Messina strait, night 16-17/8/1943

Begonnen von cam, 07 Januar 2017, 15:14:01

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cam

Hi,

On August 16/17, came the last action
of the Sicilian campaign. It involved three
boats of the 24th Flotilla led by Lieutenant
Laurie Strong in MTB 81, with MTB 242
Lieutenant Claude Holloway and MTB
243 Lieutenant du Boulay. It was a very dark
night, and the unit proceeded to within half
a mile of Messina, where they stopped and
cut engines. Soon after, Laurie Strong heard
heavy engine noise and thought it might be
the Reggio-Messina ferry. However, when
the 'vessel' appeared, it was in fact two
German R-boats. Strong had orders not to
waste torpedoes on small targets, so he
ordered a gun attack. The R-boats replied
with far heavier fire-power, and MTB 81
received their concentrated broadside,
MTB 243 had stopped with one engine out
of action, and MTB 242 had been blocked
and had briefly lost sight of other boats. As
Strong, realizing he was on his own, turned
away for support, a fire started on his bridge
and demanded immediate attention. All
three boats received heavy damage and action was broken off
with the boats returning to Augusta with a number of casualties.

http://www.coastal-forces.org.uk/downloads/May2015.pdf

This description of the battle in the Strait of Messina the night of 16-17 August 1943. What the German ships participated in it?

cam

Hi,

It turns out, I had to deal with false information. The fight took place on 15 August. He writes about this in his memoirs participant in this fight at MTB-243  Peter Bickmor Bem, as well as L.Reynolds that on MGB-658 conducts a search of the German district of boats on information from Vospers.

cam

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