Chapter Eleven

Summer Patrols May – July 1942

Inevitably it is the excitement and glamour of hard fought actions that tend to fill all naval histories and the memories of those who served in time of war. Important though they were in establishing the ascendancy of one side or the other, it was the routine patrols, night after night, that gradually denied German light forces their primary role in disrupting British coastal convoys, and took the war in the Narrow Seas to the Germans’ own convoy routes up and down the coasts of the Low Countries and France. These convoy routes were less vital to the Germans than the east coast and Channel convoy routes were to the British, but they were important enough. Peter Dickens, in his book Night Action, summarises the strategic purpose behind offensive patrols at night off the coasts of Holland, Belgium and France.

The Germans found our attacks irritating and sometimes a downright nuisance. That is no justification for our existence by itself, for the true balance can only be struck by weighing the total effort devoted to MTBs against the results achieved, an involved and difficult calcula-tion. I believe our force to have been inevitable as is borne out, partly by its very existence when few in high places liked or wanted it, and by Admiral Lucht, Befehlshaber der Sicherung der Nordsee, who wrote with feeling, ‘We must not leave the enemy free use of the area off our coast at night.’

Why not? Because the convoys had to pass and were in danger both from direct attack and from mines laid in their paths; because if they were safe at night they could avoid the greater threat of air attack by day; because we, the enemy, could not be allowed to reconnoitre the coast for invasion purposes, or pass secret agents across it, and because of the unknown – if we could operate as we would we might do anything and the Germans would only find out when it was too late. Every iron ore ship sunk meant fewer tanks; but every trawler sunk meant one less anti-aircraft escort, patrol vessel or minesweep-er, and a growing shortage of either meant an increased risk to the ore-carriers or imposed delay on their sailings which was significant in itself, as well as making it impossible to send any escorts to the Baltic where they were desperately needed to support the vast military campaign in Russia.

So the arguments in support of our small-scale activities ranged far and wide and I suggest that an aggressive Allied presence off the occupied coast was as necessary to our strategy as its neutralization was to the Germans; and since only small craft could operate in those mined and shallow waters, and join with the Air Force in completing the diurnal cycle of pressure, MTBs had to be invented. That however was not enough to make them fully effective which I frankly admit they were not, and I believe the underlying cause to have been the ingrained dislike of flashy little boats by the RN Establishment. There were thus scarcely any boats to begin with, and then only bad ones until four years after the outbreak of war; but worse even than that, many RN officers appointed to Coastal Forces in the early days lacked inspiration, one or two being downright bad, and it was left to a forceful few, RN and RNVR both, to get the business moving at all.

What Dickens said of MTBs was just as true of MGBs, the two types of boat now working closely together, the MGBs providing protection to the vulnerable MTBs if attacked by E-boats with far heavier gun armament. It was already becoming obvious that what the Royal Navy really needed was what the Germans had built before the war, a combined motor gunboat and motor torpedo boat, with the speed, the guns and the hitting power of torpedoes, all within one hull. Awaiting that development, and indeed the delivery of the new more heavily armed MGBs, the Sixth MGB Flotilla went about its workaday tasks in the summer of 1942. Hitch told the story of this period and I will only occasionally add to or comment on his text.

Although the E-boats gave up Ostend we were not to know this for some time and we continued to operate there for a while. We had a narrow escape from disaster on one occasion. We had been acting as support to the Fifty-first ML Flotilla minelaying close off Ostend. At that time the plan was for us to lie off somewhere near so that we could come to their aid if they were attacked. That night our position had been the Kwinte buoy ten miles north of the harbour mouth.

We had run our D.R. down and about four miles short of our estimated position off the Kwinte buoy we had picked up a light dead ahead, flashing three every twenty seconds. It was never certain whether the buoy was going to be lit or not, and its characteristics were not known for sure. We assumed that this was our buoy. We ran on the additional four miles by which time the light seemed quite close, four or five cables off if it were a pretty bright buoy, and stopped.

There we lay for the rest of the night, undisturbed. The tide and wind drift according to our reckoning had set us several miles to the north-west, to seaward of the buoy, which we could see throughout the night, flashing steadily but getting gradually less bright. When the MLs had finished their lay and had got well clear, and before we returned, I decided to have a run in towards Ostend to see if we could flush any patrol vessels and beat them up.

Off we set at thirty knots. It was still pitch dark and there were four of us. We thundered steadily towards the coast. I intended to run up until the Kwinte buoy light was on the beam and then carry on for eight miles. That would bring us to within two miles of the entrance to Ostend. If we had sighted nothing, we would swing round and get out of it.

We went on and on. I watched the light, at first carelessly, and then more closely. I supposed it was drawing on the beam, but devilish slowly. I checked the rev counters. Yes, we were doing thirty knots. I asked how many minutes we had been going. Already eleven minutes. Five and a half miles and that blessed light was not yet abeam, didn’t seem to have shifted bearing a great deal. We certainly must have drifted much farther than I thought.

How many minutes now? Fifteen. Seven and half miles and still we hadn’t reached that light. Besides, surely it was getting very bright? Thus, starting with a false premise, I fooled myself; as the Fourth MTB Flotilla when they mistook their buoy, we very nearly caught up with our ‘snowstorm’, and much worse it would have been, since all four boats of the Sixth Flotilla would have landed up on the enemy coast at thirty knots.

Luckily my sense of anxiety overcame my blindness just in time. After we had been travelling for twenty-three minutes towards the land and had still not got the light on our beam, but very nearly, I realised that something must be wrong. Our D.R and estimate of drift could not be that much out. We turned and in doing so our exhausts faced landwards and, being heard above the offshore wind, the light went out.

Then I realised what had happened and how narrow had been our escape. The light that we had mistaken for the compara1tively dim light of the Kwinte buoy was a powerful lighthouse on the end of Ostend pier, visible fourteen to seventeen miles. It was an easy mistake to make at first. The Ostend light had never been on before and we could not expect such a distant, bright beacon. But the distance run towards it and the greatly brightening light should have warned me in plenty of time. As it was I had gone in fatuous determination to put the light on the beam, lulled into a false sense of security by the original incorrect estimate of the light. I nearly succeeded: had I done so we should have all been prisoners of war.

There is, however, much truth in the saying that, at sea, it is more important to be lucky than to be clever. I certainly went out of my way to prove it on this occasion.

Stranding on the enemy held coast has been the fate of quite a few British naval officers over the centuries, given their determination to keep the Narrow Seas under British control and hence close blockade of the enemy coastline. Hitch was lucky that it didn’t happen to him. Navigation in those small, fast moving, noisy little vessels must have been a nightmare. The Sixth Flotilla still did not have RDF. Very junior officers, with extremely short experience of the sea, bent over small tables in their often madly bucking boats, attempting to keep a dead reckoning at night usually without any shore based navigational aids or buoys to help them, had a daunting task.

There was another incident connected with our Ostend period, which was discreditable so far as I was concerned. We had lain off the port all night, hoping for some convoy or patrol to put in an appearance. Towards dawn, utterly bored with the inaction, I had decided to carry out an offensive sweep close along the coast, despite the terrific noise we should put up at speed, making any form of surprise quite impossible.

We carried out our run without finding anything, the only result being multitudes of searchlights and flares from the shore. I had left it until late. Just as dawn was breaking and we were about to speed away from the coast to avoid air attack, David James’ boat carried away a pendulastic. This meant a delay and then a maximum speed of eighteen knots. We just got out of sight of land as broad daylight was on us and then 61 had to stop again for some minor adjustment. These delays are rather exasperating for an S.O. The safety of the boats are his responsibility. I had been caught out taking a chance and had been put in an awkward position by the breakdowns. To make matters worse, the weather was blowing up rapidly; in a rough sea we were at a disadvantage against aircraft and we had stirred them up properly with our recent close in sweep.

In addition to this, you cannot know what is going on aboard the delaying boat, you cannot see for yourself the trouble and all you can do is to persuade yourself that they are doing all that is possible and endeavour to stifle one’s restlessness. I was doing the best I could in this line, but the night had been a considerable strain and, to an impatient nature such as mine, it was difficult to restrain a growing feeling of irritability towards the erring boat, however much I may have realised at heart that they were doing all in their power.

At last David flashed OK and off we set at our eighteen knots. As soon as I had settled the throttles, I looked back as I always do to see that all were in place. There was not a sign of David. I immediately flashed an Aldis lamp astern, which should have been visible in the gathering light at a considerable distance. There was no response. Utterly exasperated, I stopped the unit again and flashed continually on the bearing where I supposed 61 must be. After several minutes there was an answering light and soon after 61 appeared. I flashed her:

‘What is the matter?’

The answer came back:

‘Nothing.’

So I stopped her and I regret to say poured out the vials of my wrath upon the unfortunate David’s head. We went on and immediately I felt very ashamed of myself. It transpired later that David’s coxswain had, in some extraordinary way, turned the boat one hundred and eighty degrees while David was raising his throttles and not looking out. Consequently when he looked out again, he could see no one and it took him a little time to realise that he was hastening in the wrong direction. It was an inept piece of work, but the sort of thing that may happen to anyone and I felt very badly about my loss of temper and slating David in front of everyone.

I am firmly of the opinion that the essence of being a good officer and leader of men is never to give an unfair, hasty answer or decision, and never to lose your temper and indulge in extravagant abuse, particularly with anyone who is doing his best. If an officer or rating is deliberately neglecting his duty or insubordinate, he may have to be dealt with harshly. But such was not the case here. I had offended against my own cardinal rules and let myself down badly.

There is nothing like learning from mistakes; I never forgot this incident and it often helped to restrain me in later days, when my natural impatience at delay or stupidity was tending to get the better of me.

One of the most surprising discoveries that I made in the research for this book was Hitch’s reputation as a calm, imperturbable leader who seldom, if ever, behaved other than in a thoroughly gentlemanly way with his officers and, indeed, with his crew. It is not that I have ever doubted that he would always have wished to behave in that manner, but knowing from family history the shortness of his fuse and his great impatience with anything done less than perfectly, I had expected to hear many stories of right royal bollockings handed out by Hitch to those he led when they didn’t come up to his exacting standards. Perhaps the self control that he generally exhibited, though not on this occasion, was one of his most remarkable wartime achievements.

After a time it became obvious that the E-boats had deserted Ostend. This and certain other considerations moved the scope of our operations farther north to the area between the Hook of Holland and Ijmuiden. We were continually ploughing over there with the minelaying MLs, or as cover for the MTBs, or on NID jobs.

Lieutenant H.L. (Harpy) Lloyd, RN, was by this time S.O. of the MTBs at ‘Beehive’ and we did many trips together. On one occasion I remember going off to Flushing¹in the first of the improved seventy-one-foot-six MGBs, 74, with several of the old Sixth Flotilla and a party of MTBs under Lloyd. It was, as so often, a flat calm night and the thunder of our approach, reverberating across the still smooth water, could be heard up to twenty miles on all sides. This was not my idea of a surprise attack by an MTB, the invariable object of the MTB officer; but for some reason best known to themselves, the Admiralty had decided that silenced main engines were unnecessary, and that six knots on auxiliaries was all that was required – the official reason given, I believe, being that at more than six knots the wash could be heard before the auxiliaries. It seems to have been overlooked that the wash could not be heard more than a few hundred yards, but that main engines could be heard up to twenty miles.

We got to our position and the gunboats stopped. They were to wait there as support for the MTBs against E-boat attack. The MTBs split into two parties and bumbled off. They only had seven or ten miles to go from where we were lying, but they could not afford to waste the time in getting there at five or six knots in silence; so we heard them clearly until they cut their engines a mile or so from their objective.

Almost immediately a great uproar started from the direction of the shore. The heavy cracking thud of large guns, four-inch at least, and the yellow-green bursts of star-shell. At first, we thought it was an air attack, as the sound of aircraft had preceded it, and that it was shore batteries firing; but presently we heard a deep underwater thud, followed immediately by the criss-cross of distant low-level tracer. Then we knew that Harpy had run into something; we started up and sped towards the scene of activity, almost immediately getting an enemy report. But the firing was short-lived, lasting only about three minutes. By the time we arrived some fifteen minutes later we found nothing and so swept away to the eastward, in which direction we thought the enemy most likely to move.

What had happened was this. Two German torpedo boats, six hundred ton vessels like small destroyers, mounting four-inch guns, and several E-boats had been on patrol on the convoy route. They had been able to plot the MTBs’ course and exact approach by the

engine noise. Harpy ran steadily on towards them and cut his main engines when only a short distance off. The Germans, realising that they were not going to get any further help as to the position of the enemy from the sound, and knowing the MTBs to be close, at once put up star-shell and endeavoured to engage.

The MTBs, in spite of being themselves surprised instead of the other way about, were fortunate in being very well placed for attack. Tom Neil in MTB 70 found a torpedo boat right opposite him in the light of the star-shells. He promptly fired and secured a direct hit, probably sinking the German vessel out of hand. But he didn’t wait to see, as the situation was distinctly hot and he could do no more good. Lloyd also fired at the other torpedo-boat, but probably missed. Then under the increasing hail of enemy shells the MTBs disengaged at forty knots to the north-west. They were fortunate in getting away with only minor damage, one officer killed and two hands wounded. A very successful exchange in the circumstances. The whole thing was over in little more than five minutes.

Harpy Lloyd had been a CO in the MTB group at Felixstowe from its earliest days, arriving in January 1940, and eventually became Senior Officer of the Fourth MTB Flotilla. He and Hitch started the practice of joint MGB and MTB patrols which was to be continued so successfully between Hitch and Peter Dickens. Peter remained a friend of my family after the war, and I saw him on a good many occasions and knew very well how important a role he had played in my father’s naval service. I was to meet Harpy Lloyd only once and then, sadly, only a few months before his death. We were both guests of Vice Admiral Sir Fitzroy Talbot, by then a neighbour of mine in Dorset, who had spent a short and not terribly happy time in command of the Third MASB Flotilla. I could so much more profitably have spent that evening in his company had I by then already immersed myself in the details of my father’s war service.

We drew a blank that night and for some time to come. There seemed to be practically no enemy shipping about, and in the quiet weather of early summer we roamed all round the Dutch coast and could find no target. Often we roused the enemy searchlights, shore batteries fired on us, but they would not send out the E-boats to give battle. Once we thought they were ready to give us a stand-up fight, but it ended in disappointment. It happened this way.

Boffin went over alone to a little place called Katwijk, to the south west of Ijmuiden, on an NID job. When closing the land he ran into a sleepy patrol of E-boats, who only just saw him at the last moment and chased him away. It seemed possible that something had leaked out from the shore end of the job. One could imagine the Gestapo descending swiftly on their victim; skilfully extracting the story. That patrol just off our objective was suspicious in view of the astonishing lack of coastal patrols in general. We were determined to attempt the job again and verify our suspicions. We devised another plan. The NID required two jobs to be done, one at Katwyck and another at Nordwyck, three miles away down the coast.

We decided to take two boats, 64 and 67, go in together so that we could tackle a patrol if we had to fight, and then split when we had found our objective, each carry out our allotted task, and return independently.

We went on a perfect night, loaded up with our spies, desperate types we thought them. It was too perfect a night. The wind had gone right away. That meant that we should have to run in for a greater distance on our closed down S pipes at slow speed, making the chances of finding our objective in time less likely, and risking gassing our engine-room crews. There was always a grave danger of this with the pipes closed, as the back pressure in the exhaust pipes was greatly increased by the gases being discharged under water, and thereby all the little leaks in the long exhaust system were found out, resulting in a quantity of carbon monoxide finding its way into the engine room. We had many quite severe cases of poisoning in the early days of these pipes, and the way the engine room crews stuck it, disregarding the danger, was greatly to their credit.

The night being dead quiet was bad enough, but worse was to come. As we swept over the one hundred miles to the Dutch coast our wash became brighter and brighter until it was a great splash of white-green luminosity. We were in for as bad a night of phosphorescence as I can remember. On such a clear dark night as this our hulls would normally be visible about three cables at the most, without glasses. With the creaming phosphorescent wakes we could be seen, like giant fireflies, at a distance of a mile or more.

Fifteen miles from the coast we shut down our pipes and closed the shore slowly. Even at the reduced speed the phosphorus was shocking, lighting up the hull so brilliantly that I could read 67’s number on her bow at more than a cable. We found two small wreck buoys with their winking green lights three or four miles from the shore, and thereby we were able to tell that we were too far to the north. As it turned out later this was fortunate. We closed the shore and when we could see it clearly, about three or four cables off, we ran south along the coast in an endeavour to locate Nordwyck.

The noise from our roughly silenced engines seemed tremendous in that absolute stillness, the bright light from the phosphorus showering from the broken water at our bows, like a beacon reflected in the glossy smooth surface. We reduced to one engine. Staggering along at our slowest speed, about seven knots, it was still possible to read 67’s number at more than two hundred yards. It seemed certain that we must be seen or heard and we were momentarily expecting a blast from the shore. Incredible as it was, nothing happened. It was two o’clock in the morning; the Germans were very fast asleep ashore.

Presently we found Nordwyck. You could see the lighthouse standing grey and unlit in the centre of the cluster of houses forming the little fishing village. We stopped. Our job was here; with a single pre-arranged spark of light to seaward we sent 67 off to her destination three miles south along the coast at Katwyck. Quietly we launched the dinghy. The NID men embarked. One was to be landed, another picked up. It was exciting and a trifle theatrical. The quiet movements, the hushed voices, the motionless boat on the unmarked shiny surface of the water, the black low line of the shore, the cluster of houses silhouetted against the skyline, the rigid finger of the lighthouse in the centre, the last handshake to the parting men, the whispered ‘Good luck’; no sound, no light, no movement, only the gentle thud and splash of the muffled oars fading shoreward. But this was no theatre. At any moment the darkness might be pierced by a brilliant finger of light, the silence shattered by the roar of real guns.

Slowly the minutes passed. Presently we became aware of the stealthy approach of the little boat. She saw us and rounded up beneath our counter. In her were the same men as had left twenty-five minutes before. There was a whispered colloquy. I was told that we had better get out of it, as nothing more could be done. I gathered that the man who should have met them was not there; that this and other circumstances had aroused their suspicions. They feared a trap and were glad to be back aboard.

We began to steal softly to seaward. Suddenly the throb of high-powered engines reverberated across the still water from the southward, followed almost at once by bright streaks of red and green tracer. Red and green: that meant British and German. 67 must be in trouble. The beans were, so to speak, spilt. The noise of engines and battle had already broken out. We might as well open up.

‘Open pipes. Start centre.’

‘Steer south 55 west.’

We were off. Flying through a cloud of luminous wash in the general direction of the fight to the south-west. Suddenly two bright searchlights broke out close on the port quarter, streams of tracer sped from a spot on our starboard beam, near but not near enough. Behind us the shore was now thoroughly roused. Searchlights, shore batteries and their curious bobbing flares were all let loose without stint.

The firing to the southward had ceased as suddenly as it had begun. The brilliant nearby searchlights on the port quarter meant a patrol close to the south, the gunfire to starboard meant another a few cables to the north. I gave her the gun, and with her 3,500 h.p. at full stretch 64 fairly stepped along; running away for the first time; our orders were explicit, we must avoid action if possible, we had valuable lives aboard. Little as we liked the idea of getting out instead of attacking, this was a moment of great exhilaration. The bellowing throb of the engines, for once filling their great brazen lungs to the maximum of their capacity, only to clear them in a deafening, earsplitting din; the vibrating thrusting surge of power beneath our feet; the rush of wind in the face as we bored into the encircling darkness at forty-five miles an hour; the dangerous game of ‘Blind Man’s Buff’ as we made violent alterations of course to avoid on one side the groping fingers of dazzling blue-white light and on the other the nearby bursts of green and yellow tracer

We were lucky. The searchlights failed to follow us far enough to the north; the gunfire, directed by sound, passed harmlessly astern, since the exhaust gases, leaving the transom at over two hundred miles an hour, formed an area of maximum noise well behind the fast-driven hull.

It was clear that our passengers’ suspicions had been correct; the agent ashore must have ‘talked’. There were no less than three inshore patrols, just off our objectives, an impossibility in normal circumstances. If we had not made our landfall to the no’thard and come down the coast close along the shore we should never have got in.

As soon as we got clear of our immediate personal troubles we called up 67 and asked how she was. She replied presently that she was all right, but being closely pursued by five E-boats.

We made to her:

‘Indicate course, speed and position’

We got her reply as dawn was breaking:

‘Course South 75 degrees West, speed thirty-six knots, position 52 degrees 25 North, 3 degrees 52 East.’

This was admirable. I had been afraid that she might have lost speed and been in grave danger. The course was the same as ours. Her position lay right in our line of advance, she was doing thirty-six knots as opposed to the thirty to which we had reduced. We were in the best possible position to give her assistance if needed; there seemed every chance of us falling in with her pursuing E-boats when they turned back. We went to action stations and licked our lips in anticipation. We would give the E-boats a run for their money anyway; the passengers would have to take their chance. We missed them, however, and both boats got back without further incident. 67 had had a close shave. We considered that we had been challenged by the enemy.

It seemed probable that they might continue their patrols next night; we determined to seek them out and give battle. We mustered a force of six gunboats and two MTBs. We had never before handled a unit of eight at night off the enemy coast; we determined to try.

The speedy armada roared its way across the North Sea. Just before dusk we spotted a Jim Crow, a German reconnaissance plane. He did not come near; there was no doubt that he had seen us. On we rumbled. We made no attempt to dissemble or hide our approach. We swept into position off the Hook of Holland and turned north-east up the coast. We churned our way up to Ijmuiden, trailing our coat, sighted the wreck buoys and, swinging around one hundred and eighty degrees, charged back again close in shore, to make certain we had missed no patrol.

By this time the coast was in a state of uproar. Flares, searchlights, star-shells and shore batteries opening up at us all down the line. Sometimes when we were only two miles off the coast it was unpleasantly accurate; they even scored one or two unimportant hits. We could find no trace of our quarry; Jim Crow had delivered his warning; if patrols had been out they had been withdrawn. They would not give fight. Probably just as well as the chaos that would have ensued with our unit of eight in action is terrifying to contemplate!

Our only satisfaction lay in the insolent challenge we had thrown down. We had swept the sea on the very threshold of their lairs. They had not come out. We liked to compare the turmoil there would have been at ‘Beehive’ to get out and at them if E-boats had been heard and sighted patrolling off the Cork light vessel!

These summer patrols were against a contented background in the home base of HMS Beehive at Felixstowe. It had not always been thus, but ever since Tommy Kerr took over in the late summer of 1941 Beehive had become a steadily more efficient and a happier base for the small fighting craft that went out night after night on patrol. To add to their contentment, the new seventy-one-foot-six boats began to arrive.

We began to get the new boats in a steady stream in April, May and June of 1942. During the nine months that Beehive had been under the new Captain, the scene had changed greatly. Many of the early MTB officers had gone, others had been eliminated. The gunboats had taken their proper position in the scheme of things, that is as full equals of the MTBs. Actually on account of the ubiquitous nature of their work, and because they operated considerably more often than the MTBs, they rather tended to monopolise attention for a change.

The base was now a very happy one. The boats worked hard and were keen; there was no sense of frustration. Most important of all the Captain helped and backed us to the limit in the development of our boats and equipment. This was most important to us, because ours was a new and developing form of warfare. We who were enacting it were the only people who really understood the problems. Certain it is that the Admiralty did not. Moreover it was no small thing, because we found that the only way to get what we wanted was to make it ourselves and show that it worked; then we had a chance of getting it taken up officially. Thus we had to make the S-pipe silencing locally and prove that it would work. Later we had to fit and try out the Bombard, construct the dual Oerlikon cradle, manufacture the light Oerlikon mounting, alter the power supply to the RDF, all important developments; all had to be put into effect and proved before there was any chance of obtaining official sanction and interest.

In every case the Captain had to stand the repercussions of such over-zealous and revolutionary behaviour. Without his willing attitude of aiding, abetting and standing by us, we could have done nothing. He knew we were only trying to get on with the war and make our boats efficient fighting weapons in the face of considerable official inertia; he was willing to take the chance. Like us, he did not really care what happened to him. Like us he had his bowler hat round the corner, his conscience was clear, they could give it to him if they wished; thus clearly demonstrating Wyndham Lewis’s famous dictum that ‘a bowler hat is not so much an article of wear as an indication of a state of mind’.

At about this time we achieved two important developments in the proper equipment of our boats. The first was the light type Coastal Forces hydrophone.

I have already shown how we had discovered that our only scientific chance of chasing and catching E-boats was by hearing them and intercepting on sound. Two recent actions had proved that things were going to be more difficult for us soon, unless we improved our technique. In March, when the Seventh Flotilla had captured their E-boat, they had ascertained that there were no external exhaust pipes. This confirmed an idea that had already been suggested to me, that it was possible to lead the exhausts of high powered engines under water and so silence them. The action off Ostend had added corroborative evidence. When we had heard them on this occasion, though they had passed quite close to us, the sound had been utterly different to the night of the 19th/20th November 1941. Then they had been vibrant, growling, full-throated beasts; off Ostend they had been sibilant, whispering, swishing sea-monsters, audible only because they were close and the sea wholly still and silent. Unquestionably the E-boats had been silenced by leading their exhaust pipes under water.

Listening for them at any range or in any appreciable breeze, we should have no chance of hearing them. I had another trouble in my mind, too. Often we had to close enemy ports, lie off them for hours on end, in conditions of extreme darkness and low visibility. Lying cut in this manner we were extremely vulnerable. We could not expect to start up and get under way in under three minutes; until we did so we were like a log on the water, unable to fire most of our guns which were power operated. A German destroyer or torpedo boat seeking us out with RDF, coming up wind on a dark night, would be upon us before we had a chance of doing anything and could smash us to pieces with their main armament at point blank range. This was a very real worry, as mine was the responsibility for the safety of the boats when we kept these dangerous vigils.

By chance I had heard of an idea, which, if it worked, could solve these difficulties. Lieutenant Perry, whom I have already referred to, always a fountain of bright ideas, having almost complete knowledge of our boats, their hulls, engines and operational problems, having built and demonstrated them before the war, and having been in command of an operating boat during the war, at that time working in RACF’s office in London, mentioned that experiments had been made with a light type hydrophone, which could be dropped over the side when the boats stopped and brought aboard again instantly when required.

This seemed a most promising line of approach. If it worked it would solve both our difficulties. We should be able to hear the E-boats under water in spite of wind and their silencing; we should have ample warning of the approach of any hostile ship when lying off enemy harbours, whatever the wind conditions and visibility. I made enquiries and found that the idea had been dropped as there was no requirement! I discussed the matter with the Captain. He took the idea up most enthusiastically, having been a submariner in the last war and therefore well versed in the potentialities of the hydrophone.

The Captain took the problem to the Flag Officer in Charge, Harwich. The new F.O.I.C. was Rear Admiral H.H. Rogers,²a Cornishman, utterly determined to back any worthwhile development, however unofficial. He took up the light hydrophone idea in a big way. He got his A/S³officers on to the job. In a short time we had the first experimental set. Apart from the standard amplifier, the main part of the hydrophone appeared to consist of a long piece of light gas piping and the cut-off bottom of an enormous kettle! But it worked; it worked magnificently and beyond all expectation. After a short period of experimenting we began to get very satisfactory ranges. In addition, the equipment was almost foolproof, and so light, twenty-five pounds in all, that it could be rigged and shipped in a matter of thirty seconds.

Admiral Rogers’ tenacity had resulted in a most important step forward in our tactical development. In a short time the equipment was to become general throughout Coastal Forces on the East Coast. It was to be the basis of our anti-E-boat tactics during the ensuing winter.

For the modern yachtsman, accustomed to built in electronics of considerable sophistication such as GPS and echo-sounders to gauge depth, it may come as a surprise to hear that the hydrophone at that time was a lightweight instrument hung over the side of a boat with its engines cut, whose operator put on earphones and sat, often with his legs dangling over the side, listening for propeller noises. Sydney Dobson, who operated a hydrophone as one of his special duties in MGB 111, described to me this primitive method.

The other important improvement that we managed to get under way at this time was the silencing of our boats. I have told how we were satisfied that the E-boats were being under-water silenced. I discussed the feasibility of doing the same to our boats with all the engineer officers I could. Perry thought it would work if we fitted underwater scoops, to provide suction and so help the gases away. Others thought that, as the speed of the exhaust gases was in the region of two hundred m.p.h. in the pipes, there would necessarily be tremendous back pressure, making the scheme impossible. I kept an open but hopeful mind. I heard in imagination those soft-voiced E-boats off Ostend and thought that, if they could do it, so could we.

Luckily about this time, late May or June 1942, Rear Admiral Coastal Forces came out with us in the old boats for an operation off the Dutch coast. In bright moonlight on a quiet night we swept up from the Hook to Ijmuiden. We encountered no enemy, but R.A.C.F. was able to see at first hand how handicapped we were by having no better silencing than that provided by our S-pipes.

Discussing the matter the next morning, I was able to propound my theories about under-water silencing. He saw the importance of the development, if it were possible, and at once arranged a conference with British Power Boats to see if experiments could be started immediately. At the meeting Colonel Searle, the managing director of the company, and Mr Selman, the designer, could not have been more helpful. The latter got out designs forthwith. Within three weeks the first boat⁴was tearing up Southampton Water at forty knots in almost complete silence before our admiring eyes. Best of all it was demonstrated that it in no way adversely⁵affected the engine boost or the back pressure.

We had achieved the most important requirement of all. It was a tremendous stride forward in our search for operating efficiency. Alas, my new flotilla by this time having been completed, I was to see all the new boats benefit from our discoveries, without being able to induce the authorities to fit the boats already built and about to operate.

My only consolation was the somewhat vicarious satisfaction of seeing that the success which had attended Power Boats’ under-water experiments had stirred Vosper’s and the authorities sufficiently to arrange a general conference and trial to see how best to silence all boats, including the MTBs which needed it even more than we did.⁶They had been operating now for three years of war and for a long period beforehand without making any attempt to silence their main engines.

Whether connected with experiments on the silencing of engines or not, engine room crews were always in danger of being gassed. This came from little leaks in the exhaust system resulting in a quantity of carbon monoxide finding its way into the engine room.

We had many quite severe cases of poisoning in the early days and the way engine room crews stuck it, disregarding the danger, was greatly to their credit. Without their willing co-operation in the face of this risk, we could never have used and developed the boats as we did. Only the night before, an elderly stoker named Gibbs, Captain Gibbs his messmates used to call him, the owner of much property in peacetime, had been found lying on his face passed clean out, severely gassed. The fastening of one of the exhaust pipes had broken, resulting in the pipe lifting and causing noise. Gibbs had lain flat on his stomach holding down the flap by hand. He had hung on until the fumes, coming up from the pipes, had knocked him flat. It was only the noise recurring from the released pipe that saved him, as it called attention to his condition. It is men like Gibbs who, in the last resort, save the British Empire from defeat by her enemies, and, by their quiet acceptance of any duty that may befall, enable the country to hang on to victory. Here was a man of over forty years, used to a quiet and prosperous business life in peacetime, unquestioningly lying flat on his face in a little cockleshell of a boat, at two o’clock in the morning, a few miles off the coast of Holland, hanging on to a hot exhaust pipe, until he passed clean out from carbon monoxide poisoning. And he did not consider that he was doing anything unusual or even surprising. Could keeping faith with your country go further?

By July 1942 five of the new seventy-one-foot-six MGBs had been delivered to form the new Eighth Flotilla and at the end of that month Hitch was to lead them down to Dartmouth, leaving the older seventy-foot boats in the Sixth to continue under George Bailey. However, Hitch records the last actions of the Sixth Flotilla while still nominally under his command, although he was away commissioning MGB 77 at the time.

The new Flotilla, the Eighth, was forming up. I was to have the fourth boat, 77, and in June Head and I went away to take her over. While I was away at Southampton getting my new boat, Boffin was in charge of the Flotilla. One night he came across some enemy patrols on their coast and was fortunate in being able to engage a small minesweeper on her own. He was in his new boat, 76, followed by 64, and Bussy Carr in 60. It was the first time that our new armament, a two pounder and twin Oerlikon turret, had been in action. Ably supported by Bussy with his single Oerlikon and 0.5’s, Boffin, without damage to his unit, savaged that minesweeper until large pieces of her upper works fell off and she was a battered and smoking wreck.

Another interesting shaft of light on this moment of change in the Sixth Flotilla’s command comes from Able Seaman Roland Clarke, who joined the Flotilla on the 16 June 1942 as a gunner in MGB 67 under George Bailey. At the time of the action, described below, Hitch had just left for Dartmouth.

I had not long to wait for my baptism of fire. Our patrol had begun on the night of July 29th as it usually did, about 9pm. All crews on board by 8.30. 67, 61 and 60 slipped from the harbour in line ahead out past the boom defence and then into V formation with nine engines at three quarter throttle, the roar vibrating for miles around and past the Cork and then the Sunk light vessels, wrecks in sight. Here the order for action stations and a practise shoot at the sunken masts. Then the order would be to keep an extra sharp look out as soon as we were well over our own shipping lane. Darkness falls about eleven o’clock leaving us with roughly ninety miles to go to the Dutch coast at Ijmuiden. With thirty miles to go, on silencers. No smoking is the order. Even this small light would be noticed miles away. We are closing in now to the enemy coast and gradually turning to starboard to start a patrol down to Ostend, past the mouth of the Scheldt. Nothing to report. Down the coast we go, still on silencers. We have not even been spotted as yet. At Zeebrugge we stop engines and lower the hydrophones over the side. All is still and quiet except for the occasional wave as it laps the side of the boat. A report! Engines can be heard on the hydrophones. All is tense. ‘Disengage silencers! Start up engines. Full speed ahead.’

We make our way past Ostend and at 2.15 we spot a faint blue light, ‘Action Stations’ are given. Speed is the thing, and surprise, but evidently we were not the only ones looking for trouble. We were chal-lenged and apparently had met two of our own MTBs under Lieutenant ‘Harpy’ Lloyd, RN, also intent on destroying the convoy, which could now be seen silhouetted in the darkness. Lloyd goes in from seaward and fires both fish, hitting the first merchant ship. Both 61 and 60 had gone between shore and convoy to distract their attention. As we turned to attack the second merchant vessel, three flak trawlers which had not before been spotted were on the point of turning about to engage us. But 67 was not dismayed. In we went until not a gun on the merchantman could bear on us. As soon as we were under her bows a depth charge was dropped. This finished the second vessel. Now for the flak trawlers. At this time they were in line ahead and we were going straight for them, with 61 and 60 attacking from their rear. What the remaining crew did not know was that the Coxswain, Commanding Officer and First Lieutenant were out and the boat was careering along on its own with the port 0.5 turret on fire and fire in the engine room and a hole in the bows at waterline level a yard across. Several of our crew were killed but the Coxswain, CO and First Lieutenant were not too serious, but were however out of action. Bunts Newton from Catford and myself were able to deal with the fire on deck and the engine room personnel with the one below and the Skipper gave us our course for home before we gave him morphia. It was 2.35 when we started back, Bunts and myself taking turns at the wheel and the mess deck pumps, the mess deck being half full of water up to our waists. The CO must have been spot on with the course. We hit the Sunk light vessel at 5.30 and entered harbour with a crash stop with wire hawsers, fire tenders, pumps and ambu-lances standing by.

Roland Clarke’s description gives the reader a fine sense of the chaos and excitement of close action between small warships at night.

By July 1942 Hitch had five new boats forming the nucleus of the Eighth Flotilla, 74 to 78 with 79, 80 and 81 hard on their heels. As battle casualties mounted, other boats joined the flotilla, 111, 112 and 115 in the winter of 1942/43. Hitch has already outlined how he assessed the quality of the new seventy-one-foot-six motor gunboats coming off the production line at British Power Boats through his connection with George Selman and the advice of the Engineer Officer at Beehive, his old friend Pop Perry. It is worth now looking in some detail at what British Power Boats had achieved.

First of all the new boats were bigger than the old seventy-foot boats. An extra foot and a half doesn’t sound very much, but if you design in a broader beam, the result in terms of cubic capacity is a worthwhile increase. The old boats had displaced thirty-one tons laden and the new were forty-six tons. They were still midgets but they were larger midgets, capable of carrying a heavier armament.

They were initially no faster. They had been designed to do a maximum of forty knots, the same as the old boats, but when underwater exhausts were fitted this increased their speed by two to three knots, which gave them the edge over the old boats. More importantly, they were more reliable. The old boats had particularly suffered from trouble with the drive mechanism, the often cursed pendulastic, and with their propellers. The new boats had direct drive on the centre engine, and although they still did not achieve the levels of reliability claimed for E-boats, they were a great deal better than their predecessors.

Of the greatest possible importance they had the potential to be quieter. Flat out the three Packards were still awesome close up but they now had silencers on their two wing engines permitting twelve knots of relatively quiet running and, due to Hitch’s exasperated insistence on the potential for underwater exhausts reducing noise dramatically, the later boats of the class had all three engines giving much reduced noise at their cruising speed of thirty-five knots and silent running up to fifteen knots. When coupled with the extra two knots of speed it can be seen what a dramatic difference that made to the MGB’s capacity to stalk the enemy and achieve tactical surprise.

Partly because they were bigger and partly because those who operated them were at last being listened to, for the first time they carried guns capable of doing real damage to E-boats. The new boats had a two-pounder quick firing pom-pom forward of the bridge, where Bath had always said it was too wet to have a gun, not understanding that in the conditions in which MGBs could operate, force four or less, the foredeck was the driest place in the boat. If MGBs were to be aggressive and their role was to attack the enemy, it hardly made sense to have their main armament aft so that it could not be brought to bear until they had nearly drawn para1llel with an E-boat. In addition to the pom-pom, there was now a twin Oerlikon aft with a powered mounting, doubling that weight of fire. They had twin Lewis guns firing 0.303 bullets from abaft the whaleback, of little effect upon a hull but quite capable of killing deck personnel at close range. Right aft they carried a Holman Projector for firing flares. One addition to the armament that may surprise the reader was a mortar, a Blacker Bombard. If you consider the way a mortar works, lobbing a relatively heavy projectile in a high arc so that it falls on its target, it will be seen that the chances of success when aiming a mortar from a fast moving, bouncing MGB at even a slow enemy vessel, in darkness, were not terribly good. It is hard to find records of where these mortars had much success other than the night Hitch was killed. Nevertheless it was there on the foredeck, backing up the guns and appears to have been the result of Hitch’s search for heavier weapons to deal with larger targets than the E-boats.

Finally, there were still two depth charges, the heavy weapon of last resort when faced with a ship too large to suffer much damage from the two-pounder pom-pom. The hazardous nature of a depth charge attack on a surface warship was to continue to test the resolve and skill of MGB officers and men until finally the Admiralty accepted the need for the torpedo to replace the depth charge as the weapon capable of dealing with larger ships.

There were other important changes. For the first time radar was fitted in MGBs. It was not that radar’s advantages had not been recognized before, but simply that production limitations and the priority given to MGBs had resulted in them remaining unavailable. The type 286 radar was fitted in the Eighth Flotilla, which was not trainable, so that the boat had to be manoeuvred to port and starboard to sweep ahead. Nevertheless it did give a capacity to pick up the presence of enemy vessels at night before they came in sight and Hitch was quick to make use of his new detection system. He must also have been glad at long last to have echo sounders to help with navigation and the hazards of the shallow east coast, and the same radio navigation system that the MLs had had for their precise minelaying.

Last but not least, for the very first time MGBs had a very small amount of armour plate, half an inch thick, surrounding the bridge, protecting coxswain and officers when at action stations. Up till then there was nothing between anybody and the enemy other than wood. At least psychologically that provided some reassurance. For those standing totally exposed behind their guns on the deck even that fig leaf was absent. The new boats had armoured shields for the forward pom-pom and the Oerlikon aft, but the two Lewis gunners remained totally exposed. The Lewis guns were eventually replaced by the 800 rounds per minute 0.303 Vickers machine gun.

The one adverse change in the new boats was the degree to which they became dependent upon power training of the guns. It had been obvious from the earliest days of MGBs that in action the hydraulic lines which provided the power for training guns were vulnerable to shellfire. The experience of being unable to train guns when in close action was as frustrating and dangerous as anything could be. Hitch’s lecture to his crews about the absolute necessity of keeping weapons in first class condition if they were to be reliable in action was of little avail if incoming fire rapidly made guns un-manoeuvrable. In the new boats both the two-pounder pom-pom and the twin Oerlikon were powered. With the pompom this was unavoidable due to its weight, but Hitch, in his everlasting search for better and more reliable weapons, was soon to conclude that a hand-trained twin Oerlikon was a more reliable weapon, and a much lighter one, than its powered equivalent.

Although in no way related to the arrival of the new seventy-onefoot-six boats, it is worth reflecting for a moment on how the experience of Coastal Forces in general and MGBs in particular had affected sea-going clothing. A small ship navy was never a dressy place and from the earliest days officers shrugged out of their reefer jackets and into sweaters and oilskins when they went to sea. What rapidly became apparent was that the tendency to get extremely wet for prolonged periods, as well as the number of deck personnel who were completely exposed to the elements without even the shelter provided by an open bridge, needed some very much better designed clothing than the traditional souwester, oil skins and rubber sea boots. A one-piece waterproof suit was developed, under which padded underclothing could be worn. Leather boots were sometimes bought by the more experienced, following the example of fishermen, because they kept drier and warmer. These garments were bulky but essential for deck personnel unsheltered from the elements.

Charles Mercer, who served in both MGB 21 and MGB 122, remembers vividly the discomfort of life on board an MGB on patrol in the winter.

Once you left harbour, you never left your post, until you got back the next morning. There was only a three foot walkway either side of the bridge and canopy. There were no guard rails. The clothes we wore at sea would include a singlet and pants, a thick white submarine jersey, a thick kapok boiler suit, and then on top an oilskin boiler suit. It used to be so cold in the North Sea that we couldn’t undo our trousers to do a ‘wee’ so sometimes I just used to wet my underwear. We were often out for sixteen to twenty hours and all we had to eat or drink was a gallon of soup in a safari flask between fifteen of us.

Hitch himself had acquired something which looked rather like the siren suit that Churchill made famous and that was what he would wear on the bridge, or indeed in his favourite position when going into action, standing on the whaleback behind the bridge, holding on to the stumpy little mast, a position from which he had the best possible view of what was going on around him, communicating to the coxswain through a fixed speaking tube. If the Lewis gunners felt exposed standing behind their weapons on the open deck, they could not easily complain if their Captain and Senior Officer chose to expose himself even more in such a position.

This then was the new weapon which had been forged from the experience gained in the early motor gunboats, which Hitch had continuously sought to modify and improve. The consequence of the fitting of silencers and radar was a marked increase in the number of contacts with the enemy compared with earlier experience. The Sixth MGB Flotilla had been in five actions with E-boats between April 1941 and June 1942. The Eighth was to see considerably more action between July 1942 and April 1943.

When they did go into action their chances of decisive success were hugely increased by the two-pounder pom-pom forward and the twin Oerlikons aft. The frustration of so many of the previous engagements had been that, in spite of surprise, greater speed and, arguably, far greater determination to bring the enemy to action, the results, with rare exceptions, had been indecisive. The enemy might have been turned back from their purposes, taken a good many casualties, and needed repairs before they went to sea again, but the chances of sinking them were not high. That was now to change.