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Saturday: Gaeta has fallen, the Adolph Hitler line is breached. Soon Anzio will link up, and then . . . Rome at last, and forward. —George H. Dormer, HMS Hornpipe crewman By early spring of 1944 the struggle at Anzio beachhead had become a stalemate destined to last until May when Allied forces were finally able to break out from the beachhead and link up with Fifth Army forces advancing northward. Allied warships and smaller escorts spent most of that period protecting the beachhead against air, submarine, and E-boat attack or escorting small convoys ferrying supplies and troops to Anzio and bringing casualties and prisoners of war back to Naples. Most of the naval action off the coast of Italy involved Coastal Forces boats based on Corsica and Sardinia that supported Anzio beachhead by intercepting and attacking Axis coastal convoys. When the Germans began arming their coastal merchant ships and giving their escorts and F-lighters “heavier metal,” Coastal Forces had to develop new tactics. Coastal Forces commander Capt. J.L. Stevens RN explained that they started using diversionary tactics to break up enemy convoys and began setting torpedoes at a shallower depth, but both failed to achieve results. MTB Squadron 15 skipper Stan Barnes felt it was “out of the question to shoot at F lighters with 20mm or 40mm guns, so in February, 1944, three PTs from MTB Squadron 15, now based at Bastia, even tried firing 4.5 inch rockets at enemy F lighters. According to Barnes, “the rockets were observed to fall on or near the target pips but no fires or direct hits were observed.” In his memoirs, Barnes noted, “Rockets did have something to offer but not much. . . . I don’t regret having tried it. We desperately needed a weapon that could lay a glove CHAPTER 15 BREAKOUT OPERATIONS DIADEM AND BUFFALO t-Tomblin 15.qx2 6/30/04 1:18 PM Page 359 on the F lighter.” The fact that as of March 1944 only one Coastal Forces’ torpedo attack had succeeded in getting a possible hit confirms Barnes’s statement. He also recalled, “The rest of the month the weather was so bad that no patrols were even sent out, much less forced to return. February 1944 was a rotten month for Coastal Forces in that part of the world and that I for one, and I am sure many others, will never forget.”1 In late March, Commander Bobby Allan, commander of MTBs in the Mediterranean, changed tactics, abandoning the old hit-and-run tactics for new ones based on a mixed squadron using American PT boats as a scouting group; a screen of MGBs, or Dogs, and MTBs; and a battle group composed of landing craft (LCGs). The first real test of Allan’s new tactics came on March 27 in Operation Gun. According to plan, LCG-14 and LCG-20 left Bastia at 1500 and rendezvoused south of Zenobito Point, Capraia with Lt. Ed DuBose’s four PTs (218, 208, 212, and 214) escorted by three MGBs (662, 659, and 660), and MTB-634. They intercepted a convoy of six F-lighters and two former Italian destroyers south of Vada Rocks. When it was all over, Allan’s force had sunk all six F-lighters. The Dogs were released to mop up, but “they could find nothing remaining afloat of the convoy which they could engage.” Commander Allan did not have another opportunity to use his battle squadron until the end of April when good weather returned to the Tyrhennian Sea. On April 24 Allan set off for Operation Newt in PT-218 returning to Vada Rocks with six other PTs (202, 209, 211, 212, 213, and 216),, three LCGs, and a half dozen MGBs and MTBs. Near the rocks, Allan’s force discovered a convoy chugging along on a southerly course and closed. In a lightning-fast action the LCGs sank the tug Tebessa and one lighter and set two more afire. Shortly thereafter a radar contact picked up three F-lighters, which were alerted by the star shell and tracers and sped off to the north. They were overtaken by LCGs, which sank one before the enemy lighters could even open fire. When another lighter, F-610, opened up on the LCGs, Allan instinctively revved up PT218 and raced out ahead to draw their fire. The ruse worked. F-610 was hit and eventually sank. PT-209 and the MTBs pursued F-589 and damaged her, but she managed...

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