Chapter Eight

Sixth Flotilla July – November 1941

Hitch had almost completed the rearmament of MGB 64 at Brightlingsea in July 1941 when he was telephoned by Peter Howes:

His voice came sharp and incisive over the line:

‘Hullo, Hitch. I’m going on a long signals course, starting at the beginning of September. I think you’re the right man to take over the flotilla; will you?’

‘Can’t you get out of it?’ I temporised.

The idea of losing Howes, with his strong personality and powers of leadership, seemed devastating. I was happy enough commanding a unit at sea, but the idea of taking on all the strife ashore was an altogether different matter. In a flash I remembered how often I had been sheltered in matters large and small behind the secure barrier of his responsibility as Senior Officer.

‘No. Not a hope. I’ve tried everything. It’s bloody.’ The staccato sentences drove home the full realisation like hammer blows.

I said nothing. All the difficulties, the responsibilities, my own lack of knowledge and incompetence in many matters of naval routine, the mere fact of having to follow in the footsteps of such a firebrand as Howes, above all certain difficulties with the Base Captain, these things revolved desperately before my mind like a kaleidoscope of bad dreams.

‘Well, will you take it on?’ The voice was insistent. I must make an instantaneous decision, a decision that would certainly vitally affect the rest of my naval career.

Could I cope with it? I did not know the answer, but I knew deep down that it was cowardice and therefore a fatal mistake to refuse additional responsibility and work, provided I thought I understood my job in its essentials.

‘All right, I will,’ I said. ‘Good. See you in a few days.’

There was a faint click as he replaced the receiver. I was committed. All too quickly Howes’ last ten days passed. The weather was rough and 64 was being re-engined in the hangar. There was only one trip and that was disastrous. There had been a big bombing raid and several returning planes had crashed in the North Sea. Though it was blowing hard from the south-west the gunboats were ordered out to search early one morning. Howes took four boats and, as he was going down wind on the way out, he went further than he had realised, and when he turned back into it, he had a hell of a passage home. They came in at midday soaked to the skin; three out of the four boats were ‘gash’;¹it was many weeks before they were running again.

Howes left at the end of August, departing in a blaze of glory and with his large blue Bentley stuffed to the hatches with luggage. Just before he left he was awarded a D.S.C., fully merited. His attitude towards this was accurately summed up in his remark to me when I first saw him wearing the ribbon and went up to congratulate him:

‘Well someone’s got to hoist it for the flotilla.’

He had worked hard, fought three engagements with inadequate weapons, and given gunboats their only sound start. We were all sorry to see Howes go, I most of all. I had a natural shrinking feeling at the thought of stepping into his shoes. He had held the centre of the stage so completely and so fittingly, he was so much liked and respected by the sailors as well as the officers that I realised it would be difficult to follow on, particularly as I had not that je ne sais quoi, that inexpressible something, that goes, or is supposed to go, with straight stripes.

Though we did not know it, the wavy stripes were at the dawn of their day. Howes had handed over to an RNVR, showing that he at least had an open mind. The first Captain of the base had handed over to Commander Kerr, who had a still more open one. We had got on well with our RN officers, but most of them were leaving now. Whitehead and Dixon went, and very soon Johnson also to command the Fourth Flotilla. They were replaced by RNVRs, mostly our early first lieutenants.

Hitch was appointed Senior Officer in command of the Sixth MGB Flotilla on 25 August 1941 and was promoted to lieutenant commander the following month. He was the first RNVR officer to be promoted to Senior Officer of a flotilla. He then set out to form the officers and men into the most effective fighting unit that he could contrive. In this he had the full backing of his new Base Captain, Tommy Kerr, who had taken command at the end of July 1941. Kerr was an avuncular commander RN, brought back from retirement when the war started, who therefore cared not what their lordships thought of him but cared a great deal for the success and safety of the young men whom he was there to support and serve, and send out to fight the enemy. Everybody who served under Tommy Kerr liked him. His tall, thin, angular figure was always to be seen on the pier head at Felixstowe when the boats went to sea, waving them goodbye, and he would be there when they limped back, as so often they did, tired, strained and, all too often, with their dead and wounded. He never failed to support Hitch in his demands for changes in motor gunboat armament, invariably resisted by the Admiralty until proven beyond all reasonable doubt and perhaps further than that. He also turned a blind eye to young RNVR officers who did not always comply with King’s Regulations and Admiralty Instructions but got on with the war in their own enthusiastic but unorthodox ways. Perhaps he felt that they had enough to learn about the sea and the enemy without worrying too much about less urgent matters such as their dress, their discipline, and even their tendency to intoxication when not required for duty.

Indeed these young RNVR officers, some of them now captaining their boats for the first time, had much to learn. Most had only been in the Navy for between twelve and fifteen months and none for more than two years. They had a fair idea about how the Navy did things by then, even if they didn’t always agree with it, but how to handle their highly strung little warships in order to bring them into battle with the enemy still required a great deal of practice before success would come. When motor gunboats had first been designed there had been no tactical doctrine as to how they should be handled. It was the development of this doctrine that was perhaps Hitch’s greatest contribution to the success of his own flotilla and ultimately, by example, to all other MGBs in service. Hitch was all too aware that the Navy was none too sure that seventy-foot fast motor gunboats were the answer to the E-boat challenge. Their record to date had been indifferent at best, their unreliability notorious, and such success as they had achieved in deterring E-boat attacks on coastal convoys hard to prove in the absence of sunk or captured enemy. Hitch became aware that official thinking about the replacement of the first generation of MGBs was moving to larger but slower motor gunboats, capable of carrying heavier armament, ultimately to be known as the ‘D’ or Dog class. Hitch did not agree. More of that later in his own words.

There still also remained at this stage of the war doubts about the basic competence of RNVRs in command, with their undisciplined ways and lack of experience. The resentment felt by men of Hitch’s age, over thirty and with two years of hard warfare behind them, to the assumption of innate superiority by those with regular commissions comes out again and again in his book and his diaries. Probably it would have evaporated with time, as it did for most other RNVR officers who survived the war and look back on their time in the Royal Navy with deep affection and great respect for their regular colleagues. After all, by the end of the war over 85 per cent of all officers in the Royal Navy were either RNVR or RNR so that it was hard to feel one was the underdog in a world dominated by one’s own kind. In 1941, however, that feeling lingered on in spite of the support from men like Tommy Kerr, and the small number of sea-going regular naval officers remaining in Coastal Forces. RNVR officers who suffered from a tenuous grasp of KR and AIs, with the resulting bruises from conflict with authority, were inclined snidely to refer to straight stripers as ‘state educated’, an allusion to the fact that Dartmouth was a government school in an era when the self confidence of the men who had attended public schools or the great independent grammar schools caused them to joke about their social equals in the Navy enjoying a subsidised education. ‘State educated types’ were particularly those RN officers who enjoyed quoting regulations at their irregular colleagues.

Hitch felt the weight of responsibility as the first RNVR Senior Officer of an MGB flotilla. If his inexperience led him into manifest error, would that close off the same opportunity for other equally suitable candidates for the role?

Though Howes undoubtedly left me a fine legacy in the Sixth Flotilla he also left a trail of difficulties. Most of the COs went with him. This left me with a set of new officers, admittedly officers I knew since they were our original first lieutenants, but untried in command of boats. Then the boats themselves were in the most unfortunate condition. 65 was away rearming, 62 had been sunk (more of this later), 67 was undergoing lengthy repairs to her bow as a result of collision with 62, 58, 59 and 61 were all out of action for some time as a result of damage received in the recent rough trip looking for airmen. This left me with 64, 60 and 63 only, one of which was always sure to be out with minor defects. The flotilla had never failed to produce a unit when required; I particularly did not want it to fail immediately after I had taken over.

More important than this there was a malaise spreading through the flotilla. Most of the more go ahead and keen officers were getting unsettled and were on the verge of applying for a transfer to destroyers, or some other branch of the Navy, where they considered that they were more likely to see action. This was due to several causes. The breaking down of the boats, the long spell, over two months, without any contact with the enemy or seemingly any likelihood of it, chiefly due to the fact that the E-boats were not operating in the North Sea at that time of year, a growing doubt as to whether the boats ever would be efficient enough tactically and materially to do their job. The immense difficulty in catching the E-boats coupled with the unreliability of our boats was becoming apparent and disaffecting many even enthusiastic spirits.

Perhaps Hitch’s greatest challenge at this time was the maintenance of his boats in a state fit for operations. He was quick to acknowledge the important part played by those who supported him in this crusade.

At the other end of the scale was Chief E.R.A. Pavey, the Sixth Flotilla Engine Room Artificer; a wiry, humorous faced little man with twinkling eyes. How that man worked. He never relaxed. No make and mend,²no weekend leave, no pipe down³at 1600 for him. No nonsense about his work; no sticking to the letter of the law and so holding a boat back from sea. The boats were wanted. They kept on coming in with trouble. They must be repaired somehow and got to sea again. Hours of labour in hot engine rooms, upside down with his head in the bilges, sweat pouring down his face, his bottom as like as not against a hot manifold. Pavey was no chicken. He stuck to it and he made those boats work.

At that stage of the war, making the boats operate reliably had marginally higher priority than fighting the battle with the Admiralty to get them more effective weapons and reduce the noise they made. In turn, both these struggles were pointless unless the problem of finding the enemy, other than by pure chance, could be solved in those pre-radar days, or rather before radars were fitted to small Coastal Forces’ warships.

Howes’s departure, followed soon after by the rest of the RN officers, created an inevitable disturbance which Hitch sought to settle in his own way by regularly bringing his officers together to discuss what they should be doing to train their crews and prepare their boats to fight the enemy.

I can remember so well our evening discussions in the tiny wardroom in one of our boats, working out over a bottle of port the details of operation Fanny or dwelling, somewhat optimistically no doubt, upon the great possibilities opened up by mine laying trips far afield.

The officers of the flotilla were to be all RNVR from this time on; the boats were manned as follows. I had 64 still, Campbell took command of 67, and Head was my first lieutenant. Sub-Lieutenant Cowley, a Manxman, late first lieutenant of 61, had 58. 60 went first to a Canadian called Kirkpatrick and after a short while to Sub-lieutenant Ronald Carr. David James, late first lieutenant of 63, got 61 and George Duncan took over 65 from Gotelee, who wanted a larger boat and went to the first D Class MGB to be built.

I have said little of the crews as yet. Individuals have been mentioned, but no generalisations. Our gunboat crews fall into two periods and categories. The early period when we had a majority, or at least a healthy sprinkling, of active service⁴hands, and the later days, starting from the time I took over the flotilla, when any new crews arriving were entirely ‘Hostilities Only’⁵personnel, in many cases men who had never been on the sea.

The ‘Hostilities Only’ crews were truly amazing. They were so keen to do their share in downing the Nazis that they could be knocked into good crews in a matter of weeks. Raw boys, from the machine shops, the lathes, the potteries, the railways, the farms, they put up with that most dreadful of scourges, sea-sickness, in smelly engine rooms and stuffy W/T cabins, and they acquitted themselves like seasoned men in the face of the enemy.

But in the early days we had mostly active service men. I had some particularly good ones in my boat. I have mentioned Punton before, my leading stoker. He was a tiger. He had been in MTBs in China before the war. His one idea was to get to sea and at the enemy if possible. I wish he could have been with us later, when his wish would have been fulfilled. The way that man sweated in an engine-room, with a temperature of one hundred and ten degrees, undergoing muscle-aching contortions, changing a set of plugs in order to keep 64 available, was a sight to inspire a cynic.

Perhaps the most serious element of the new training regime introduced by Hitch was the need to establish tactical doctrine so firmly in the minds of all officers that, when presented with the opportunity for action in a fast moving and confusing situation at night, they would be of one mind as to how to tackle it. Again he describes how he went about this.

As the reconstituted flotilla settled down, I introduced one other element in our communal life, which was to be a success and prove of value to us. It was known as ‘the tactical talk’. It originated in this way.

Shortly before Howes had given up the flotilla, while 64 was still at Brightlingsea, there had been a slight disaster. A unit had gone to sea consisting of 62, 60 and 67. They were going over to the other side. 62 was leader. When nearing the Dutch coast they had suddenly come upon a small fishing boat under sail. They had closed at speed and 60, the nearside boat, getting excited, had forged ahead and opened fire. The leader, realising that here was no fair game for a gunboat, had called off his ships and ordered them to follow him, at the same time turning away to starboard. In the resulting confusion 67 had rammed 62 severely, knocking in her bow to a distance of several feet and damaging her so seriously that she rapidly filled with water and had to be abandoned. Her crew were taken off and she was sunk by gunfire. Such accidents must inevitably happen when operating fast boats at night in war conditions, with no lights and often in the presence of the enemy. But in this case I considered that the accident was largely due to the fact that there had been no prearranged plan for dealing with the eventuality that had arisen, namely the discovery of a small and inoffensive fishing vessel. 60 had been too hasty in attacking and had thereby caused the confusion. She could not be censured however as everything was left to the initiative of the C.O. and he could justly claim that he was exercising his initiative, albeit somewhat mistakenly.

I had always been of the opinion that a mistake was being made in not having pre-arranged plans for dealing with different situations. Hard and fast rules could not be laid down, but the best method of attempting to deal with the various types of enemy craft that might be met could be discussed and postulated and the different COs would then at least know upon what lines the leader would probably be thinking. I was determined to formulate some clearly defined plans of attack and tactical dispositions. With this in view I decided to have a weekly meeting of all the officers in my flotilla, to discuss these matters and work out our schemes and, because originally our idea was to get at the correct form of tactics for our warfare, we called it the ‘tactical talk’.

I think it was one of the most useful training developments we had. In the early talks we got out our first clearly defined forms of attack to meet all the situations we could visualise. In some instances our original ideas proved to be wrong, but we had made a start. As we fought and gained experience, and talked with others who had done likewise both in this war and the previous one, we amended and altered tactics until we arrived at a really sound fighting technique. I can affirm unhesitatingly that the tactical talk helped very considerably towards this end. It not only got us together and allowed of everyone’s ideas being put forward and considered; it enabled any officer, however junior, to air his grievances or put forward his query in open counsel. It is said that Nelson’s captains were a ‘band of brothers’. Though on a humble and undistinguished scale, we were also such a band, and without a doubt it contributed much to our success.

It was frequently frustrating for both officers and men to work with the delicate instruments they were supplied with. An MGB was, at that stage of the war, little more than a fast pleasure craft turned into a miniature warship by adding light armament which, though inadequate in the early stages of the war to stop E-boats, still tended to stress their hulls more than their original design allowed for. These fast, lightly built, high-powered boats, handled by men with little prior experience of the sea or marine petrol engines, were inevitably going to have more than their fair share of troubles. Hitch’s strong sense that they must never fail to respond to the call for an operation put even greater stress on both men and machinery, raising the risk of breakdown, often as not at a critical moment.

Though we slowly pulled ourselves together mentally as a flotilla again, we had no luck with the material and physical side of operating until the action of the 19th/20th November. The two or three boats that we could muster were always on the edge of breakdowns because they could not be spared for maintenance. On one occasion we started out with three boats to act as an escort for the minelaying MLs off the Hook of Holland, one dropped off a few miles from the Harwich boom, another twenty minutes later, just as we were heading east from the convoy route.

I was angry by this time, all the more determined that the Sixth should not fail to carry out a patrol when ordered. 64 went on alone and a few minutes later the telegraphist reported that our W/T set had broken down beyond repair. Thus alone and out of touch we carried out our patrol off the Hook. It was a case of anger rather than wisdom and during the later and more lonely watches of the night I rather regretted my decision; but the Sixth had not failed to obey orders.

Soon after, on a rather rough night, 63 carried away both her wing

engine pendulastics.⁶In the sea that was running her centre engine alone could not drive her fast enough to retain suction on the salt water pumps, so that engine over-heated and had to be stopped. Helpless, she had to obtain towing assistance and was ultimately taken into Lowestoft by a trawler.

The worst trouble we encountered resulted from rough weather trips in October. They gave valuable experience as to the capabilities of our boats, but were incredibly unpleasant and frightening at the time.

The first was brought about by an air-sea rescue trip. The unfortunate crew of a bomber crashed into the sea twenty miles from the Dutch coast halfway between Flushing and the Hook. It was at night and there had been a very strong westerly wind which had eased to force five or six. The sea was piling up on the Dutch coast and it was not known whether the crew survived the crash. All that had been received was a W/T signal just before the bomber had landed in the water, giving an approximate position and calling for help.

The only boats that could possibly make it were the gunboats; they were sent. It was bright moonlight and we were going down wind. As we drew away from the land at thirty knots the seas began to mount and break, the boats to swoop and stagger in their flight. I looked apprehensively at the little white ensign at our yard arm. It was flying out stiffly ahead. We were doing thirty knots. That meant a thirty-five to forty mph wind. Not good enough, I thought, and looked still more apprehensively at the rising seas. The boats were beginning to surge badly now; drawing up sharply as the stern lifted to a steep following sea, the engines grinding and jarring as the revs came down despite their thousands of horse-power driving and thrusting the hull into the hollow of the wave. The next moment, like a racing car released by the starting gun, they would be hurtling forward at what seemed to be break-neck speed, on the foaming crest of a wave, the entire forward half of the boat clear of the water and the spray flying mast high from the wide thrown bow wave.

The decision whether to go on or not in circumstances such as these is one of the most difficult I have had to face. To go on close to the enemy coast with a strong on-shore wind and sea was to risk our boats seriously. The return journey, banging into the waves, imposes the severest strain on hulls and machinery; it is the time when engines, transmission or underwater gear are likely to go, and it is likewise the time when, if any of these do fail, the boat and crew would be lost. Also, the chances of seeing a rubber dinghy in those conditions, assuming there was one to be seen, were about a thousand to one.

But there might be men in a dinghy, their condition branded itself upon the imagination like a cruel vision, without hope except for our efforts. There was no passing the responsibility. Unless we tried no one else would or could. Moreover going down wind with a bright moon we had, comparatively speaking, good visibility. There was just that outside chance of seeing something, if we took the risk.

We kept on. As we neared the Dutch coast the big seas were piling up, steep precipitous declivities with angry breaking crests. The ‘climbing’ (as we called the laboured struggle of the boat from the trough to the summit of the wave) and the forward surging was becoming intensely pronounced, making station keeping a matter of great difficulty and danger. At one moment a following boat might swoop right by, as the leader struggled up the back of a wave, at another he might be dropped two or three cables astern as the other lurched madly forward on a steep irresistible pinnacle. When it is realised that it was impossible to prevent the boats yawing between an arc of thirty to forty degrees, the grave danger of collision will be appreciated. Collision in those conditions must almost certainly have produced fatal results.

Every now and then a boat would take off on the top of a wave, career along at thirty-five to forty knots, without warning drop sharply into the trough ahead, the bluff bows thrusting solidly into the opposing wall of water. The boat would shudder throughout her length, in the dustbin men would be flung violently against the forward bulkhead, a great wave of green water would roll solidly along the foredeck and break against the wheelhouse coaming, filling the dustbin and sweeping away along the open decks on either side.

Thus we swooped and staggered to the eastward. At one moment foaming along on a crest, at another seemingly stopped and stumbling in the depths, the wet decks glistening in the moonlight, the dripping gun barrels glinting darkly against the moon-path, the tumbled seas forming fantastic patterns of light and shade as the cold light was thrown back to the eye from one wall of water and cut off from another, leaving a black gaping pit; at one moment divided by a sharp peak from all sight of the other boats, at another lifted on high and maybe looking down on the swept decks of one’s companions. With this opposing sequence of physical sensations came alternating exhilaration and anxiety of mind. At one moment exalted and excited by the wild beauty of the scene, the pricking sense of adventure; at another filled with apprehension and misgiving, fumbling ceaselessly but indecisively with the manifold risks and hazards of the situation.

We carried on well past the position given. There was nothing more we could do. Reluctantly we turned and instantly our whole world was about our ears.

Revs were cut to the minimum; at any speed above ten knots the boats would have dropped off a wave and broken their backs. Visibility virtually ceased. Spray and solid water continuously sheeted the hulls mast high. It was at least seventy miles before we could hope for any lee. Seven hours of physical hell and intense mental strain. We were soaked at once, nothing could keep it out effectively. The boat reared and dropped, seemingly struck by an endless succession of giant hammer blows. Every now and then the violent upthrust had a twisting corkscrew effect, and the boat landed with a shattering thud on her port side, the wind being slightly on the starboard bow. It seemed that the port turret must come through the deck. It seemed that the bottom must be stove in. It seemed that the engine holding down bolts must shear under the succession of grievous shocks to which they were subjected. It seemed impossible that the pendulastics could stand it. And anyway, where were we getting to? With the compass card thrown through ninety degrees, and the impossibility of judging what speed the boat was making through the water, sometimes apparently stopped short by a specially vicious crest, the dead reckoning position was a matter of guess work.

Though the mind played with the difficulties and dangers of such a situation, raising in endless succession images of the disasters that could occur, it was one form of the physical discomfort that provided the culminating blow. Headed into the wind the eyes were facing a fifty-mile-an-hour gale. Spray, hard and solid, was coming over continuously, driven viciously with the full force of the wind against the forward motion of the boat, slapping, slapping, slapping against the eyeballs. However you looked, attempt to dodge it how you would, your eyes were stung and stung hard. It hit you until the sheer physical pain of it made you so angry that you would swear out loud and senselessly, as one turns round in a rage and kicks a stone over which one has tripped. But the slap, slapping may go on for five, seven, maybe ten hours on end.

The autumn wore on with rough weather and no success, until our piece of luck in November. I hope that this brief outline of our beginnings in gunboats will have shown why that action, not specially noteworthy in itself, was of considerable importance to us in the position we were then in. It gave us new confidence in ourselves. More important still, it revived outside interest in the small fast gunboat at a time when this had nearly vanished.

One of the most significant design defects in the early MGBs, and indeed in MTBs for a more prolonged period, was the noise they made. How could they ever expect to surprise the enemy if they could be heard coming ten to fifteen miles away on a quiet night? Did they have to make a din like the hammers of hell just because they were capable of very high speeds? Perhaps it didn’t matter when they were going very fast but it must be possible to go more slowly quietly. Hitch turned his engineering imagination and his knowledge of MGB operations on to finding a solution to this problem.

To make the changes he wanted Hitch had to do battle with ‘Bath’, as the office of the Director of Naval Construction (DNC) was always known due to its wartime location, which had the power to approve or veto design changes.

We had to devise a means of silencing our boats, at least to a reasonable extent. DNC, not of course the great man himself but one of his myrmidons detailed to supervise the choice and construction of small craft, had not thought it necessary, if he thought about it at all, to silence our boats. This may not have caused any inconvenience at Bath, where this worthy department resided immediately after the outbreak of war, but it used to worry us quite a lot when we careered along the enemy coast, advertising our presence a long time before we arrived, by no means observing thereby the first principles of warfare. An early but abortive attempt at silencing had been made by means of S pipes. These were extensions of the exhaust pipes curving from the stern of the boat into the water down to the level of the bottom. This gave reasonable silence at slow speeds, but as soon as the boats started to plane the exhausts drummed on the water, as they shot hard as a board from under the stern, and the noise was as bad as ever. The pipes could not be lengthened because they would have carried away at speed, and, anyway, numerous troubles developed with the engines because of the exhausts being permanently connected to an underwater outlet; if at any time an engine kicked back when starting it was flooded with sea water and ruined; condensation led to valve and piston trouble. The plan was dropped.

For silencing at slow speeds we devised a modification of the old S pipes which proved satisfactory and led to reasonably adequate silencing of the Sixth Flotilla. We put a trap on the curve of the S pipe which could be opened or closed quickly. This meant that we could operate the boats normally with loud exhausts, and merely shut down to silence for the few hours required when we were closing the enemy coast at relatively low speed. The scheme had its objections, the slow speed tended to cause oiled plugs, the silence was by no means complete and the unfortunate engine-room crews were several times gassed by exhaust fumes until we took steps to deal with this; but it worked, faute de mieux, and it enabled us to do many things, NID⁷work and mine laying support, which would have been impossible otherwise.

No one interested in making important changes in the teeth of opposition from officialdom can entirely disregard what officials thought of them, but at least their Lordships’ displeasure would not blight any RNVR officer’s long term career. Hitch was prepared to risk fighting for his views with those senior to him in the hierarchy if he thought he had any prospect of winning the argument. Yet at the start of this particular debate he must have felt he was a voice crying in the wilderness. ‘Here were these little boats’, the Navy seemed to be saying, ‘manufactured of wood which we don’t understand, seldom fit for operations, generally unable to find anyone to fight, and when they do unable to stop them, officered by a bunch of rank amateurs whose views we are not bound to respect. Why should we listen to their arguments for change and improvement? We have probably made a mistake in ever putting these fast midgets into commission. Let us not waste more time and money on them and go back to building more substantial patrol craft which will at least regularly get to sea and safely carry the guns they need to make a difference when they meet the enemy.’ It was obvious to Hitch that he needed to prove beyond all doubt what his boats could do before he was going to win serious arguments about improving them.