surprise, a large tight formation at speed was difficult to hit with bombs.
Two incidents remain in my mind: one, an air raid at Portsmouth. I was standing by my after turret to control the fire. Suddenly the turret of the boat alongside, 61, roared into life, its four Browning guns with their high muzzle velocity and bright tracer shattering the night air and spitting a bright path of light low across the forecastle of my boat, where several of the crew were standing. They fell flat and by the grace of God no one was hurt.
I leapt across to the turret yelling at the occupant; the only result was another terrifying burst of fire on exactly the same bearing. It was time for deeds not words. The guns did not speak again. It transpired that the quaking victim was a stoker who wrongly thought he understood the turret; he thought that you trained the guns by pressing a certain little button. Actually you fired them by so doing. A sad case of misplaced zeal.
The second incident was a good deal more alarming. While at Portsmouth we lay right inside the cats7 at Hornet. It is a very tricky place, as you have to execute a sharp one hundred and eighty degree turn round the end of the cats from the inner position to attain the outer channel, with very little sea-room to do it in. It definitely means swinging your boat by going ahead and astern respectively on your wing engines.
All five of the Sixth Flotilla were packed close together in the inner berth on the morning after our arrival, and there were several MTBs moored on the outer side of the cats. We were changing plugs on my port engine and checking magneto points on the centre. Thus it was impossible to use either of these engines in a hurry. Suddenly there was a cry of fire. One of the MTBs8 on the outer side of the cats had had an explosion in her engine room and was almost immediately ablaze from stem to stern. Several of her personnel were blown clean out of her on to the cats; it was soon clear that the fire could not be controlled. It was seen at once that we should be in grave trouble if the war-heads of the torpedoes or the air bottles of the tubes should explode. We all proceeded to start up and endeavour to get out of the inner basin as quickly as possible. Having only one engine available it was impossible to get my boat out, and being tied alongside 58, we arranged that she should try to swing both of us together out around the end of the cats to safety. It soon became apparent that she could not do it against the northerly wind blowing us all the time towards the mud on the Hornet side, where we should lie helpless, no more than one hundred feet from the blazing MTB. Every time we began to get round, another boat, manoeuvring to get out, gave us a nudge back in the wrong direction. Finally 58 gave it up, let us go, and got out of it. By this time all the others had got away and the MTB was a mass of flames burning steadily to the water line, with streams of 0.5 shells bursting out from her with the curious ‘pheet-pheet’ of unenclosed bullets igniting. The situation seemed sufficiently alarming; the heat generated round the air bottles and the war-heads was terrific, the metal was glowing a dull red. We were helpless, unable to turn with only one engine, and being blown steadily on to the mud. The only thing to do was to clear away, let go the anchor, and hope for the best. Boffin was ashore getting stores; I jumped on to the foredeck and superintended the clearing away of the anchor, casting an anxious eye from time to time at the burning hull. She was getting lower and lower, the war-heads would soon be submerged. I began to feel that all was over and we were safe. Just as we were letting go the anchor, the port engine burst into life.
‘Hold on. Stow that anchor.’
I nipped back to the controls and took her gently out, our propellers churning up thick patches of mud where we had been nearly aground.
Within three minutes we had berthed alongside the others, a cable from the blazing remains. As the order was given to stop engines there was a shattering explosion and a black cloud covered the wreck. An air bottle had exploded with one of the loudest bangs I have ever heard. Large bits of metal landed in Gunboat Yard half a mile away, and the front of Hornet was blown in, killing one Wren. It was fortunate that the casualties were no worse. We were indeed lucky. Had we not got out just three minutes before the explosion we should have been in the immediate line of the blast, which was directed across the inner basin towards Hornet.
We arrived without further incident in a thick fog, after some extremely accurate navigation by our temporary S.O., Dicky Richards in 60, and some even more dashing leadership. Doing thirty knots in the approaches to Harwich through fog patches in which you could not see the leading boat farther than half a cable, opened my eyes to things to come, and some of the chances we were later to have to take.
We were arriving at our proper theatre of war and we were glad of it. It was to prove a long struggle; a struggle not only or even primarily with the enemy, but first to understand and conquer our temperamental craft, and then to acquire the necessary equipment and discover the essential operating tactics without which success would have been impossible.
The first three boats (MGBs 60, 63 and 64) of the Sixth MGB flotilla arrived at Felixstowe on Sunday, 9 March 1941. The rest arrived in April. No one was quite sure what to do with these new boats. To say that they had been designed to fight E-boats would be significantly to exaggerate the thought that had gone into modifying their design and armament. All boats had two twin.303 inch Lewis guns, sited, amidships, while MGBs 58-60 had a 20mm Oerlikon aft. These had run out by the time MGBs 61-65 completed, resulting in their receiving a Boulton & Paul aircraft turret, with four.303 inch Browning machine guns as their main armament. Thus a degree of optimism prevailed over the size of weapon that could make much impression on such an enemy, matched by an equal amount of pessimism as to what weight of weapons such boats could carry and still attain the high speeds that were thought essential to their chance of finding and engaging the enemy. No one seems to have thought much about how the enemy were, in fact, to be located and brought to action.
The East Coast convoys had been hard pressed by E-boats throughout the autumn and winter of 1940/41. Their destroyer escorts had found it very difficult to fight off the fast moving, low silhouette German warships attacking at night. The early models of radar could do little more than give warning of an E-boat’s approach. Gunnery was not radar controlled in the sense that it would be later linked to a radar. All that a destroyer could do in those circumstances was to fire star shell in the hope of seeing the attacking E-boats. A number of destroyers had been sunk in such actions and the loss of merchant ships in convoy had been significant.
My first impression of HMS Beehive, Coastal Forces base at Felixstowe to which we were attached, were favourable. After the chaos of Fowey, where there was no proper accommodation for crews who had to live in their boats, with the town, where the officers lived, a great distance away, and repair shops and slipping facilities insofar as they existed, scattered around the harbour, the comparative compactness and comfort of Beehive was a great asset.
As I climbed up the oily gang ladder of the dock wall for the first time in the rapidly gathering gloom of a foggy winter evening, I was greeted by the First Lieutenant with the news that my crew could have accommodation ashore; I was so surprised at this that I asked him for confirmation more than once, until I called down upon myself an acid rebuke for my temerity in doubting the good news. This was followed by a good dinner in the comfortable surroundings of the RAF mess, where the naval officers were for the time being housed in the surplus accommodation provided by a beneficent Air Ministry for the ‘balloonatics’, as we called the RAF personnel looking after the Harwich balloon barrage. The dinner was made even more memorable by the quantities of port generously provided for us by the First Lieutenant who was determined to welcome us royally. And royally he did us and himself too, accompanying our libations by a magnificent if slightly incomprehensible account of the commissioning of a cruiser.
But things deteriorated pretty rapidly, at least so far as Boffin and I were concerned, in the ensuing days. We had arrived in admirable condition, except that one of our propeller shaft stern glands was leaking and required repacking. This, I now know, is an easy job and can be done without slipping the boat, but having no experience of the trouble at the time, and being advised by the base staff that the boat should be slipped for the purpose, slipped we were.
The slipping at Beehive is done by means of a giant crane lifting a cradle on to which the boat is floated. The crane driver was a notorious character by the name of Bill, the slipping party being in the charge of a remarkably tired Petty Officer, under the supreme control of the shipwright officer, Lieutenant-Commander Lillycrap, of whom more anon. The responsibility for slipping was out of my hands, so I only did what I was told. My surprise and chagrin can therefore be imagined when, after the interminable shouting and strife that always accompanied this operation, the boat finally having left the water and swinging poised in the air like an enormous cod hooked at last, it was discovered that the after chocks were taking the weight on our wing propeller shafts, and that they were bent like two gleaming long-bows. The cradle had not been correctly measured and adjusted and, in the process of finding the proper positions for the chocks empirically, we had suffered severely.
And how we suffered. Within the first seventeen days of our time at Beehive we were slipped and un-slipped no less than five times in an endeavour to correct the misalignment of shafts, stern glands and P brackets which ensued. Only a gunboat or MTB officer who has experienced these things can appreciate fully the labour and discouragement involved in all this continual slipping; taking down the mast and aerials, removing guns, de-ammunitioning the ship, and so on, with no chance to get on with our training and final working up, and all at a time when we were particularly wishing to make a good impression.
Well, we did not make a good impression, however hard we tried; just the reverse. But I have more than a suspicion that our case was largely prejudged. Had we not wavy rings on our arms?9 Was I not in command of a boat, the first RNVR to be so appointed? Naturally everything would be inefficient. What else could you expect? I am sorry to have to record that as the atmosphere surrounding us. I have already remarked upon the young RN officers, six of them in our flotilla, how well they treated us and how easy and pleasant we found it to work with them. I have invariably found it thus throughout the sea-going personnel of the Royal Navy, except on this occasion.
Led by the Captain of the base, a red-faced, paunchy individual, a retired officer with a DSO, and DSC, earned in CMBs, the Coastal craft of the last war,10 there was a clique of young RN Lieutenants in command of MTBs who thought very highly of themselves and nothing at all of their lowly brethren with wavy stripes, who were struggling to perform a difficult and serious task. There were, of course, several notable exceptions, RN officers who gave us all the help they could and treated us as their equals, but the general atmosphere was hostile. They did not make allowances for our difficulties caused by lack of knowledge and experience of a specialised nature. They were all too ready to trip us up, get us into trouble, and cast us down both mentally and physically.
This was only a passing phase and my book will have failed of its purpose if it does not faithfully record the happy co-operation that later ensued between the few RN officers retained in Coastal Forces and the ever-growing stream of RNVRs; but at the time it was a real and disappointing difficulty that we had to face.
For three or four weeks after we arrived we were not operated. I do not know why, but suspect that it was because the operational authorities at the Nore were either unaware of our existence or did not know how to try to use us. Anyway it caused us to ‘suck our teeth’ to no small tune. Day after day of suitable quiet weather passed us by and still we were not sent out.
At last they made up their minds to use us in conjunction with destroyers. At this time one method of using destroyers for defending a convoy against E-boats was to have two of them weaving up and down at twenty-two knots to seaward of the convoy during the dark hours. Using their, at that time, somewhat primitive RDF (radar) for picking up E-boats, they were able sometimes to ‘flush’ a unit of the enemy coming quietly into the attack. But being much larger than E-boats, they were nearly always seen by the latter first, who, having considerably more speed than the destroyers, disappeared forthwith making smoke, so that it was unlikely that the destroyers could do more than disturb them. The idea was to have us as, so to speak, a projection of the destroyer patrol. They would find the quarry with their RDF,11 and we, having a few knots more speed than the E-boats, would be released and sent off to chase and endeavour to destroy the enemy. The snag from our point of view was that they made the mistake of putting us between the two destroyers instead of behind both, and from the destroyers’ point of view they reckoned without our intolerable noise, which being audible for many miles, gave away the presence of the whole party to E-boats proceeding on silent engines, as they would be when approaching a convoy. Thus having plenty of audible warning the E-boats would be able to avoid the, to them, thoroughly objectionable patrol and make their attack from another quarter.
However we started out for our first operation on a lovely spring evening in early April unaware of these difficulties. The boats were Dicky Richards (SO) in 60, and Boffin and I in 64. We were to rendezvous with the two destroyers on the convoy route a few miles north of the Shipwash, and to take up station in line ahead behind the leading destroyer and followed by the second one. This meeting duly took place; we dashed into position in fine style, rather showing off our high speed to the interested crews of the destroyers, who had not seen these peculiar noisy midgets on the East Coast before.
Then began one of the most terrible ordeals of my life. It was all right while the light lasted, but as soon as it got really dark it was awful. Sometimes the second destroyer would be a decent cable or so astern, but it is very difficult for us to keep an exact throttle setting and so a constant speed, when keeping station on another ship; frequently 60 would drop slowly back, forcing me astern until the destroyer’s bows were almost overhanging my transom, all this in the dark at twenty-two knots. It was literally terrifying; the strain on one’s nerves station-keeping under these conditions was intolerable. Every now and then Richards, having ridden up a bit too close to the leading destroyer, would throttle down rather rapidly. Up we would surge and to avoid a collision swing out to port or starboard, get on to his pressure wave and ride irresistibly forward almost level with 60. This in its turn would necessitate rather violent deceleration on my part. I would drop back to clear 60’s stern and find the seemingly vast and terrifying bows of a destroyer literally overhanging my stern. To make matters worse we were continually weaving around, often turning 180 degrees, and this frequently resulted in the second destroyer nearly cutting us in half, which they would have done on occasions if we had not violently accelerated to get out of the way. All this was a tremendous nerve strain to inexperienced officers such as Boffin and myself, but there was real danger as well. The destroyer was not aware of the great likelihood of our engines or underwater gear developing some defect during a long run of this sort, so he kept up close, seeming almost to delight in menacing us. There was an almost fifty percent chance of such a breakdown in the then unreliable state of the boats and, had our speed suddenly dropped on this account, there was the extreme probability of the destroyer’s bows splitting us in half like a coconut; in such circumstances few of the ship’s company of 64 would have survived.
However we were spared this fate. The fierce drumming of our engines continued unabated. Two diminutive noisily activated cockleshells, we swept along beneath the threatening black silhouettes of the destroyers, the white waves hissing back unendingly from the beautiful lofty down-swept bow. Boffin and I managed to keep awake and alert by talking and joking in a strained sort of way, when at 0400 we began to sweep slowly to port out of the line. Remonstrances with the coxswain proved unavailing. The steering had jammed; we executed a magnificent curve out and away until the others were lost to sight. Then we stopped and examined the gear to locate the jam. This was easily done, (bottom boards had entangled themselves with the steering gear) but we had completely lost our party.
Oh, the joy of the peace and silence! We had been underway in the conditions already described since five pm the evening before. That is eleven hours on end of continuous nerve-racking tension and noise. This is nothing exceptional for an MTB or MGB officer. I have often since done as much as sixteen or nineteen hours on end under way in our little cramped dustbin, two feet six inches by five feet, subjected to the tension of station-keeping at thirty knots much of the time in the dark, where an instant’s inattention or lapse of judgement might mean disaster sudden and devastating. I am inclined to think that this is the greatest physical and mental strain that a serving officer is subjected to as a matter of normal routine. I have not flown on long bombing flights. Doubtless these can be very exhausting, but they are rarely so long, the officer is sitting in comparative comfort, he is not subjected to the intense noise and rush of cold air and often continuous spray, and above all he is not undergoing the strain of close station-keeping. The noise, vibration and flow of air remind one of an open racing car. I have raced repeatedly in the twenty-four hour race at Le Mans in a small open British car and not found it so exhausting as a bad night in a gunboat.
This feeling of utter physical and mental exhaustion has to be felt to be understood. I do not believe that the majority of people have ever experienced it. I certainly had not until I operated gunboats. The last few hours as the light makes, the tension of night station-keeping relaxed, searching the horizon for a landfall, are almost the worst of all. Though it is easier, this very fact makes it more difficult to fight off the clutching hands of sleep and, curiously, the younger men invariably nod off. Shapes appear wherever you look on the horizon, you have to tell yourself all the time: ‘I’m only seeing that’, because after you have experienced the reality you know that it is different from the images. When you are ashore and it is all over, the relaxation is complete and overwhelming. You feel quite a different person, either stupidly happy over a drink, or irritable and depressed, small difficulties seeming desperate and insurmountable. One’s natural stability is largely gone. Finally you get to bed and understand for the first time that sleep really is a vital chemical process. It literally does renew you; after ten hours you come back, a normal man again. And one other thing you have learnt, that you have been fussing unnecessarily because you have lain abed often before with sleep evading you. If you are sufficiently exhausted sleep will come, willy nilly.
Mercifully for us the destroyers did not like that devastating experiment. I suspect that the unceasing noise was not to their liking, and they guessed, no doubt, that it would give the E-boats fair warning.
Then started a grind of patrols. Flogging endlessly up and down a patrol line at either twenty-four or thirty knots, until it slowly dawned on all and sundry that this was not a good thing to do. It wore out our engines, it wore out our boats, and it was inclined to wear us out too; this maybe would not have mattered except for one decisive factor; it came to be realised that our chances of interception were almost nil. We pointed out that we could only see an E-boat a matter of a few hundred yards from a gunboat under way, but that if cut we could hear them for a very considerable distance in quiet weather, that is operational weather.
So they thought up a new method of using us. We were to go out at dusk and rendezvous with an ASDIC trawler off the convoy route in a likely position for E-boat interception. There the trawler anchored and we tied up astern. This was a delightful modus operandi, as far as we were concerned, since we could get plenty of rest, it being necessary only to have one officer on watch. It was quite a sound scheme, too, combining as it did the ability to listen for engines by ear and propellers by ASDIC.12
One of the early ‘trawler patrols’ indirectly resulted in our first brush with the enemy. It happened this way. We were lying astern of our trawler in a position 090 degrees five miles from the Aldeburgh light vessel, when reports began to come through of E-boats on the convoy route. This went on so continuously and enticingly that Howes finally decided to move up towards the area of strife. We slipped, the three of us, 60 with Howes in her leading, 59 on the starboard quarter, and 64 on the port, and sped away northward at thirty-six knots.
Presently the destroyers began to put up star shell to seaward of the convoy. We swept in a great semi-circle round the perimeter of the area lit by star shell. I shall not easily forget that run. The sea quiet, the port side of the hulls lit up by the greeny, white glare of the star shells, the wake creaming aft under the high pulsing beat of the engines opened up to their maximum continuous effort; men were on tip-toe, it seemed that the enemy must be near, and the steady fierce rush of the wind in the face kept them alert and expectant. Abruptly and yet almost unperceived the thing we were expecting was upon us; I saw a swirl of wash to port and noticed the leader going hard aport. I looked back and there it was, unforgettable and vivid in my mind now, my first sight of the enemy at sea. The moon was to the southward, astern; silhouetted in the moon’s path, about a cable astern, was the black malevolent shape of an E-boat’s bows, crossing at rights angles to our line of advance, heading for the convoy.
‘Hard aport’, the order shouted into the voice pipe was drowned by the high-pitched deafening crackle of the four Brownings aft. Edwards had got his teeth into them without hesitation. We swung round close alongside 60, opening up as we did so and gaining on her. The E-boats, there were at least three of them, were turning away, accelerating; the next moment our whole world was blotted out. We were in dense smoke doing forty knots and close alongside another boat. There was nothing to be done about it except carry on, hope for the best and aim to come out up-moon of the smoke screen. Tearing through this dense smoke cloud, unable to see even the bow of your own boat, was a harrowing experience. Luckily I remembered to give the coxswain a course at once. After what seemed like an age, actually I suppose about three minutes, the smoke began to thin, and suddenly we were out in the clear moonlight again. There was a thick line of smoke billowing away to port, looking like an ever elongating and enlarging caterpillar. Turning quickly round, I could see a black hull tearing along three hundred yards on our starboard quarter. The opportunity I had dreamed of, to have obtained adequate bearing on an E-boat for a close-in depth charge attack, seemed within my grasp.
‘Stand by to let go starboard depth charge.’
Boffin scrambled over the whaleback and dropped down close to the large drum like weapon. His head reappeared close to mine and in a horrified shout he informed me that he did not know how to set the depth charge to fire. An entirely unmoved voice replied from the wheelhouse in measured tones:
‘Press the key in and turn to the right, sir.’
The coxswain was always at his best in these moments of crisis. Boffin never again forgot how to set a depth charge!
There flashed across my mind a doubt. Was it one of our own boats? I had gone into the smoke still a little astern of 60; 59 was well back. I didn’t think it likely that I had got ahead of Howes, and I doubted if 59 could be up so close. Still better make sure. I flashed our recognition lights; back came the answering flash at once. It was 60 after all. We had led out of the smoke. I had nearly depth-charged my Senior Officer. Still we had proved one thing, the effectiveness of the display signals. No challenge and reply could have been dealt with in those conditions of high speed and necessity for split second decisions. We were ever to remember that lesson, it was invaluable to us. Through using the more correct but cumbrous procedure of the ordinary challenge and reply, two coastal force officers and one rating in another flotilla from a different base lost their lives in an engagement between two of our patrols; I am convinced that had the display signals been used this tragedy would have been avoided.
Immediately we were again enveloped in thick smoke; go where we would we were plunged in dense patches of the wretched stuff, thrashing our way eastward in pursuit of the fleeing E-boats. We none of us saw them again, though we nearly rammed and engaged 59, saved once more by the rapid use of the recognition lights.
We had all engaged them for a brief moment or two before they made smoke; they had replied, but very half-heartedly. At that close range we must have hit them to some extent, and when starting for home we had observed a large orange flash some miles to the eastward. Thinking it might be 60, who had not rejoined, we turned and went back eight miles in the direction of the explosion, but could see nothing. It was not 60 and we do not know to this day whether it was an E-boat blowing up, or what it was.
We had made a beginning. We had driven at least one unit of E-boats away from their attack and given them a fright; we were pleased at that. Howes gave the troops a speech, told the boats engaged to put up a star on their wheelhouse, which they did with enthusiasm, and the whole episode bucked the flotilla up considerably.13
It is interesting to note that Hitch’s instinctive reaction to seeing a boat he took for the enemy was to depth charge her. The Brownings they carried were an inadequate weapon for destroying an E-boat, no matter how much damage they might do to her deck personnel. The Oerlikon could damage an E-boat but 64 had only Brownings.
After completing a number of trawler patrols without further luck, we were started on another type of operation. The listening patrol having been established, it was proposed to use us for this purpose off Brown Ridge.
Brown Ridge is the only considerable bank in the southern part of the North Sea in the latitude of Lowestoft, where the bulk of the E-boat attacks took place. It was almost exactly in the centre of the sea and thus was a very suitable Tom Tiddler’s ground for the opposing forces. On account of the soundings and because there was a lighted buoy there, we were almost certain that E-boats must use this bank as a check on their navigation on the way over and even more probably on their way back. So we were sent to do listening patrols off Brown Ridge and very pleased we were, since it took us further afield. It was the thin end of the wedge towards fully fledged operations on the other side.
About this time an incident occurred that brings into sharp relief some of the difficulties we laboured under, nearly two years after the war had begun. Out of the eight boats of the flotilla three had single Oerlikons, 20 millimetre guns on a heavy mounting aft. The rest of us had four 0.303 Browning guns in the electric Bolton & Paul turret, because there were no more Oerlikons available. A heavier gun was really essential against E-boats since they had two Oerlikons and we could not expect to stop an E-boat with 0.303s. The three Oerlikons were therefore the pride of the flotilla and greatly cherished. It has been an everlasting source of wonder to me that extremely costly gunboats should be produced and run, at great expense, without making any provision for supplying them with suitable guns. It has still more surprised me to observe how, when guns were finally available, these comparatively large vessels weighing thirty-five tons should be considered incapable of carrying more than one Oerlikon and four 0.5 guns; whereas a Spitfire weighing five tons has been found capable of carrying four Oerlikons.14 The reason for this apparently inexplicable situation lies in the method of approach to the problem. The correct outlook is to treat these planing boats like aircraft, since weight is as important to them as to their airborne counterpart, but this has been beyond the capacity of DNO’s15 department. In their conception, if a single 20 millimetre gun is to be carried weighting 1 60 pounds, it is necessary to mount it on a stand weighing 1,530 pounds, instead of numerous light gun positions in the boat as part of the ship’s construction, and to carry a great weight of ammunition which is unnecessary. Thus weighted down by a needless load, our boats subjected their engines to unnecessary strain and succeeded in carrying one 20 millimetre gun only as our main armament.
Anyway, Greece at this particular moment was in the process of being evacuated, and three days before the papers announced that our troops had been got away, we received a signal ordering us to pack up our three precious Oerlikons and send them forthwith to Liverpool for shipment to the Mediterranean to assist in the evacuation of Greece.
This was a bitter blow. We felt that we had just started to achieve some results in our job. We had made our presence felt by the E-boats and were eagerly hoping for another chance soon. The removal of these three guns almost put the flotilla out of the running for ‘killing’ an E-boat for the time being. We could see fighters flying about all the time with four 20 millimetre guns in each and they had comparatively little to do in England at that time in the Spring of 1941. We felt it hard that the success we were trying so diligently for should be jeopardised for the sake of three guns which could by no conceivable chance arrive in time to help the evacuation of Greece, though doubtless after weeks of cold storage in transit they might be of use to ships in the Mediterranean. We had the E-boats there and then on our doorstep and we thought our job of sharing in the protection of the convoys an important one.
There was no appeal; our guns went. We were determined not to be defeated. Dicky Richards, Boffin and I started a predatory search for fire arms. We combed the local gun stores. There was nothing available. We had high hopes of the nearby aerodrome at Martlesham, where they had some thirty or forty Hispano guns which they were fitting into Hurricanes, four in each. We tried to persuade them that one gunboat flotilla was more important than one Hurricane; that all we needed was four of these guns; and it would be possible to have four without lowering the operational efficiency of the fighters, because there must always be at least one ‘plane being serviced whose guns we could have. We even considered the possibility of salvaging, surreptitiously, four guns from a Hurricane that had just recently crashed in the water near Walton. But they would not, or could not, listen to us.
They did one thing, however. They put us in touch with a secret experimental depot at Orfordness. Thither we repaired to be greeted suspiciously by some civilian scientists. We were naval officers no doubt but our story seemed almost too incredible. During the second year of the war, a gunboat flotilla and no guns!
But our persistence and obvious sincerity slowly made its impression. Gradually suspicion changed to pained interest and finally to active co-operation. They were good fellows those scientists. Their job was to test our machine guns and ammunition with similar guns and ammunition captured from the Germans against German armour, with a view to improving the penetrative power of our shells. They took a chance on us and lent us four guns, the only weapons they could possibly spare. One was a whopping great 38 millimetre single-shot COW16 gun (two-pounder); one was a 20 millimetre Hispano, just what we wanted; the other two were old Vickers 0.5s. We returned in triumph. We built a special cradle for the COW gun and mounted it on the Oerlikon pedestal in 60. The Hispano was installed in 59 and one of the 0.5s in the place of the Oerlikon removed from 58. As one of the leaders of the search party, I got the spare 0.5 and set it up on a little tripod in the bows of my boat. This was early proof of the operational officer’s opinion that a gun forward could be used effectively and was badly required. We had nothing with which to shoot forward. The more knowledgeable personnel ashore, who decided these things, did not share this opinion but it was subsequently proved to be correct by the success of the two-pounder mounted forward in the later seventy-one-footsix inch MGBs.
Thus the Sixth Flotilla went to sea again, with its guns motley but its ardour undiminished. Shortly afterwards plans for a proper rearmament of the flotilla were arranged. After considerable consultation it was decided that all boats should be refitted, as the material became available, with a single Oerlikon aft in place of the Boulton & Paul turret, and with two power worked Frazer-Nash turrets mounting two Vickers 0.5 guns in each. These power turrets were to be placed on either side of the ‘dustbin’, replacing the twin Lewis guns, previously the only side armament. Boats were to go one or two at a time to Brightlingsea to be dealt with. 63 went first, early in April, and was kept for an unconscionable time; 61 went next, then 62, finally 64 in mid-July.
The early summer drew on, with a continual run of patrols, though little further incident. Even if few excitements befell us at this time, there was always the fascination of the boats. Life then was not altogether easy for us at the base, and for that reason we enjoyed our sea time the more. To get out on one’s own in the North Sea beyond the convoy route, to know that for the next twelve hours at any rate you were your own master, within the limits of the operation ordered; to see a North Sea sunset and a North Sea dawn, to feel the rush of cool air in one’s face as the little boats creamed over the smooth sea; these were circumstances of never-failing delight, never to be forgotten.
Alan Gotelee, another rather elderly solicitor, arrived in 65 with a Canadian, George Duncan, as his first lieutenant. Otherwise of this period, the period up to the time that my boat went away to be rearmed and I came back to take over the flotilla under a new Captain, I have little more to say. But there were a few patrols that deserve comment. The first was an air-sea rescue trip.
There had been a fairly strong northerly wind which had died away, leaving a long bumpy swell. We were all busy at ten o’clock in the morning, cleaning guns, checking W/T, testing steering and compass lights, all the usual preparations in anticipation of a job that night. Suddenly a shout along the dockside.
‘All gunboats prepare for sea forthwith.’
A quick look round, a word with the coxswain and motor mechanic, and I knew that we were ready. Howes was coming along the dockside; I reported all ready to him. He said:
‘Right. You take 64, 60 and 62 with you. Slip as quickly as you can. Get your clothes and come to SOO’s17office for orders.’
I gave a few brief orders to Boffin and the coxswain, and ran up for my seagoing gear, which included my old Guernsey. I had had that old blue jersey since I was a boy. It had been with me on all my more adventurous sailing trips. I had worn it always at sea throughout the first year of the war in a minesweeper and at Dunkirk, and I had begun to look on it as my lucky mascot. Sailors are notoriously superstitious; there is something about the risks at sea and the fact that luck plays so large a part in the success or failure of any seaman’s activities, that lends itself to the development of this way of thinking. Be that as it may, by this time I was firmly convinced of the importance to me of this old jersey, and I would not have gone to sea without it unless utterly impossible to do otherwise.
I remember rushing down, donning my garments, and speculating as to the cause of this unexpected and urgent call. SOO had our orders ready. We were to search for five airmen, the crew of a large bomber, who had been in the sea now for three days and nights. The HSLs (high speed launches), the RAF air-sea rescue launches, had been out after them all this time, but had had no joy so far, in spite of aircraft reports of the men’s position. So the gunboats had been called in. It was a challenge to take up.
The engines were running, splitting the silence in the confined space of the dock. We jumped aboard.
‘Good luck’, from Howes.
‘Let go’.
‘Ahead port’.
The boats were gliding to sea, accelerating, the engines throbbing louder and louder, until they attained a steady roar as we settled down to thirty-four knots in open water. This was my first chance to study the chart and consider the position given to us.
‘What a hell of a long way’, was my first comment.
The little cross I had marked on the chart was to the north-east of Cromer, right out in the North Sea, one hundred and fifty miles away.
We were out on the convoy route and at thirty-four knots were bumped considerably in the northerly swell. We had a long run up the coast before we left the convoy route; this would give us a good opportunity of checking the accuracy of courses by the buoys. The effect of bumping on the compass can throw the course out by many degrees. It was a matter of care and judgement to ascertain the exact compass course to steer in bumpy conditions in order to make good any required course. I remember swearing to myself, as I studied the tidal streams in relation to the direction of the wind and swell, that I would put everything I had got into the navigation. Did not five men’s lives depend upon finding that little cross, or such other little crosses as we might be given to reach?
On we roared. We left the convoy route and our last navigational aids. We ate our sandwiches. I told the coxswain that everything depended upon the accuracy of his steering. He stuck to the wheel all through that day. He was a magnificent helmsman. At 1300 we received a signal ordering us to sweep a line a little ahead of where we then were, to a position fifteen miles away from our original goal. They were evidently getting aircraft plots of the men. We were told there were reports of two rubber dinghies. The buzz spread from the W/T cabin and interest quickened. We altered course slightly and spread to visibility distance, thus covering a searching lane of at least fifteen miles.
Presently 62 flashed Harry, meaning a breakdown. We had a long way to go yet and probably many hours of searching before us; we had to retain our speed and could not afford to keep a boat with two engines only and a speed of eighteen knots. I ordered her to return independently. On we went at our thirty-four knots; our search was reduced to a ten mile strip.
At 1500 we reached the second position ordered and stopped. I considered what to do next as 60 closed. The obvious thing seemed to be to proceed to the position originally ordered, which was fifteen miles away, in case it had been the right one. Suddenly there was a shout from Punton, the leading stoker, aft.
‘Making water fast, sir’.
This was unpleasant news. We were a long way from home. I went to inspect. There was no doubt about it. The starboard P bracket had broken its retaining bolts; the propeller, on the unsupported shaft, was being allowed to swing up against the boat, and had cut a hole the size of a dinner plate in the bottom. The after compartment was flooding rapidly; if the bulkhead to the engine room failed, nothing could save the boat. The only hope was to keep her going fast, so that the self-bailers acting by the suction of the boat’s speed through the water, and helped by the lift of the hull when planing, could keep the water level down.
‘Start up’.
I explained the situation to 60 by semaphore and moved off, accelerating to thirty knots, shaping a course for the original position. We couldn’t give up the search at this stage with five men, maybe quite close, in the drink. We kept an anxious eye on the after compartment. It kept a steady level of water, about eighteen inches deep, as long as we retained our speed.
We spread again and continued our search. Three aircraft came over, took a look at us and passed ahead in the direction in which we were going. They did not seem to know where to go either, and gave us no lead, such as we had hoped for. We were within a mile or two of my first little cross, or so I reckoned. I was wondering what to do next, as we could not stop, when the problem was solved for me by a further signal from the Nore.
‘Proceed to position –.’
Eagerly I plotted my third little cross. It was thirty-five miles away in exactly the reverse direction to that in which we were proceeding. Round we wheeled. Anxiously I checked the tide. We had been under way now for six hours and had covered some one hundred and eighty miles. Could we keep our DR accurate?
‘What are you steering, Coxswain?’
‘South 74 east, sir.’
‘Make it 76.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
Well, I couldn’t do more than check the figures and sea conditions as carefully as possible.
We were joined by an HSL, which hove over the horizon coming on opposite courses. She asked permission to join up with us, as she had lost herself. I agreed, spread her on my port side, 60 being stationed to starboard, and gave her my estimated position. On we went. The men were silent now. They had had a tiring time already, keeping their eyes skinned; the first excitement and enthusiasm was wearing off. Mercifully our starboard prop kept going and the water held its level, though I was expecting to have trouble with the shaft at any moment.
We received another signal.
‘After completing existing sweep, search for fifty miles 270 degrees.’
Another fifty miles to the west, and then one hundred and eighty miles home. Christ! Would the boat stand it? That meant another seven or eight hours running at thirty knots. We should have to go into Lowestoft. Lucky we started with a high fuel load. We were getting near to the end of the run down to the third little cross. A mile and a half to go.
‘Object in the water fine on the port bow, sir.’
It was the port Lewis gunner who saw it first. Eagerly we scanned the sea. Yes! There it was, and it was a rubber dinghy too. We rushed towards it, slowing as we neared. There were no signs of airmen, though. As we slid alongside we saw the tragedy at a glance. There was one man in the dinghy. He had evidently fainted from wounds and exhaustion, and had slid down into the base of the dinghy, which had a foot of water in it. His head had fallen back and was under water. He was dead. The excitement was gone. Sailors are quickly moved from cheerful anticipation to depression. Everyone was silent.
‘Signal the HSL to pick up this dinghy. We will continue the search.’
The telegraphist passed the signal. The HSL had special gear for picking up purposes and anyway we could not stop, as already our after compartment was filling dangerously. We moved on. I looked round for 60. I had stationed her three miles on my starboard beam. She was slowing up. Yes, definitely, and beginning to flash.
‘Am closing dinghy with four airmen in.’
A cheer went up when this was announced. I called for the R/T phone and made contact with 60 that way.
‘Are the airmen alive?’ I asked.
‘Yes, why?’ came back the surprised reply.
I realised then what a silly question it was; but our recent disappointment had made me cautious.
‘Have you seen another dinghy?’ came from Richards. ‘Airmen inform us that their captain was wounded and put in one dinghy by himself for comfort. Dinghy broke away last night and was seen drifting to the northward.’
I told him of our discovery. A pause.
‘Did you say he was dead?’ from 60.
One could imagine the survivors’ anxious query.
‘Yes.’
I closed and circled 60 while they were getting the men aboard. There was nothing more to wait for. We set course for home and sent a signal informing the Nore of our success. I congratulated Curtis on his steering and felt rewarded for my special care over the navigation, or was it luck? Mostly luck, in matters of this sort and we had indeed been lucky. Each boat had brought up one dinghy right ahead.
We had an uneventful run back in a beautiful flat calm summer’s evening. The glossy surface of the water was broken at one point by numerous bits of floating wreckage, black and ominous against the golden sheen of the sea gilded by the setting sun. 60 sent a signal.
‘Am running out of oil, have you any to spare?’
The motor mechanic was consulted and said that he could let them have five gallons.
‘We can let you have five gallons. Will this do?’ was flashed back.
‘Yes, just’ came the reply.
But we could not stop. How to transfer the oil at thirty knots? The motor mechanic hit on a bright idea. He put it in an old ten-gallon drum and sealed the top. Over it went, and 60 stopped and picked it up while we circled. The only other distinct memory I have of the return journey is of Boffin and I sipping sherry with extreme enjoyment as we neared the Shipwash. We had had nothing to eat or drink since our sandwiches at noon – it was then nine in the evening; that sherry tasted very good. The first time we had had a drink on our bridge.
We had sent a signal requesting to be slipped immediately on arrival. We roared up to the examination vessel, who made his usual signal, ‘stop’. He must have been somewhat astonished to receive our reply, as we swept round him in a large circle at thirty knots.
‘If I stop I sink. Request permission to enter.’
The assent came at once; in a few minutes we were in and over the slipping cradle. We had done twelve hours under way at thirty knots and over, seven and a half of them with a large hole in our bottom, and the starboard prop shaft, unsupported, describing weird and wonderful arcs beneath. Even if we did have breakdowns in our highly strung little boats, is it to be wondered at that we grew to be very fond of them?
We had been very lucky. Lucky to find the men at once, and lucky to get back all that way with the boat in this condition. That good fortune, the secret of which I hoped lay in my old jersey, had not failed me this time.
We kept many morning rendezvous at Brown Ridge, hoping to meet the E-boats returning at dawn. Howes achieved this on one occasion with 61 and 59. They were on their way home when they saw high-speed boats approaching. Realising they must be E-boats as they were heading east, Howes turned round and started to cut them off. There were two of them, one larger than the other. They joined battle proceeding to the eastward at thirty-seven knots. Exactly what happened I do not know, but 59’s engines early gave out and she dropped behind. Howes held on until almost in sight of the enemy coast, but his 0.303 weapons were unable to inflict serious damage on the enemy and soon jammed, whereas the E-boats began to cause him considerable discomfort with their two Oerlikons. He had to turn back in the end, with only one Lewis gun firing. At that the E-boats turned too and it looked for a moment as if they were coming after him.
‘I took the lowest view of that,’ he said in his humorous way, ‘as my engines were pretty well red hot, and the Browning barrels drooping with exercise. Luckily they changed their minds.’
I met him when he got back. He was very disappointed, but there was nothing else he could have done. He had a few minor casualties and a great number of shell holes in his boat, but luckily no very serious damage. Considering the unfair odds in armament he did remarkably well to chase them away.
Soon after this we started to go over to the other side for patrols, to back up the MTBs and look for convoys. At this time there seemed to be practically no shipping on the Dutch coast at night. Neither the MTBs nor ourselves ever found anything except a very occasional fishing vessel. We often found ourselves quite close to the other shore at dawn due to some delay or other and, as SO of the unit, I used to wonder what I should do if we suddenly sighted German destroyers. With only 0.303 and a depth-charge there would be only one proper course of action in daylight. To keep clear and shadow, reporting the enemy’s position, course and speed. But I was sufficiently inexperienced then to think it was my duty to attack whatever the odds, and I believe we should have tried a depth-charge attack if the situation had arisen. The problem used to bother me a lot because I realised it would be virtual suicide; yet was it not my duty? Luckily the chance never came, otherwise foolhardiness, born of lack of experience, might have ended many lives prematurely and unnecessarily.
On another occasion, near the Dutch coast, heavy British bombing raids were taking place. We were patrolling slowly on a flat calm sea; the night dark and moonless. Every now and then there would be bright orange flashes to starboard followed by tremendous thuds as heavy bombs landed in Holland. Suddenly a large plane, travelling from east to west, flew low over us with flames coming out of her exhausts, an intermittent popping and banging audible above the drone of our engines. There was a poignant pause. We all realised something was very wrong with her. Forty seconds later there was a crash a mile or so to port, followed instantaneously by a bright flash of flame and a horrible report.
There was no need for comment; we turned to port and opened up. Within three minutes we were on the spot. Large bits of floating wreckage surrounded us. Tanks, bits of fuselage, clothing, pieces of wing, and a half-blown-up rubber dinghy. This latter we investigated at once and hauled aboard 64 with some difficulty, all lending a hand. Of the crew of that plane we found no trace, or rather, alas, only one trace. That dinghy was covered in entrails, and the smell, a deathly smell, clung to our hands in an uncanny manner. I remember washing and scrubbing for days afterwards before I could get rid of all traces.
At the time we were much distressed. The plane was clearly British. In a matter of seconds five brave men, living, warm and happy like ourselves, had been dashed to destruction, almost within our reach; now there was nothing left, nothing but a contaminating smell. Such experiences happen all too often in war to many; it was not my first. Nevertheless they cannot but have a sobering effect. We set sadly home with our pathetic remnants, honouring afresh the men who nightly risked such a fate.
Hitch ends this chapter of his book at the point at which the Sixth MGB Flotilla had essentially completed its novitiate. Officers and men had learnt how to operate their boats and had started to form sound theories about the best way to find the enemy and bring them to action. Very little had been achieved beyond morale raising skirmishes but the illustration of Peter Howes’ pursuit of two E-boats with a single gunboat, armed with nothing heavier than 0.303 guns, and most of them temporarily out of action, illustrates the extraordinary esprit de corps of the Royal Navy generally and the young men in Coastal Forces in particular. So does Hitch’s theorizing of how he would have had to tackle a German destroyer in daylight, had he had the misfortune to meet one. In spite of the inadequacy of the boats and their weapons there was a determination to reaffirm the Royal Navy’s control of the Narrow Seas after the German Navy had bid to seize it in the wake of the fall of France.
This time also marked the point at which most of the regular Royal Navy lieutenants were being withdrawn from Coastal Forces and sent to larger ships where their professional training was of far greater value in those infinitely more complex vessels and weapon systems. Their places were being taken steadily by young reserve officers, most of them fresh out of a few weeks of training, who had to be rapidly forged into competent seamen, navigators and, ultimately, commanding officers.