Mediterranean MTBs at War
MEDITERRANEAN MTB’S AT WAR: Short MTB Flotilla Operations 1939-1945 L.C. REYNOLDS AND H.F.COOPER Sutton Publishing in association with the Imperial War Museum, Stroud, 1999
216p., illustrated, 8 maps £20 ISBN 0 7509 2274 5
This is the second volume of a planned trilogy which aims to provide a definitive account of the long neglected Coastal Forces contribution to the war at sea. The early history in particular is poorly documented and the authors (who themselves served on the boats) have made painstaking efforts to track down obscure official reports and to uncover the memories of the diminishing band of survivors.
The book is well organised and well written and provides a chronological record of the history of the flotillas from the return of the 1st Flotilla from Malta via the French canals in 1939, through the return to the Mediterranean of the tiny and ancient boats of the 10th Flotilla, sunk in disastrous actions around soon after their arrival, to the slow growth of the flotillas as the bigger and splendid Elco boats arrived from the United States. As their numbers grew they supported the 8th Army along the North African coast and ranged up through the Aegean and Adriatic. A final chapter gives a substantial account of the 2nd MTB Flotilla in Hong Kong 1938-41 and the escape through China of some of the crews. Here in particular it does a real service in piecing together the forlorn hope actions of very brave men fighting in a doomed cause.
There is a substantial number of previously unpublished photographs, many from those they have contacted, which give an excellent sense of period and the book’s A4 size and high production values allow these to be very well displayed. There are also well drawn and easy to use maps. The index is something of a curiosity, arranged into subsections by MTB numbers, other boats, flotillas, RN ships, operations and Allied Personnel. None of the Axis forces or any of the places is indexed, making it difficult, for example, to track down a sequence of events by place.
It is a splendid piece of work with a real sense of freshness and life and what it was like, but questions do remain. The authors have concentrated overwhelmingly on unearthing official reports and contacting survivors. There is then a niggling worry that they may have neglected the admittedly very scattered printed sources and indeed the bibliography of published works is relatively slim. Thus the return of the 1st Flotilla through France is described through an unpublished memoir, neglecting more recent published accounts. The authors note that no reports exist on the role of MA/SB2 of the 10th Flotilla, but this is covered in Ritchie’s recently published Letter of Proceedings. A raid to capture Italian prisoners is described in recollections from the Coxswain of MA/SB3, whereas Ritchie, who was her CO, records that they were actually attempting to capture General ‘Electric Whiskers’ Bergonzoli. The same niggling worry occurs in considering the actions in the Aegean, a topic on which there has of late been a small spate of books, none of them mentioned. The authors’ description of the important night action off Leros on 14/15 November 1943 in which an invasion convoy was destroyed differs in almost every significant detail from Lind’s account of the same action (Lind, [1994],The Wine Dark Sea). This is not in any sense to question the accuracy of the book, which is firmly based on the documentary evidence, but if there are differences of interpretation or fact, or uncertainties over exactly what happened, one might expect these to be exposed and explored.
In sum then this is a very welcome and indeed enjoyable book, which is certainly authoritative but perhaps falls a little short of the ambition to be definitive.