The Adventures Of Harvey Knight - 9

After his escape from France, Harvey Knight was keen to get out on the sea again. He had a new boat and a mostly new crew, so they needed experience. And the same was true of two of his other boats. So supported by Stewart's MTB 414, Knight took out his own MTB 413 and Lennox Dean's now green MGB 91 of the next patrol.

Lurking off  the French coast they came across a small convoy - two transports and three escorts. They approached it under the cover of an offshore island and some fog. The escorts, already suspicious, turned towards the approaching British.

The convoy was moving rapidly down the coast, so Knight ordered all boats to attack at full speed. They immediately spotted the first escort - a destroyer!

The second escort was an R-boat. Stewart pushed forward, aiming to get a fix on one or both transports. 

The German destroyer sped up to avoid being torpedoed by Knight's boats and, with the R-boat, engaged MTB 414. Amazingly neither of the German ships scored a hit.

With the destroyer up-moon, Knight tried the best torpedo shot he could get on the destroyer , but missed. 

(German destroyers are C2, so are very hard to hit with torpedoes.)

Stewart identified a transport in the convoy, but couldn't get a line with his torpedoes, so contented himself by shooting at it. It had no effect.  The destroyer engaged him with its big guns, but missed once again. 

Stewart saw a chance to torpedo the freighter. With the destroyer still shooting at him, this would be his only chance. 

His torpedoes missed. 

Both British MTBs had fired off their torpedoes and, with teh destroyer in play, it didn't seem safe to hang around and try to use gunnery to sink a transport. The British turned for home. 

What of MGB 91 you ask? Dean had been bringing it around the rear of the convoy through the fig. But now he joined his SO in turning for home.

The third escort - a KFK - fired some parting shots as the British sped away. The destroyer was turning to pursue as well, but had to avoid colliding with the R-boat and the transports. 

And so the British disappeared into the night. 

Neither side had taken any damage, and the British hadn't sunk anything. But two crews had survived a close encounter with a destroyer on their first mission, so it was good experience for them. 

Obviously Harvey Knight didn't see any improvement in his reputation off the back of this encounter, but two crews picked up a little experience. Disappointed by his crews' failure to hit anything with torpedoes he organised some additional training in that area, but the green crews didn't really benefit from it. 

It would take at least one more mission to get the crews to a state Harvey would be happy with.