HMs derpy (but deadly) sharks
Thousands of Motor Launch (ML), Coastal Motor Boat (CMB), Motor Torpedo Boat (MTB), Motor Anti-submarine Boat (MASB), Motor Gunboat (MGB), Steam Gunboat (SGB), Fast Patrol Boat (FPB) and Fast Training Boat (FTB) craft served in the RN’s often forgotten Coastal Forces during WWII.
Scrapping with the Germans S- and E-boats up and down the English Channel and French coast, as well as birddogging U-boats and supporting both overt and covert landings in occupied Europe, these “splinter boats,” supported by legions of WRENs ashore, had a lot of pluck.
Though these, just two days before D-Day, look a little derpy.
AT A COASTAL FORCES BASE, HMS HORNET, GOSPORT, 4 JUNE 1944. (A 23969) Ships with ‘a bite’. Clever camouflage on the bows of MTB’s at HMS HORNET, Gosport. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205187106