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The War of the Gun Boats

Bryan Cooper

The 'little ships' of the Second World War - the fast and highly manoeuvrable motor torpedo boats and gunboats which fought in coastal waters all over the world - developed a special kind of naval warfare. With their daring nightly raids against an enemy's coastal shipping - and sometimes much larger warships - they acquired the buccaneering spirit of an earlier age. And never more so than in the close hand-to-hand battles which raged between opposing craft when they met in open waters. Bryan Cooper's book traces the history and development of these craft from their first limited use in the First World War and the fast motor boats designed in the 1930s for wealthy private clients and water speed record attempts. With account of the battles which took place during the Second World War, when the vital importance of coastal waters came to be recognised, he captures the drama of this highly individual form of combat. And not least the sea itself which was the common enemy of all who crewed these frail craft.
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The 'little ships' of the Second World War - the fast and highly manoeuvrable motor torpedo boats and gunboats which fought in coastal waters all over the world - developed a special kind of naval warfare. With their daring nightly raids against an enemy's coastal shipping - and sometimes much larger warships - they acquired the buccaneering spirit of an earlier age. And never more so than in the close hand-to-hand battles which raged between opposing craft when they met in open waters. Large numbers of these small fighting boats were built by the major naval powers. The Germans called them Schnellboote (Fast Boats), referred to by the British as E-boats (E for Enemy). In the Royal Navy they were MTBs and MGBs. The American equivalent were PT boats (for Patrol Torpedo). They fought in the narrow waters of the English Channel and the stormy North Sea, in the Mediterranean off the coasts of North Africa and Italy and among the islands of the Aegean, across the Pacific from Pearl Harbour to Leyte Gulf, in Hong Kong and Singapore, and off Burma's Arakan coast. Bryan Cooper's book traces the history and development of these craft from their first limited use in the First World War and the fast motor boats designed in the 1930s for wealthy private clients and water speed record attempts. With account of the battles which took place during the Second World War, when the vital importance of coastal waters came to be recognised, he captures the drama of this highly individual form of combat. And not least the sea itself which was the common enemy of all who crewed these frail craft.

ISBN: 9781399019897
Format: Paperback
Author(s): Bryan Cooper
First Publishment Date: 22 July 2022
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Author(s) Bryan Cooper
Customer Reviews
  1. Recommended
    First published in 1970, in this reprint the author explains in his introduction that his book doesn’t aim to cover all MTB operations in all the theatres of war, but to show how the tactics used by MTBs evolved on both sides of WWII. A brief history of MTB development covers the characteristics of the different national “little boats”. The German S-boats (known as E-boats (enemy) by the British) were larger with diesel engines and better armed; the smaller British MTBs had Italian petrol engines. After Dunkirk the Germans occupied all the coast facing England and the RN rapidly established MTB bases to face this challenge. Early contact in the Channel emphasised the superiority of the E-boat, but the arrival of better armed MGBs operating with the MTBs proved effective, thanks to the leadership of officers such as Lt Cdr Hichens. The book also covers the operations of the USN in the Pacific where PT boats were a constant threat to Japanese coastal shipping. In the Mediterranean, German E-boats initially had success against convoys and sank 2 cruisers but the Allies steadily gained the upper hand and by 1944 had evolved Battle Squadrons – a mix of Fairmile D -class MGBs and MTBs with US PT boats with their superior radar. The book has a lovely vignette of an E-boat demanding and achieving the surrender of 5,000 Italians and the city of Venice! Other operations covered are the St Nazaire Raid – the “greatest single undertaking by Coastal Forces” and D-Day where Coastal Forces successfully prevented E-boats attacks and harassed German coastal shipping as the Allies advanced. Concluding, the book shows that the E-boats were more successful against Allied convoys than the MTBs were against German shipping, but the larger British convoys provided better targets, although German mining operations were the most successful use of the E-boat. The book traces the rapid build-up of British Coastal Forces commanded predominantly by RNVR officers; operating in all weather, in the dark with only basic navigational aids, was a skill in itself, let alone fighting. Unashamedly a canter across WWII Coastal Forces operations, a read of books such as Peter Scott’s Battle of the Narrow Seas and Hichens Gunboat Command will give a deeper understanding. Although currently worldwide Coastal Forces are minimal, the war in Ukraine shows the continued vulnerability of coastal shipping and the advent of unmanned attack craft.

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