THEY CAN FIGHT

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 251, 5 August 1941, Page 8

THEY CAN FIGHT

ACTION BY BRITISH GUNBOATS.

PUMPED SHELLS INTO LIBYA

Here is the story of the part played by three gunboats in the Mediterranean recently, as related by Harry Allen, American correspondent to the Associated Press of America and published in “Parade.” He writes: Britain’s three “Frankensteins” of destruction — Terror, Ladybird and Aphis—wrote a new chapter in the war against Italy, pumping hundreds of high explosive shells into Mussolini’s Libyan strongholds and clearing the path for the fall of Bardia.

Paving the way for the continuance of the British Army offensive, this trio of flat-bottomed, weirdly camouflaged ships, repeatedly swept to within sight of the muzzle of the guns of the Italian shore batteries at Bardia, hurling six to fifteen-inch shells into the heart of Italian troop concentrations and supply bases, starting huge fires. Terror, Ladybird and Aphis, in day and night shellings, gave the Italians their heaviest bombardment of tho African campaign, blocking attempts of thousands of Marshal Graziani’s troops to flee toward Tobruk.

One-ton shells from tho guns of the Terror hurled Italian motor transports, tanks and armoured -cars high into the air, tore huge craters in the highway from Bardia to Tobruk, and scattered Italian infantrymen. The Texwor, supplementing her fire of “heavy stuff” with six-inch guns was joined by Ladybird and Aphis firing similar sized shells. Italian shore batteries often offered a hot answering fire, but this only spurred rather than diminished the fierceness of their bombardment.

These ships can now be identified as the “British Fleet units” which- plastered the Italians all the way from Sidi Barrani and Solium into Libya. All hold a unique record of courage, daring and efficiency in gunnery, difficult for any British warship to equal. Their shellings were most highly effective in the systematic blasting of Italian positions. The audacity of these units is exemplified by the fact that the best of the three— Terror—only makes a top speed of 14 knots.

The big British Army push into Libya accentuated the demands upon the gunboats. For more than a fortnight before the fall of Bardia, they often pushed almost close enough to Italian bases to touch them before opening fire and emptying their entire supply of ammunition. This was usually done through a hail of Italian bombs from the skies and with shells from shore batteries falling dangerously close. They are courageous men who command these ships. Not even Italian mines thickly laid off the Libyan coast deterred, them. I saw the Terror, for the first time anchored in the calm waters of beautiful Suda Bay in Crete, Britain’s new naval base and the latest link in the chain blocking the Dodecanese islands and preventing the Italians from sending fresh troops and supplies to Rhodes and Loros.

I boarded the ship for tho voyage returning to Alexandria after the Fleet sweep of the Mediterranean. She nninded me of a tattooed monstrosity that. belonged in a circus sidesliOAV, rather than in a Avar on the seas. Whoever camouflaged Terror must have been a surrealist, for I have never seen a more Avoird net-AVorlc ox undulating lines of colour—black, green, red, blue and mauve. One glance at the Terror, moving inshore out of the grey mist of dawn, firing one-ton shells, Avas enough to strike fear in any human heart. The armament is supplemented by batteries of six-inch guns, “pompoms” and LeAvis guns along the sides. A grotesque mast nearly 100 ft high rises from the centre of the ship. The Ladybird and Aphis are similarly camouflaged. They carry six-inch guns and “pompoms,” and being of lighter displacement than the Terror, often moA’e closer inshore before opening fire. None of these ships is pretty to look at, but their steady, quick continuing action in flinging destruction into Bardia leaA’es no -doubt that they can fight.