Lieut. Commander Barnes still restlessly experimented with armaments and tactics, looking for a combination of weapons and methods that would counter the dangerous weapons of the F-lighters. Rocket launchers were being mounted on landing craft, and the small vessels were delivering devastating ripples on enemy beaches. Their firepower was all out of proportion to the size of the craft. A few PTs were playing around with rocket launchers in the Pacific. It’s worth at least a try, thought Lieut. Commander Barnes.
On the night of February 18th, 1944, Barnes went out in Lieut. (jg) Page H. Tullock’s 211, with Lieut. Robert B. Reader’s 203 and Lieut. (jg) Robert D. McLeod’s 202.
As Lieut. Commander Barnes tells the story:
“I saw a small radar target come out from behind the peninsula and head over toward one of the small islands south of Giglio. Thinking it might be an F-lighter, I ordered rocket racks loaded.
“He must have seen us, because whatever it was—probably an E-boat—speeded up and ducked into the island before we could make contact. That presented the first difficulty of a rocket installation. There we were with the racks all loaded and the safety pins out. The weather had picked up a little, and getting those pins back in the rockets and the racks unloaded was going to be a touchy job in the pitch dark on wet, tossing decks. I decided to leave them there for a while to see what would happen.
“About midnight it started to kick up a good deal more. I had just about decided that whatever it was we were looking for wasn’t going to show up, and I was getting pretty worried about the rockets heaving out of the racks and rolling around in a semiarmed condition on deck. I decided to take one last turn around our patrol area and head for the barn.
“On our last southerly leg we picked up a target coming north at about eight knots, and I closed right away, thinking to spend all our rockets on whatever it was. As we got closer, it appeared to be two small targets in column—a conclusion which I later used as an outstanding example of ‘Don’t trust your interpretation of radar too blindly.’
“Just about the time we got to the 1,000-yard firing range the lookouts started reporting vessels everywhere, all the way from our port back around to our starboard bow. I had arranged the other two boats on either side in line abreast and ordered them to stand by to fire on my order over the radio. I gave the order and we all let go together.
“During the eleven seconds the rockets were in flight nobody fired a shot, but a couple of seconds after the rockets landed what seemed like a dozen enemy craft opened up. The formation was probably three or four F-lighters escorted by two groups of E-boats. We had passed through the two groups of escorts on our way to our firing position.
“Now it was time to turn away, and as my boat turned to the right we found that the 202 was steaming right into the convoy. To avoid collision we had to turn back and parallel the 202.