Coastal Forces Veterans

As far as I'm aware they don't seem to have been preserved unless they were kept by individual officers, in which case the odd one may be still in the hands of family members somewhere, or donated to some local museum. In the case of MGB 658 for instance, Len Reynolds , who was the last officer of t...

This is a photograph of some familiar sounding Mediterranean MTB & MGB COs taken at a reunion for the officers and men of the 56th Flotilla held in London in May 1986.

A very good find!

Hi Gray207 I've just realised where I probably heard about the minesweeping in the Seine that I referred to in your thread on ML 207, and that is in part four of the sound recording made by the IWM of William Arthur Gostling as I recognise my own note for ML 206 referenced earlier in this thread, wh...

Yes I think it definitely is Courseulles-sur-Mer. Your original coloured postcard shows a metal latticed tower, presumably for telegraph signals, at the corner of the car park in front of the restaurant part of the hotel on the left, and I have found one for Rue de la Mer at Courseulles which is tak...

I believe the postcard manufacturer is Combier Mâcon, of which there are many examples on the internet, though I haven't managed to find a match for yours. The street though would appear to be the Rue de la Mer, which though common, is not in every town. The name seems a long one, possibly starting ...

Hello again chine I believe the G1 is a good conduct award. Can you check your email please, as I sent you the four part article that was originally published in the old Coastal Forces Veterans newsletters, which gave all the background on the surrender of all the remaining E-boats in the Mediterran...

Hello Gray207 Thank you for sharing your considerable research on ML 207. In all the time I have spent researching the subject of Coastal Forces, I've never been able to come by a definitive answer as to what if anything happened to all the log books; whether there was any official attempt made by t...

The photo of the gun on the foredeck is the automatic 6pdr gun the Dog Boats were armed with later in the War. There are other close up shots of this gun available on the IWM web site . It definitely would not have been taken in combat as all personnel would be closed up at their stations during any...

Hello again chine These are the names of shore establishments. Often with Coastal Forces (CF) it is the base that gets listed, sometimes with a boat number in brackets, sometimes not. The dates are the timeframes for when he was registered at a particular shore base for the purpose of administration...

Just to add to my previous reply, if you visit our Awards to Coastal Forces page, select Unit, then Unit Type as MGB, and then MGB 658, you will see a list of some of those who served on the boat. Likewise the casualty database.

Hello chine and welcome to the forum. Thank you for the fabulous photo of MGB 658, which is the best shot I have seen of it. This as you may understand was eventually Len Reynolds' command, so he will undoubtedly be on the bridge, although the Canadian Commander, Cornelius Burke, was the Senior Offi...

Rest in peace John. You will be sadly missed by the Coastal Forces community, and by the boat modelling world as well.

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There is also this interesting three-part interview with Douglas Hunt carried out by the IWM and available online.

Richard, just so as you're aware, I have emailed you using three different email addresses, but your email provider has rejected them all. If you could kindly email a scan of the autographs you have to our web site address (info@cfv.org.uk) I'd be grateful.

Regards
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Hello Andy Thank you for your enquiry to the forum. Unfortunately I don't have a lot more to add beyond that which you will already have found out. If you do a search for 'LCG' on the IWM web site , you will pick up some general images of LCGs besides the ones for LCG 14 that are not available, and ...

This is a photograph held by the Imperial War Museum (IWM) of one of the Fairmile 'D' Motor Gunboats which would later become MTBs with the addition of torpedo tubes. There is an MTB variant at the rear of it. Of the first 96 of the Fairmile 'D' type, commencing with MGB 601, half the boats were com...

Hello John

Merry Xmas & Happy New Year to you and yours too!

London Branch

Hello Keith Welcome to the forum. HMS Midge was the Coastal Forces base at Great Yarmouth and MGB/MTB 609 was a Fairmile 'D' Class boat, also known as a Dog Boat. There are several references to the boat in Dog Boats at War by Len Reynolds, which is available as a reprint, including a mention of a b...

This is a copy of a photograph of Grey Shark 's crew taken at Newhaven in September 1943. This version comes from a page in one of the old Coastal Forces Veterans Association (CFVA) newsletters, and is not very big, or very well reproduced in the original publication (click on photo for a larger ver...

Hello mickhud Thank you for your enquiry and welcome to the forum. I don't have a great deal of information to hand as the boat survived the war without incident it seems, has no mention within ours awards database, nor has any casualties listed. It was a Fairmile 'D' class, or 'Dog Boat', known to ...

London Branch has learned of the death of Robert Juffs, who died aged 90, on 20th November, 2015. As a member of the Coastal Forces Veterans Association (CFVA) — as well as Standard Bearer for Royal British Legion — he attended many of the CFVA's reunions, where he enjoyed the company of his former ...

The following photos feature some unknown members of crew of ML 1301. Does anyone recognise any of the faces that are not named? unknown-crew-ml-1301-1.jpg ml-1301-crew-with-angelina.jpg frank-carter-crew-ml-1301-ischia.jpg alan-goddard-frank-carter-ml-1301.jpg lieutenant-frank-leslie-carter-mediter...

The web site has added the facility to view casualties by month by selecting the appropriate tab within the Remembrance Book page.

Hi John

This one of a set four from the National Museum of the US Navy collection on Flickr showing Dog Boats of the 66th at Le Havre engaged in minesweeping work using depth charges at speed. Use the right hand arrow to see the others.

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Hello Joe Coastal Forces did operate MLs out in Burma as part of the Arakan Campaign to oust the Japanese, and some additional crews were shipped there after hostilities in Europe ceased, to reinforce the units already there. The details the Royal Navy still holds may shed some light on what his com...

Hello Joe Thank you for your enquiry and welcome to the forum. I have taken the liberty of moving your post to a new thread in case someone may have something specific to add to your post in future. The base names you list are more or less all Coastal Forces. HMS Mantis was a frontline operations ba...

Thanks John, glad you appreciate the changes which will allow for better management of additional content in future. I'm just moving this post to Forum Feedback, and added Web Site to the title.

Regards
Admin

Hello Christopher Thank you for your enquiry to our forum. As you are no doubt aware Europa was the main base for the Royal Navy Patrol Service (RNPS), whose makeup and role was somewhat different to that of Coastal Forces, as the minesweeping trawlers were working hard to keep the East Coast channe...

Hello John Can you recall which boat you saw the casualties for? The daily casualty list shows casualties for Coastal Forces on that date for any of the years in which there were casualties, which is basically 1940 through to the 1947 or 1948. We will soon be adding the facilty to view all casualtie...