Customer Reviews

Cassell Military Classics: Motor Gunboat 658: The Small Boat War in the Mediterranean

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Len Reynolds wrote probably the best eyewitness account of small-craft warfare to emerge from WW2. Anyone who is interested in naval coastal warfare of that period should read it, even though the geographical scope is limited to the Mediterranean and Adriatic, where MGB 658 and Reynolds spent the whole of their service. His continuity of service in a single boat (as, successively, Navigator, First Lieutenant and Commanding Officer) gave Reynolds an appreciation not only of all facets of MGB operations, but also of the all-important factor of crew cohesion and morale.

Motor gunboat warfare was in some ways a throwback to a much earlier era of sea fighting; in reading the book I was often reminded of the exploits of John Nicholas and the brig-sloop 'Pilot' which played much the same role, in the very same waters, in Napoleonic days. Unlike the torpedo-armed MTBs, MGBs had no long-range armament that was effective from a platform which, because of its small size, was nearly always violently-moving. Thus, actions had to be conducted at point-blank range and casualties were severe when things went wrong. Reynolds describes seeing an enemy destroyer about to 'cross the T' of the MGBs' line; he claims even to have remembered the traditional 'Grace before Grapeshot', "For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful". Sure enough, seconds later 658 was raked by the destroyer's secondary armament, and when he picked himself up from under the wreckage of the mast, he was the only man alive and unwounded of the five who had stood on the bridge a minute before. Many a deck officer in the frigates and sloops of Nelson's day could tell a similar tale. Also like those earlier small ships, because they were tiny and overloaded with ordnance, considerations of seaworthiness loomed much larger in MGBs than in bigger ships. Reynolds records numbers of occasions in heavy weather when 658 could only be kept to her intended course with considerable difficulty and danger.

For the technically minded, the book has added interest because 658 was one of the last D-type MGBs to receive the original, distinctly old-fashioned, weapons fit. This was based on the Mk.I 6-pounder, a weapon Reynolds describes variously as 'our ancient cannon' and (because of its great length) 'the goose-gun'. Ancient it certainly was; the Mk.I was a pre-WW1 design, its previous claim to fame being its adoption by the Army to arm the first tanks. It nevertheless delivered surprisingly good service in WW2. The 6pdr was backed up by a single-barrel Vickers 2pdr pom-pom, never the most reliable or hard-hitting of weapons. Only during her final refit in December 1944 did 658 receive the state-of-the-art weapons fit based on the power-operated autoloading 6pdr Mk.IIA (a totally different weapon, derived - perhaps in a spirit of fair exchange - from the Army's 6pdr anti-tank gun).

One of the best written books about British Coastal Forces during WW2. LC Reynolds has written a great first person account of his time on MGB658. It is an outstanding account of his years in the RN and his own growth as an officer and a man it details all of the people around him ...a first rate book. L C Reynolds actaully wrote two more accounts and they shoudl be read as well.