The third lighter poured an astonishing volume of fire at the unarmored gunboats, and Commander Allan, in PT 218, made a fast run at the enemy to draw fire away from his gunboats. The Marines put a shell into the flak lighter, and it ran off behind smoke, but the 209 led a charge through the smoke, fired off its fish, caught the flak ship squarely amidships, and blew it in two.
Lieut. Dubose’s scouting torpedo boats found a convoy escorted by a flak lighter, but at that moment the gunboats were engaged in another fight, so rather than break up the show of the main battle line, the PTs attacked the enemy themselves. At least one of three fish connected, for the flak lighter blew up in a jarring explosion.
Ashore, fifty miles away at Bastia, squadron mates sat outdoors to watch the flash and glare of the all-night battle against the eastern sky. Things were just threatening to get dull after midnight when shore radio at Bastia called Commander Allan with a radar-contact report of an Axis convoy between the gunboats and Corsica. The PTs got there first and found two destroyers and an E-boat in column.
When the PTs were still 2,500 yards away—too far for a good torpedo shot from a small boat—the destroyers fired a starshell. PT 202 was ready for just that emergency. A sailor standing by with a captured five-star recognition flare fired the correct answering lights and calmed the enemy’s nerves.
The PTs moved in under the guise of friends and fired four fish at 1,700 yards. As they ran away they felt a violent underwater explosion, so they claimed a possible hit.
On this one wild night of action Commander Allan’s strange little navy had, without damage to itself, sunk five of the formidable F-lighters, four heavily armed flak lighters, and a tug; scored a possible torpedo hit on a destroyer; and pulled a dozen German prisoners from the water.
Hearts of the PT sailors were lifted with joy in May 1944, when the Mark XIII torpedoes began to trickle into their bases and the heavy old-fashioned torpedo tubes were replaced with light launching racks that gave the boats badly needed extra bursts of speed. More boats had been arriving, too, and eventually there were three PT squadrons working out of Sardinia and Corsica.
As torpedomen installed the new fish and the new launching rigs, a PT skipper rubbed his hands and said: “Wait till we get a good target now. These Mark Thirteens are going to sweep these waters clean.”
Lieut. Eugene A. Clifford, in 204, led two other PTs in the first attack with the new torpedoes on the night of May 18th in the Tuscan Archipelago. The PTs had two flak lighters on their radarscopes. Determined to try out the new torpedoes, they bored through the massive barrage from the flak lighters’ antiaircraft guns, firing from 1,000 yards.
One of the highly vaunted Mark XIII’s made a typical Mark VIII run and hit the 204 in the stern. Fortunately, when this Mark XIII goofed, it really goofed, so it did not explode, but punched through the PT’s skin and lodged its warhead inside. Its body dangled in the PT’s wake, like a sucker-fish clamped to a shark’s tail.