Coastal Forces Veterans

Hello Stuart

Welcome to the forum and thank you for your contribution which has well and truly squared the circle! I have some photos of the burial parties from 916 and other related documents, which you may be interested to see, which I'll email to you later.

Regards
Admin

Ian

Thank you for going to the trouble of posting all the pages from the visitor book which include some interesting names and boat numbers. I'll check our awards database later just in case the odd unidentified name is someone who earned an award and might be decipherable from that.

Regards
Admin

Thank you once again for all the information you have provided which has proved very helpful. Given the fate of other MTBs at the hands of mines around that time, it's more than likely that MGB 17 struck a mine too. As a small, shallow-drafted, vessel it would not have been the target of a torpedo, ...

Thank you for the additional information. It's interesting to learn of such details and I'm glad you came across the post. Did your father relate whether this happened at night, or was it in the daytime presumably?

Hello piers143 Thank you for your post confirming the fate of MGB 17. May I ask, was your father in Coastal Forces, or in the regular navy and being transported as a passenger on the day, and what was his task, and where had he been picked up from? If he was a passenger it might clarify the role the...

Thanks for letting us know Norman.

Hello rgoodyear Welcome to the forum. I thought I recognised the name of Lt Cdr Sir Kenneth Cradock-Hartopp whose obituary may be found in The Telegraph . He wrote an article on the Indian Vospers which I'll look out for you later, and I think there are some photos of them on the Imperial War Museum...

He may have been entitled to the France & Germany Star, although the government are a bit unclear on this.

I believe from a Coastal Forces perspective you had to have been based on the continent at some stage, so those flotillas that worked out of Cherbourg or Ostend for example qualified.

Norman, I managed to get it going after downloading the latest Flash plugin and then adjusting Preferences in Safari under the security settings. There is some help from Adobe here. MGB 17 hoves into view very briefly at 03:27 into the film, and I've made a screen capture, though the film is a bit c...

Hello again Norm The second group is in action with MGBs and S 171 sinks MGB 17 by gunfire. Other reports say that MGB 17 sank after striking a mine and also that S 171 sank her with a torpedo. This is proving quite elusive, which may indicate there is no solid source of recorded information. If the...

Hello Norm The Navy List for June 1944 gives his appointment to Midshipman as 29/10/1943, and lists him "For Small Craft" at HMS Attack as of 03/04/44, so sadly it appears his tenure in Coastal Forces was short-lived. Attack was a Coastal Forces base at Portland on the South Coast. There's...

Hello Norm Welcome to the forum. There is a photo of MGB 17, a British Power Boat, which was formerly a Motor Anti-Submarine Boat or MASB, in the Imperial War Museum Collections online. Our records show this boat as having been sunk by an E-Boat (the German equivalent of an MTB) off Normandy in the ...

I thought it might be useful to provide a visual comparison between the motor launches of the First and Second World Wars First World War Elco Motor Launch http://media.iwm.org.uk/ciim5/327/778/large_000000.jpg?action=e&cat=photographs WWI Elco Motor Launch ML 516 © IWM (Q 63064) IWM Non Commerc...

Hello Graham Thank you for your post to the forum. Sorry for the slight delay in getting it approved, a temporary measure in the light of recent spamming of the board. I believe the MLs shown here are actually First World War era boats, manufactured by the American company Elco. There were several h...

ML's were not only used as direction guides at D-Day. Some were fitted with radar in the Mediterranean a year earlier and were so used in Operation Husky and Salerno. Thanks for the heads up David. The Mediterranean theatre does tend to get overlooked somewhat as there aren't as many photographs of...

Claude Broomfield recalls a radar course at Rutherford. It looks as though he was in Newcastle for around four months or so doesn't it. I appreciate this stuff is 'off topic' for this board, but I'll try and find out what was going on there That's a good find and I feel helps clarify the situation,...

If your father received the head injury that led to his loss of memory sometime in Autumn 1944, then it must have been while his pay was being handled by Victory at Portsmouth, on his return from what may have been a training course. The MLs involved in minesweeping in the Scheldt came out of Queens...

Ben Warlow ( Shore Establishments of the Royal Navy ) to the rescue: Diomede: Devonport Boys' Training Establishment, and also Cruiser Training Ship Royal Katherine: Wilhelmshaven Port Party/Base NP 1738. Commissioned 08.05.1945, Ceased 10.04.1946 Royal Albert: London/Berlin/Hamburg/Cuxhaven He did ...

OK I've managed to convert some pages to jpg, a scan of one half the service record page (not very legible unfortunately) and the pay and victuals ledge which is legible but doesn't tell me much (I think) about his early service. Is does record the Naval Party he joined in Germany at the end of the...

Thanks for the documents Steve. I notice Seedie (Coastal Forces Awards) lists McCusker's boat as ML 571, rather than 207 as here, which is another of those differences that occurs from time to time with awards. Do you know whether this document likely reflects the boat McCusker was on at the time of...

It's hard to tell if the ensigns referred to are those intended for display on a flagstaff at the stern of a vessel, as set against one flown from the masthead like a signal flag. Judging by the string and the size of the flag's eyelets in the photo above, and the fact it was copied in a scanner, I ...

Hello Herve I think the simple version of it is: Ensigns always measure multiples of 9 inches (22.86cms), known as a 'breadth', so are either 9" (1 breadth), 18" (two breadths), 27" (three breadths) etc, and are also twice as long as they are wide, giving you 9" x 18" (22.86...

Hello jaime6575 Welcome to the forum, and yes we'd love to have copies of anything you have in your possession to add to our archives, as we don't currently have any photos of the boat or her crew. As you may be aware, La Combattante was later sunk herself in February 1945 with considerable loss of ...

I believe that's HMS Mantis at Lowestoft. Do you have a boat number for the crew shot please?
THE ROYAL NAVY DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR. © IWM (A 14911) IWM Non Commercial License

Your site is without question invaluable, there is no question about that, you have me, us hooked. Thanks for the feedback James, and I'm glad you've found the web site helpful! You may already be aware of this document stored at the National Archives Cumulative awards for Coastal Forces, including...

The 1937 edition of Manual of Seamanship cites the following: Measurement of Ensigns, Standards, etc. The size of British Ensigns, Standards, and Union Flags is commonly expressed in terms of ‘breadths.’ This measurement, which is 9 inches, is used for describing the size of any of the above flags. ...

Hello James Welcome to the forum, and thank you for your enquiry. As far as I can ascertain the award whilst a member of MGB 606's crew likely involved an attack by Don Bradford of the 55th MTB Flotilla , in the company of certain of the MGBs from the 17th MGB Flotilla which included 606 commanded b...

Hello Jcarver, thanks for the confirmation of your grandfather as part of the crew of SGB 6. Can I ask you please just to confirm which row number, and which number of person from left or right in that row he is, just to be sure.

Thanks
Admin

To muddy the waters further (it's completely acceptable for you all to give up on me right now!) my other swears that dad told her that he served on an MTB. However, I am certain I recall that when he was recounting the tale of the sand samples pre-D-Day that he said his boat either did not have to...

Please understand I'm not disputing that MLs were involved on 1st November. That's well documented and Geoffrey Searle's account makes graphic reading. I just don't think that 916 was there on that day or was likely to have been spotting for Roberts. On balance I think that 146 sounds like it may w...