Lewis H. Riggsby, TM2c, went into the lazaret to stuff towels into the vanes of the impeller to keep the torpedo from arming and exploding.
The flak lighters chased the PTs and hit 204 with 20-mm fire, but the boat escaped behind smoke, one of the famous Mark XIII torpedoes bobbing and dangling from the stern.
Dominating the Tuscan Archipelago, within sight of the Italian mainland, is the island of Elba, first home of Napoleon in exile. The island attracted the Allies, because big guns on the point closest to the mainland could reach the coastal road and also close off the inshore passage to coastal craft. Once Elba was in Allied hands, southbound Axis land traffic might be chased a few miles inland to less-developed mountain roads, and sea traffic would certainly be squeezed into the thirty miles of water between two Allied bases at Elba and Corsica.
One problem annoyed the planners of the Elba landings. What to do for naval support? The waters around Elba were probably the most heavily mined on the Italian Coast, and deep-draft ships could not be risked there. But then, hadn’t PTs been scooting about the coast of Elba for nine months?
On the night between June 16th and 17th thirty-seven PTs joined other shallow-draft vessels of the Coastal Force to support landings of Senegalese troops of the French Ninth Colonial Division, plus mixed elements from other Allied forces.
Five PTs approached the northern coast at midnight, and about a half mile from shore put 87 French raiders in the water in rubber rafts. The five PTs joined another quintet at the farthest northeast point of Elba, the point closest to the mainland.
At 2 A.M. three of the ten PTs went roaring along the northern coast, smoke generators wide open and smoke pots dropping over the side in a steady stream. When the shoreline was sealed off behind a 16,000-yard curtain of smoke, four more PTs moved down the seaward side, with loudspeakers blaring the sounds of a great fleet of landing craft. The PTs launched occasional ripples of rockets at the beach to imitate a preinvasion shore bombardment.
The three remaining PT skippers carried on a lively radio exchange, straining their imaginations to invent a torrent of orders for an imaginary invasion armada.
Searchlights from the beach swept the water, looking for a hole in the screen. Land guns on the shore and in the mountains to the west poured shells into the smoke screen, thus pinpointing themselves nicely for an Allied air strike that slipped in just before dawn.
At the true landing beach on the south coast, Lieut. (jg) Eads Poitevent, Jr., captain of the 211, was posted as radar picket to guide landing craft ashore. He was alarmed when he saw a radar target creep out of the harbor at Marina de Campo. He could not attack without alerting the beach, and yet the oncoming enemy vessel had to be kept away from the landing flotilla at any cost.