Hi my name is carl woodiwiss. My grandfather served on MGB 658, his name was John McGuffie. He was an Able seaman and his record showed he served on the boat late 1944 onwards...I have tried to find out more but to no avail ...f anybody remembered him or could help me in anyway with information I w...

That's an interesting find, with footage I'd never have imagined would exist in black & white, let alone colour!

My Dad (Derek Gwyther Jones) was navigator on the ML250: The Coastal Forces Heritage Trust carries a letter from your father on the subject of minesweeping on page 11 of its Issue 15 November 2014 newsletter, available for download, along with others, from their web site. There's also an insightful...

To Admin: Thanks for the information. That's great. Also I will gladly email a copy of my father's memoirs to you if you tell me how & where to send.

Thank you – I've sent you a pm earlier with the details, if you see top right of page when logged in.

You're welcome, and thank you for your earlier photographs Peploe. I don't know if you have followed the ML 916 thread, which was also a minesweeping ML, where the hazards of the job are viscerally revealed. It was normal practice for all of the crew who could, to remain on deck during operations, a...

Hello Norfolkgal Our Coastal Forces Awards database gives him as being ML 224 for this particular award. A batch of Mention in Dispatches awards to four crew members on this boat, listed in the 26 June 1945 edition of the Gazette are for minesweeping off the north coast of France from September to D...

All the Coastal Forces casualties are on our web site, searchable by Person or by Unit. We also have all the awards to Coastal Forces as well.

Many thanks for your posting Kevin, which gives a vivid impression of the minesweeping operations and of the catastrophic destruction of ML 916. It must have played on everyone's nerves the whole time they were out there. It appears from the description of the other survivor being down in the cabin,...

Thanks for the additional info Steve and for the useful id of the photograph. Coastal Forces was very much its own thing, but it seems to have intersected at times with any number of other services from Minesweeping to Combined Operations, the SOE, the SIS, the Commandoes, and as we are now learning...

I recall him telling a tale of zipping over to France overnight, pre D-Day with scientists aboard to collect samples of sand (I believe to help us understand how tanks would fare on landing on the beaches). There were small survey vessels used by the Royal Navy of the kind shown below, though to th...

We have one letter from my father from Ceylon, though he's not allowed to say where and no date but talks about the jungle and getting fresh water from a well on the island they were harboured in. Coastal Forces in Ceylon was HMS Barracuda which was operated by the Royal Indian Navy, and was a mobi...

Hello Keith Thank you for your message. I note the original message is some five years old now, so I hope the original correspondent will reply, not least because I would have liked to have copies of all the resources mentioned, and I'm not sure why we didn't gather them at the time. If there's no r...

On the way back out of the Scheldt they were aware the Germans had mined the channel during the night so he had all members of the crew, not needed to run the ship, to stand on deck - they were possibly sweeping. When the mine went off he was on the bridge scratching the back of his left leg with h...

Is there a data base which matches names of crew to ML ship Nos? I have my Father's service history from Personnel Support Admiralty which mentions ML 1082, 1288, 1306 and 1098 on which my Father served in Ceylon but I found nothing in the records. Hello again Stuart Unfortunately, apart from the N...