Dog Boats at War

Royal Navy D Class MTBs and MGBs 1939-1945

Leonard C Reynolds, Leonard C Reynolds OBE, DSC

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780752450452
• eBook ISBN: 9780752499949
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Built of plywood and measuring 115 feet long, powered by four supercharged petrol engines and armed to the teeth with heavy weapons, the 'D' Class Motor Gun Boats (MGBs) and Motor Torpedo Boats (MTBs) were better known as Dog Boats and played havoc with enemy shipping in home and foreign waters. During three years of war they engaged the enemy on more than 350 occasions, sinking and damaging many ships. Dog Boats at War is the authoritative account of operations by the Royal Navy's 'D' Class MGBs and MTBs in the Second World War in Home, Mediterranean and Norwegian waters. As well as drawing on official records - both British and German - the author has contacted several hundred Dog Boat veterans whose eye witness accounts add drama to the unfolding story.

CHAPTER 1

THE URGENCY OF WAR

The ‘Dog Boats’ – the D class Fairmile MTBs and MGBs – formed one of the classes of wooden boat produced by the Fairmile Marine Company. The history of that company is a tribute to one man’s vision and drive and to the positive and speedy decisionmaking that resulted from the existence of an urgent requirement: exactly the conditions which existed in 1939. It is remarkable that such decisions had to be taken with so little long-term planning to make rapid expansion possible, and that the man, Noel Macklin, should be there ready to take risks and invest money, even before the slow response and reactionary thinking of the Admiralty had taken only faltering steps.

This story of the operations of the Dog Boats would not be complete without a brief reference to the organization and system which led to the astonishing achievement of their production.

Noel Macklin had a background of naval service in the First World War, and of car racing and flying between the wars. It was his success with car construction in the 1930s, when models such as the Invicta and the Railton car were produced by his Fairmile Engineering Company in sheds behind his house at Fairmile, Cobham, that put him in a position to respond when he read that imminent war would require an immediate and urgent need for small anti-submarine vessels.

He quickly discovered that lessons were to be learned from the experience of fulfilling precisely the same requirements in the First World War. In 1915, orders had been placed with Elco in New Jersey for 550 motor launches (MLs) of 75–80 ft in length, capable of 19 knots and an average radius of action of 750 miles. These had been delivered, by a remarkable feat of production, by November 1916. In retrospect, however, the Royal Navy considered that a vessel of 100–200 ft length, designed more significantly for the weather conditions in home waters, would have been preferable. With this in mind, Macklin began to apply his extraordinary energy and breadth of vision to the concept of building mass-produced wooden boats in a multitude of small boat yards. He formed the Fairmile Marine Company, assembled a team of experts, and had soon decided on a prototype of a 110-ft hard chine motor launch designed for a maximum speed of 25 knots. Despite a very negative early Admiralty response to this initiative, Macklin had sufficient confidence in his concept to set about building a prototype. Fairmile’s records show that the Admiralty finally placed an order for ML 100 on 27 July 1939 and she was ‘laid off’ at Woodnutt’s yard on the Isle of Wight, ‘laid down’ on 29 September and completed on 21 March 1940.

A very significant figure in the design of the Fairmile boats was William John Holt, at that time the head of the boat section in the Department of Naval Construction (DNCD). He recognized the huge potential of the Fairmile production organization, and threw himself into the task of designing developments of that first motor launch, designated the Fairmile ‘A’, of which twelve were built and were used mainly as minelayers.

It was his design for a round bilge motor launch that was accepted and went into production immediately as the Fairmile ‘B’. This became the versatile and ubiquitous ‘ML’, which served all over the world in large numbers and with great distinction.

The additional capital required for even the first few dozen boats led to a quite remarkable agreement with the Admiralty. The Fairmile Marine Company retained its name and considerable freedom in commercial activity but became a Government Agency with guaranteed firm contracts.

The stage was set, with amazing speed and unorthodox supply sources, for the rapid expansion of orders and consideration of new designs, and Holt set about the task of using these early ideas and the Fairmile system to provide a significant new element in another field. The Navy’s fleet of motor torpedo boats (MTBs) and motor gunboats (MGBs) had until this time been thought of as primarily consisting of ‘short’ boats, usually of 60–80 ft in length. These MTBs and MGBs were faster and more powerfully armed than the MLs, and their role was to attack enemy shipping and to counteract the threat of the German Navy’s E-boats, which had the advantage of high speed provided by powerful lightweight diesel engines.

Just as Macklin had taken a commercial risk to produce a prototype, so the Vosper Company, the British Power Boat Company and the Thornycroft Organisation had been producing early MTBs, MASBs (motor antisubmarine boats) and MGBs for the navies of the world. The onset of war found the Admiralty commandeering boats under construction for other nations, to add to the handful of boats very tentatively ordered from 1935 onwards and initially deployed in Malta and Hong Kong.

It was rapidly concluded that there was a need to reinforce the ‘short boats’ with a new design of ‘long’ boats (over 100 ft) to provide a more stable gun platform, an ability to withstand heavier seas, and room for a greatly increased armament.

The first Fairmile ‘long’ boats with greater power were ordered in August 1940 as motor launches, and were a development from the early A class. They were designated C class and began coming off the construction line in June 1941. Almost at once, they were reclassed as motor gunboats, and the twenty-four boats of the class were numbered from 312 to 335. They were to do valiant service not only as escorts for East Coast convoys, but for clandestine operations: indeed MGB 314 entered naval history as the headquarters ship for the St Nazaire raid.

Throughout the construction period of the C class boats, and with growing confidence in the Fairmile system of mass production, the Admiralty, using the expertise of William John Holt, were designing and testing a new hull design for a boat of greater power.¹

Holt’s concept for the next development of the Fairmile MTB/MGB was to marry a destroyer bow to a fast motor boat stern capable of accepting the greater power of four engines. He was working on this before the end of 1939. The aim was to obtain less pounding when driven at high speed into a head sea, and also to produce a dry boat forward by ploughing over the bow wave. This form had been tested experimentally to compare it with the round bilge form already developed.

The result was a semi-hard chine design with a sharp bow and very distinctive flare, with a wide flat transom which lent itself well to the arrangement of four shafts and propellers.

Holt later acknowledged that it was found that problems arose when it was necessary to maintain higher speeds into short steep sea conditions; then the plywood frames forward tended to break. This was tackled successfully by doubling the number of frames forward, and reinforcing parts of the hull with steel angle bars. The hull proved capable of providing the required greater speed, longer range, and heavier armament with a steady gun platform, and was acknowledged as a success.²

This, then, was the D class Fairmile, soon to be known as the ‘Dog Boat’. The boats of the class were allocated the numbers 601 onwards.

Sadly, this design did not lead to beauty. Compared with the sleek yacht-like hull of the Fairmile ‘B’ motor launch, the Dog Boat was at first sight ugly – much beamier and very squat. Indeed, one CO joining his boat and remembering it was prefabricated, was heard to mutter, ‘Is that the boat or the box it was delivered in?’

By March 1941, the design was ready, and orders given for twelve motor gunboats, with the prototype MGB 601 laid down at Tough Brothers’ yard at Teddington on 1 June 1941. Within a few weeks, the order was increased to forty boats, to be built at fifteen boat yards. The first thirty-two boats were planned to be gunboats and had no torpedo scallops cut into the hull forward of the bridge, but almost at once it was recognized that some might be completed as MTBs. The boats from 633 onwards had scallops incorporated, and could receive 21-in torpedo tubes, even though some were completed as MGBs. By November 1941, the order had been increased to 100 boats, and four more yards were building Dog Boats.

A feature of the construction of the class was the ease with which modifications could be introduced, proving the value of the prefabrication techniques and the flexibility of both planning and execution by the Fairmile method. This was quickly demonstrated when the decision was made to complete four of the first eight flotillas (each of eight boats) as MTBs rather than MGBs. Armament varied as new weapons and mountings became available, and it was not long before the Dog Boat was recognized as the most powerfully armed fast motor boat in the navies of the world.

The early flotillas soon settled to a ‘normal’ configuration. The common elements were the 2-pdr pom-pom on the focs’le and the twin 0.5-in mountings on each side of the bridge, with twin Vickers .303 machine-guns in the bridge wings. The MTBs had their two 21-in torpedoes, and a twin Oerlikon aft, while the MGBs mounted their twin Oerlikon on the coach roof and had a hand-operated Hotchkiss 6-pdr aft. This gun of ancient vintage, laid and trained by something akin to bicycle chains, proved in action to be accurate and effective when manned by a well-trained crew, and was greatly respected.

Later, some of the MGBs in the Mediterranean replaced the twin 0.5-in turrets with single Oerlikons; a power-operated semi-automatic 6-pdr replaced the pom-pom and the manual 6-pdr, and there were many local adaptations and experiments.

To complete the picture of this new concept of a brutal striking force, the early Dog Boats were powered by four Packard 4M-2500 marine petrol engines giving 1,250 b.h.p. at 2,400 r.p.m. They were the first MTBs to have four engines. Certainly, to be in the engine room when all four engines were running at high revs was to the uninitiated a frightening experience: somehow the dedicated motor mechanics and stokers found it exhilarating! The engines ran on 100 octane fuel, and the crews had quickly to get used to living within feet of 5,000 gallons of this highly volatile liquid whose vapour mixed with air could explode easily, given a spark from a faulty electrical system. The wardroom after bulkhead, for instance, was within inches of six copper tanks, each surrounded by a selfsealing compound, and each holding nearly 400 gallons. The petty officers’ and stokers’ messes down aft were similarly close to the after tank space, with another five tanks.

Descriptions thus far have been of hull and armament and engines: a power pack within the confines of thin plywood. But it was the men manning the boats who created their spirit and effectiveness, and gave them their vibrant purpose.

Indeed, these were the first MTBs and MGBs that were designed to have a crew which lived aboard and could be selfsufficient for long periods. That decision had its critics, including the legendary Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean, Admiral A.B.C. Cunningham who, paying his first and unannounced visit to a Dog Boat newly arrived in Algiers, muttered sharp imprecations about MTBs which were so full of clutter by virtue of living accommodation, that they were too slow to be effective.

But those words were quickly refuted as the benefits became rapidly evident. The ability to undertake much longer patrols and, for example, to remain off a beachhead for days supported only by transfers of water and fuel were exemplified during the Invasion of Sicily, and ‘ABC’ was soon sending congratulatory messages!³

For those responsible for organizing the manning of this new generation of much larger boats, with their complement of three officers and thirty men, the rapid expansion of manpower requirements posed very real problems. The increasing demand caused by the regular arrival from the boat yards of short MTBs and MGBs, and MLs and HDMLs, was now compounded by this proportionately greater need of the larger boats.

The Naval Psychological Service had already been involved in devising methods of identifying suitable candidates from the mass of officers and men coming out of initial training, given the specific qualities needed in a branch of the service where youth, physical resilience, quick reactions and mental toughness were all deemed essential requirements.

The middle of 1942 in Coastal Forces was indeed the start of a remarkable expansion in required manpower. It also happened to be a time when those yachtsmen and seafaring amateurs who had flocked in 1938 and 1939 to the RNVR had proved themselves in many types of small boat. The early MTBs had nearly all been commanded by young RN officers but very quickly the RNVR men began to get commands, and the Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders came through strongly, too. (Note 1, Appendix 1)

So, command of the new Dog Boats went generally to RNVR officers who had spent two years in either short boats or in MLs and who had proved their worth in seamanship and aggression. They tended to be in their mid-twenties, although some were older, but even at twenty-five they were frequently the oldest men aboard.

First Lieutenants came broadly from a different background. They were mostly in an age group that had come into the Navy as ratings, had been commissioned in 1941 and then gained perhaps a year or less of experience in short boats. The Third Officers (usually known as ‘Pilot’ because normally they had the responsibility of navigating the boat) were however invariably straight from training, and were commonly nineteen or twenty years old – either fresh-faced midshipmen with their maroon patches, or sub-lieutenants with brightly gleaming new gold braid on their sleeves. It was a fact that every week, the Officers’ Training Ship at Hove, HMS King Alfred, was turning out over a hundred young officers. Of these, it was normal that fifteen of the top twenty in the pass out list should be allocated to Coastal Forces, presumably because it was inevitable that they would almost immediately be navigating boats on operations which would be physically and mentally demanding – quite definitely a job for the young and bright.

This group was given one special ‘perk’ before being thrown in at the deep end. They alone were sent to Royal Naval College, Greenwich, for two weeks on what was irreverently known as the ‘knife and fork’ course. Few remembered afterwards any special benefits of that fortnight other than the proximity of London and the opportunity of dining in unaccustomed splendour in the Painted Hall, served by delightful Wren stewards. But at least it eased the transition from lower deck to wardroom and was greatly appreciated. They spent the next three weeks at Whale Island on gunnery instruction, and at Roedean College near Brighton on a torpedo course, before making the long train journey north to Fort William. There, at HMS St Christopher, the Coastal Forces training base, they were instructed in specifically relevant aspects of what they were about to do. They all remembered the aircraft recognition sessions with the renowned yachtsman and author Alan Villiers, and benefited from instruction by young officers, often recovering from wounds, who only weeks before had been in command of an MTB.

The problems of manning at this stage of the war (in mid-1942) were probably seen most dramatically in the composition of crews. The keystone of any crew was the coxswain, and in the Dog Boats he was invariably a Petty Officer and almost always he had a General Service (i.e., career Navy) background. He brought the seamanship and man-management skills which were so necessary, especially when his crew were largely raw recruits.

He was supported by a ‘second coxswain’ – normally a Leading Seaman – with perhaps two years of Coastal Forces experience behind him. After that, he was lucky if he had two or three Able Seamen with salt in their veins: the rest of the upper deck crew were Ordinary Seamen straight from training. Their job was to man the guns and to maintain the boat in a shipshape and seamanlike condition. The boats had no signalman – the Pilot and First Lieutenant were expected to cope with light or flag signals – but carried a Telegraphist (‘Sparks’) and a Radar Operator. Rather strangely, there was no cook: morale on board often reflected the coxswain’s success in persuading one of the seamen to take on that very important role with a modicum of competence.

Below decks in the engine room crew there was a Petty Officer (or Chief) Motor Mechanic, and a Leading MM, with four stokers, only one of whom might have some experience. So, in a crew of thirty-two, the CO might be lucky when he commissioned his boat to have six or seven hands with any experience. The other twenty-five were raw material for him to train and mould into an efficient unit as quickly as possible. His coxswain was therefore vital to his success, their relationship literally a matter of life or death, with the possibility of action only days away.

It was these untried boats and men that formed the first Dog Boat flotillas, and were thrust rapidly into the realities of war.

¹ J. Lambert and A. Ross, ‘The Fairmile “D” MTB’, Allied Coastal Forces in World War Two, vol. 1, Fairmile Designs.

²   Paper by W.J. Holt to Institute of Naval Architects, 1947.

³   See chapter four.

CHAPTER 2

OPERATIONS BEGIN

When the Dog Boats began to come off the slipways of their boat yards in the spring of 1942, they joined a rapidly growing force of short MTBs and MGBs which, until a few months earlier, had been desperately short of resources.

The war had begun with only a handful of MTBs in ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Author’ S Note
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Urgency of War
• Chapter 2 Operations Begin
• Chapter 3 The 30th (Norwegian) MTB Flotilla, June 1942 to October 1943
• Chapter 4 Mediterranean Operations, march to October 1943
• Chapter 5 Home waters, may 1943 to may 1944
• Chapter 6 Norwegian Operations, september 1943 to may 1945
• Chapter 7 Mediterranean Operations, October 1943 to July 1944
• Chapter 8 Home waters, June 1944 to may 1945
• Chapter 9 MTB 718, Clandestine Operations to the shores of Brittany and Norway
• Chapter 10 Mediterranean Operations, august 1944 to May 1945
• Chapter 11 C Class MGBs, sGBs and Camper and Nicholsons MGBs
• Epilogue
• Glossary
• Appendix 1 Notes
• Appendix 2 Tables
• Appendix 3 Bibliography