Jonathan Boff

Spitfires of the sea: the secret exploits of the Royal Navy’s 15th Motor Gun Boat Flotilla

Tim Spicer pays tribute to the brave unit that repeatedly crossed the Channel at dead of night to liaise with the resistance in Brittany from 1942 to 1944

A motor gun boat c.1942. [Alamy]

Fast boats and fast women have been the ruin of many a poor boy. But they can also prove a triumphant mix, as the wartime exploits of the Royal Navy’s 15th Motor Gun Boat Flotilla, described in Tim Spicer’s highly enjoyable book, show. An under-cover unit run during the second world war by the Secret Intelligence Service, it used sleek 110ft motor launches to ferry agents and supplies between England and France.

Leaving Dartmouth in the late afternoon, their mission was to race across 100 miles of Channel, evade German patrol boats, navigate the rocks and tidal races of the Brittany coast to a pinpoint spot under the noses of enemy sentries, paddle through the surf and, with luck, rendezvous with the Resistance. Once they had dropped off their passengers and cargo and picked up any agents or aircrew heading for England, they threaded their way back, in the hope of returning to base by breakfast. All this had to be done in pitch dark and total silence, often in winter weather. Their main weapons were speed and stealth. A navigator’s mistake, a mechanic’s dropped spanner, betrayal to the Gestapo or sheer bad luck could spell disaster.

The brave men of 15th MGBF made that perilous journey many times between 1942 and the liberation of France in 1944. This was dangerous, exciting work. Officers of these ‘spitfires of the sea’ had some of the same glamour as fighter pilots. Youth, daring and modernity incarnate, they enjoyed close links with the West End, and especially with some of its female stars. The girls of the Windmill Theatre adopted the unit and took good care of its members when they were in London on leave. One of the team was Guy Hamilton, who became a well-known film director after the war, demonstrating a sharp eye for the female form in Gold-finger and other Bond films.

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