Part 9

The next shot hit the boat in the charthouse, wounding Lieut. Patterson and his executive officer, Ensign Paul B. Benson, and killing an officer passenger and a sailor.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” suggested General Clark.

Ensign Benson, though wounded, took the wheel from the sagging skipper and zigzagged the boat away at high speed back toward Naples, until he was out of range of the _Sway’s_ batteries. A few miles down the coast the crew of 201 transferred dead and wounded to a British minesweeper.

The _Sway_ still stood between the boat and Anzio, but General Clark wanted to go to the Anzio beach, so the 201 crept back at a peaceful-looking speed and spoke up from long distance with a bigger light. The sun was higher, _Sway’s_ signalmen read the message, and the skipper waved them by.

Lieut. Commander Barnes still restlessly experimented with armaments and tactics, looking for a combination of weapons and methods that would counter the dangerous weapons of the F-lighters. Rocket launchers were being mounted on landing craft, and the small vessels were delivering devastating ripples on enemy beaches. Their firepower was all out of proportion to the size of the craft. A few PTs were playing around with rocket launchers in the Pacific. It’s worth at least a try, thought Lieut. Commander Barnes.

On the night of February 18th, 1944, Barnes went out in Lieut. (jg) Page H. Tullock’s 211, with Lieut. Robert B. Reader’s 203 and Lieut. (jg) Robert D. McLeod’s 202.

As Lieut. Commander Barnes tells the story:

“I saw a small radar target come out from behind the peninsula and head over toward one of the small islands south of Giglio. Thinking it might be an F-lighter, I ordered rocket racks loaded.

“He must have seen us, because whatever it was—probably an E-boat—speeded up and ducked into the island before we could make contact. That presented the first difficulty of a rocket installation. There we were with the racks all loaded and the safety pins out. The weather had picked up a little, and getting those pins back in the rockets and the racks unloaded was going to be a touchy job in the pitch dark on wet, tossing decks. I decided to leave them there for a while to see what would happen.

“About midnight it started to kick up a good deal more. I had just about decided that whatever it was we were looking for wasn’t going to show up, and I was getting pretty worried about the rockets heaving out of the racks and rolling around in a semiarmed condition on deck. I decided to take one last turn around our patrol area and head for the barn.

“On our last southerly leg we picked up a target coming north at about eight knots, and I closed right away, thinking to spend all our rockets on whatever it was. As we got closer, it appeared to be two small targets in column—a conclusion which I later used as an outstanding example of ‘Don’t trust your interpretation of radar too blindly.’

“Just about the time we got to the 1,000-yard firing range the lookouts started reporting vessels everywhere, all the way from our port back around to our starboard bow. I had arranged the other two boats on either side in line abreast and ordered them to stand by to fire on my order over the radio. I gave the order and we all let go together.

“During the eleven seconds the rockets were in flight nobody fired a shot, but a couple of seconds after the rockets landed what seemed like a dozen enemy craft opened up. The formation was probably three or four F-lighters escorted by two groups of E-boats. We had passed through the two groups of escorts on our way to our firing position.

“Now it was time to turn away, and as my boat turned to the right we found that the 202 was steaming right into the convoy. To avoid collision we had to turn back and parallel the 202.

“Just at that time the engines on my boat started to labor and unbelievably coughed and died—all three of them. We were smack dab in the center of the whole outfit, with the enemy shooting from all sides.... The volume was terrific.

“The 203 had lost all electric power, including the radar and compass lights. She saw the two of us off our original course and came back to join us, making a wide circle at high speed and laying smoke. It is impossible to say exactly what happened; the melee was too terrific.

“The 202 had a jammed rudder which they were able to clear. She eventually got out by ducking around several vessels, passing as close as 100 yards. The 203 likewise got out by ducking in and out of the enemy formation, but we on the 211 just sat there helpless, watching the whole show.

“This business lasted for at least four or five minutes and even the shore batteries came into illuminate with starshells. Fortunately, there was enough smoke in the air to keep the issue confused. That confusion was the only thing that saved us.

“None of our boats was using guns at all, and it was obvious that the enemy was frightfully confused with us weaving through the formation. They were hard at work shooting each other up. I am sure they sank at least one of the E-boats, because several minutes later they started firing again off to the north, and there was a large gasoline fire in the channel which burned for a long time.

“We got clear by the simple process of just sitting still and letting the enemy pass around us and continue north.

“I finally got one engine engaged and went to our rendezvous which was only a couple of miles away, but by the time I got there I could just see the other two boats, on the radar screen, leaving. I tried to call them back, but I couldn’t get a soul and waited around for some time thinking they would come back. They didn’t, however, and went on back individually, for which they got a little private hell from me later.

“I had no alternative but to go back myself. I expected to find the other two boats pretty well shot up, as it was a miracle that we weren’t lost ourselves. Strangely enough, I found that they were not damaged, and except for the fantastic coincidence of all three of us being more or less disabled simultaneously, we were OK.”

Apparently, the rockets did no damage, and further installation of rocket racks on his PTs was firmly rejected by Lieut. Commander Barnes.

The American PT commander was not the only one concerned about the heavy ordnance of the F-lighters. Captain J. F. Stevens of the British Navy’s Coastal Forces in the Mediterranean said:

“While coastal forces are the most suitable forces to operate in mined areas, the enemy has so strengthened his escorts and armed his shipping that our coastal craft find themselves up against considerably heavier metal. Furthermore, the enemy’s use of F-lighters of shallow draft does not provide good torpedo targets. Everything that can be done to improve our chances of successful attack is being done. Torpedoes will, if possible, be fired at even shallower settings. Meanwhile, if they cannot achieve destruction, coastal forces will harry the enemy and endeavour to cause him the utmost possible alarm, damage, and casualties.”

Officers at La Maddalena gave longer thought to the problem and came up with an idea called Operation Gun.

Lieut. Commander Barnes’ combined operation—the plan to use American radar for scouting and conning heavier-armed British boats to targets—had been a promising beginning, but even the MBG gunboats were not a real match for the F-lighters.

Commander Robert A. Allan, British Commandant of the Sardinia base, cut three landing craft out of the British amphibious fleet and armed them with 4.7 naval guns and 40-mm. autocannon. The landing craft were big, flat-bottomed tubs, wonderful platforms for the hard-hitting 4.7 inchers. To man the guns, he assigned crack gunners of the Royal Marine Artillery.

Commander Allan organized an interesting task force around the three landing-craft gunboats (designated LCGs) as his main battle line. They were screened against E-boat attack by British torpedo boats, and controlled by the radar-equipped American PT scouting force.

Commander Allan himself went out on the first sweep of his beefed-up inshore patrol on the night of March 27th. He rode Lieut. (jg) Thaddeus Grundy’s PT 218, so that he could use American radar to assign targets to his gunboats and give them opening salvo ranges and bearings by remote control.

When the gunboat battle line arrived off San Vicenzo, south of Leghorn, a scouting group of two PTs, under Lieut. Dubose, went off on a fast sweep, looking for targets. At 10 P.M. the PTs had found six F-lighters going south, and Commander Allan brought his main battle force up quickly to intercept them.

At 11 P.M. Lieut. Dubose sharply warned the main force that two destroyers were escorting the lighters on the seaward side. “I am preparing to attack the destroyers,” he added.

Commander Allan continues the story: “Until he carried out this attack, it was not possible for us to engage the convoy, as our starshells being fired inshore over the target [to illuminate the F-lighters for the gunboats] would illuminate us for the escorting destroyers which were even farther to seaward than we were. Fire was therefore withheld during several anxious minutes.”

During this ten-minute wait for the PT scouts to take on the destroyers, both the German forces, escort and convoy, came on Commander Allan’s radar screen.

The PT scouts crept to within 400 yards before firing torpedoes, and ran away behind heavy smoke. Nevertheless, the destroyers laid down such a heavy fire that they hit 214, even in the smoke screen, wounding the engineer of the watch, Joseph F. Grossman, MoMM2c, and damaging the center engine. Grossman ignored his wounds and tended the stricken engine until it was running well again, staying below with his engines until the boat was out of danger.

The skippers of the scouting PTs heard the usual large explosions on one of the destroyers and hoped they had scored but couldn’t be sure. Hit or no hit, the destroyers reversed course and ran up the coast, abandoning their convoy—an unthinkable act of cowardice for Allied escorts.

Sunk or run off, it was all the same to Commander Allan, who wanted only a free hand with the F-lighters. When the destroyers were gone, he passed radar ranges and bearings to the gunboats, and the Royal Marines lit up the night over the convoy with a perfect spread of starshells.

Startled gunners on the F-lighters, unused to this kind of treatment in waters where vessels with 4.7-inch guns had never dared venture before, took the lights for plane flares and fired wildly into the clouds.

The Royal Marine gunners took their time for careful aim under the bright glare of the slowly sinking magnesium lights. At the first salvo, one of the F-lighters blew up with a tremendous explosion. Within ten minutes three F-lighters were burning briskly. The gunboats spread out and pinned the surviving boats against the beach while the Marine artillerymen methodically pounded them to scrap.

“Of the six F-lighters destroyed,” says Commander Allan, “two, judging by the impressive explosions, were carrying petrol, two ammunition, and one a mixed cargo of both.”

With what sounds like a note of wistful disappointment, Commander Allan added: “The sixth sank without exploding.”

The Operation Gun Task Force sortied again on the night of April 24th. The coastal waters around the Tuscan Archipelago were swarming with traffic that night. Early in the evening the gunboats blew two F-lighters out of the water. Burning debris, cascading from the sky after the explosions, set fires on the beach.

Shortly afterward the Marine sharpshooters picked off a tug and three more F-lighters.

Radar picked up still another group and star-shell from the gunboats showed that they were three flak lighters—medium-size craft powerfully armed as antiaircraft escorts for daylight convoys. The Royal Marine gunners smacked their first salvos into two of the flak lighters, which burned in a fury of exploding ammunition.

The third lighter poured an astonishing volume of fire at the unarmored gunboats, and Commander Allan, in PT 218, made a fast run at the enemy to draw fire away from his gunboats. The Marines put a shell into the flak lighter, and it ran off behind smoke, but the 209 led a charge through the smoke, fired off its fish, caught the flak ship squarely amidships, and blew it in two.

Lieut. Dubose’s scouting torpedo boats found a convoy escorted by a flak lighter, but at that moment the gunboats were engaged in another fight, so rather than break up the show of the main battle line, the PTs attacked the enemy themselves. At least one of three fish connected, for the flak lighter blew up in a jarring explosion.

Ashore, fifty miles away at Bastia, squadron mates sat outdoors to watch the flash and glare of the all-night battle against the eastern sky. Things were just threatening to get dull after midnight when shore radio at Bastia called Commander Allan with a radar-contact report of an Axis convoy between the gunboats and Corsica. The PTs got there first and found two destroyers and an E-boat in column.

When the PTs were still 2,500 yards away—too far for a good torpedo shot from a small boat—the destroyers fired a starshell. PT 202 was ready for just that emergency. A sailor standing by with a captured five-star recognition flare fired the correct answering lights and calmed the enemy’s nerves.

The PTs moved in under the guise of friends and fired four fish at 1,700 yards. As they ran away they felt a violent underwater explosion, so they claimed a possible hit.

On this one wild night of action Commander Allan’s strange little navy had, without damage to itself, sunk five of the formidable F-lighters, four heavily armed flak lighters, and a tug; scored a possible torpedo hit on a destroyer; and pulled a dozen German prisoners from the water.

Hearts of the PT sailors were lifted with joy in May 1944, when the Mark XIII torpedoes began to trickle into their bases and the heavy old-fashioned torpedo tubes were replaced with light launching racks that gave the boats badly needed extra bursts of speed. More boats had been arriving, too, and eventually there were three PT squadrons working out of Sardinia and Corsica.

As torpedomen installed the new fish and the new launching rigs, a PT skipper rubbed his hands and said: “Wait till we get a good target now. These Mark Thirteens are going to sweep these waters clean.”

Lieut. Eugene A. Clifford, in 204, led two other PTs in the first attack with the new torpedoes on the night of May 18th in the Tuscan Archipelago. The PTs had two flak lighters on their radarscopes. Determined to try out the new torpedoes, they bored through the massive barrage from the flak lighters’ antiaircraft guns, firing from 1,000 yards.

One of the highly vaunted Mark XIII’s made a typical Mark VIII run and hit the 204 in the stern. Fortunately, when this Mark XIII goofed, it really goofed, so it did not explode, but punched through the PT’s skin and lodged its warhead inside. Its body dangled in the PT’s wake, like a sucker-fish clamped to a shark’s tail.

Lewis H. Riggsby, TM2c, went into the lazaret to stuff towels into the vanes of the impeller to keep the torpedo from arming and exploding.

The flak lighters chased the PTs and hit 204 with 20-mm fire, but the boat escaped behind smoke, one of the famous Mark XIII torpedoes bobbing and dangling from the stern.

Dominating the Tuscan Archipelago, within sight of the Italian mainland, is the island of Elba, first home of Napoleon in exile. The island attracted the Allies, because big guns on the point closest to the mainland could reach the coastal road and also close off the inshore passage to coastal craft. Once Elba was in Allied hands, southbound Axis land traffic might be chased a few miles inland to less-developed mountain roads, and sea traffic would certainly be squeezed into the thirty miles of water between two Allied bases at Elba and Corsica.

One problem annoyed the planners of the Elba landings. What to do for naval support? The waters around Elba were probably the most heavily mined on the Italian Coast, and deep-draft ships could not be risked there. But then, hadn’t PTs been scooting about the coast of Elba for nine months?

On the night between June 16th and 17th thirty-seven PTs joined other shallow-draft vessels of the Coastal Force to support landings of Senegalese troops of the French Ninth Colonial Division, plus mixed elements from other Allied forces.

Five PTs approached the northern coast at midnight, and about a half mile from shore put 87 French raiders in the water in rubber rafts. The five PTs joined another quintet at the farthest northeast point of Elba, the point closest to the mainland.

At 2 A.M. three of the ten PTs went roaring along the northern coast, smoke generators wide open and smoke pots dropping over the side in a steady stream. When the shoreline was sealed off behind a 16,000-yard curtain of smoke, four more PTs moved down the seaward side, with loudspeakers blaring the sounds of a great fleet of landing craft. The PTs launched occasional ripples of rockets at the beach to imitate a preinvasion shore bombardment.

The three remaining PT skippers carried on a lively radio exchange, straining their imaginations to invent a torrent of orders for an imaginary invasion armada.

Searchlights from the beach swept the water, looking for a hole in the screen. Land guns on the shore and in the mountains to the west poured shells into the smoke screen, thus pinpointing themselves nicely for an Allied air strike that slipped in just before dawn.

At the true landing beach on the south coast, Lieut. (jg) Eads Poitevent, Jr., captain of the 211, was posted as radar picket to guide landing craft ashore. He was alarmed when he saw a radar target creep out of the harbor at Marina de Campo. He could not attack without alerting the beach, and yet the oncoming enemy vessel had to be kept away from the landing flotilla at any cost.

Poitevent boldly sailed close to the target—an E-boat—and made friendly looking signals on a blinker light. He eased off in a direction away from the convoy, luring the patrol into harmless waters. It took him fifteen minutes to tease the E-boat off the scene and return to his duties.

The E-boat would not stay away, however, and in its aimless wanderings it blundered across the path of a PT with a deckload of British commandos destined for a preinvasion landing. The commandos slipped over the side, three-quarters of a mile farther out than they had planned, and silently paddled their rubber boats successfully to the beach, around the lackadaisical enemy patrol.

Another PT saw the E-boat also, and thinking it was a friendly, tried to form up in column. Lieut. (jg) Harold J. Nugent, on 210, who was following the bumbling drama on radar, broke radio silence just long enough to cheep the smallest of warnings to his squadron mate. The E-boat crew incredibly fumbled about those waters, teeming with Allied boats, for most of the night and never lost their happy belief that they were alone with the stars and the sea.

PT radarscopes now showed a more interesting target. Coming right up the patrol line was something big, in fact, a formation of big ships, so PT skippers prepared for a torpedo attack. They held back, however, for full identification of the targets, because the ships could just possibly be the invasion flotilla, slightly off course.

At 400 yards, Nugent challenged the approaching formation by blinker. The nearest vessel answered correctly, and a few seconds later repeated the correct code phrase for the period.

Lieut. Nugent continues:

“Being convinced that the ships were part of the invasion convoy which had probably become lost, I called to my executive officer, Lieut. (jg) Joel W. Bloom, to be ready to look up the ships’ correct position in our copy of the invasion plan. I brought the 210 up to the starboard side of the nearest ship, took off my helmet, put the megaphone to my mouth and called over ‘What ship are you?’

“I shall never forget the answer.

“First there was a string of guttural words, followed by a broadside from the ship’s two 88-mm. guns and five or six 20-mm. guns. The first blast carried the megaphone away and tore the right side off a pair of binoculars that I was wearing around my neck. It also tore through the bridge of the boat, jamming the helm, knocking out the bridge engine controls, and scoring a direct hit on the three engine emergency cutout switches which stopped the engines.

“I immediately gave the order to open fire, and though we were dead in the water and had no way of controlling the boat, she was in such a position as to deliver a full broadside.

“After a few minutes of heavy fire, we had reduced the firepower of the closest ship to one wildly wavering 20-mm. and one 88-mm. cannon which continued to fire over our heads throughout the engagement.

“It was easy to identify the ships, as the scene was well lighted with tracers. They were three ships traveling in a close V, an E-boat in the center with an F-lighter on either flank.

“We were engaging the F-lighter on the starboard flank of the formation. As the ships started to move toward our stern the injured F-lighter screened us from the fire of the other two ships, so I gave the order to cease fire.

“In the ensuing silence we clearly heard screams and cries from the F-lighter.

“Two members of our engine-room crew, who were topside as gun loaders during battle, were sent to the engine room to take over the chief engineer’s duties, for I was sure he was dead or wounded. However, he had been working on the engines throughout the battle and had already found the trouble. We immediately got under way.

“We found out, however, that our rudder was jammed in a dead-ahead position, but by great good fortune we were headed directly away from the enemy, so I dropped a couple of smoke pots over the side and we moved off. The enemy shifted its fire to the smoke pots, and we lay to and started repairs.

“Much to our surprise, we found that none of us had even been wounded, but the boat had absorbed a great deal of punishment. A burst of 20 mm. had zipped through the charthouse, torn the chart table to bits, knocked out the lighting system, and de-tuned and scarred the radio and radar. Another burst had gone through the engine room, damaged control panels, torn the hull. All hits, however, were above the waterline. Turrets, turret lockers, ventilators, and the deck were holed.

“We called the 209 alongside, and sent off a radio report to the flagship on the action and the direction in which the ships retired.”

Lieut. Nugent learned from the skipper of the 209 that his boat had been hit only twice, but one of the shells had scored a direct hit on a 40-mm. gun loader and killed him instantly.

The tall, black warriors from French Senegal swept over the island in two days of brisk fighting and Elba was Allied. The sea roads to the south were blocked, and PT action shifted to the north, to the Ligurian Sea, the Gulf of Genoa, and the lovely blue waters off the Côte d’Azur.

7. The War in Europe: English Channel

In England, as May 1944 turned into June, it didn’t take a genius to know that something big was afoot. Military traffic choked the roads leading to the Channel seacoast and the coastal villages. Troops were in battle dress, officers were grim faced, all hands hustled about on the thousands of mysterious errands that presage an offensive. Everybody knew it was the Big Landing—the assault on Fortress Europe—but where?