Lord Haw Haw, the English traitor who broadcast for the Axis, said: “The assault convoy was twelve miles long, but for the second time in three nights the Allies have learned of the determined resistance of the Wehrmacht, to their cost.”
The Axis broadcasts had the unexpected result of terrifying crews of German warships ordered out to attack the “invasion fleet.” Prisoners of war later reported that some of the ships would not sail because they had lost heart after listening to their own broadcast alarms.
Some ships did venture out, however, for one of the crash boats, retiring from the demonstration area after the final show, ran into two enemy corvettes—heavily armed escort vessels. The crash boat called loudly for help, and two antique British river gunboats, the Aphis and the Scarab, came running. The British and German ships battled for twenty minutes. Lieut. Commander Bulkeley’s Endicott, already almost out of sight on the southern horizon, steamed back at flank speed and opened fire at seven and one-half-mile range. Fire was slow, however, for the Endicott, trying to imitate a large bombardment force earlier that night, had shot its five-inchers so fast that all but one breech block was fused from the heat. The one remaining gun shifted fire from one corvette to the other.
Two PTs, screening the destroyer, closed the corvettes to 300 yards and fired two fish, but missed. The Endicott also fired torpedoes, and the corvettes turned bow on to comb their tracks, thus masking their own broadside. The Endicott closed to 1,500 yards and raked the corvette decks with 20-mm. and 40-mm. autocannon, driving gunners from their stations.
The British gunboats and the destroyer pounded the now silent corvettes until they sank. The ships and PT boats picked up 211 prisoners from the Nimet Allah, a converted Egyptian yacht, and the Capriolo, a smartly rigged light warship taken from the Italian navy.
In southern waters the PTs had been immune to mines, but off the Mediterranean shores of France they suffered terribly from a new type of underwater menace.
Following standard PT practice of moving the base as close to the fighting front as possible, Lieut. Commander Barnes set up a boat pool in the Baie de Briande, near Saint Tropez, almost as soon as the troops went ashore. The boats were close to the fighting and ready for action, but their gas tanker didn’t show up. By the evening of August 16th the boats were low on fuel, so the skippers puttered about the coast, running down rumors of gas tankers anchored here and there.
Lieut. (jg) Wesley Gallagher in 202, and Lieut. Robert Dearth in 218, set sail together to look for a tanker reported to be in the Gulf of Fréjus, fifteen miles to the northeast, the other side of Saint Tropez. At 11 P.M., as the boats were rounding the point of St. Aygulf to enter the harbor at Fréjus, the bow lookout on 202 sang out that he saw a boxlike object floating 150 yards dead ahead. The skipper turned out to sea to avoid it.
During the turn a mine tore the stern off the boat, blew stunned sailors into the water, and threw a column of water, smoke, and splinters hundreds of feet into the air. Four sailors jumped overboard to rescue their shipmates.
Lieut. Dearth brought the 218 over to pick up the swimming sailors and tried to approach the floating section of the 202 to take off survivors, but the stern of his boat was blown off in the stunning explosion of another mine.