HUNTING E-BOATS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 136, 11 June 1942, Page 6

HUNTING E-BOATS

WELLINGTONIAN IjNT HECTIC ACTION

{By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.)

(Special Correspondent.)

(Rec. 10 a.m.)

LONDON, June 10

An engagement off the Belgian coast in. which Lieutenant G. J. Macdonald, D.S.C., of Wellington, took part, was a hectic fifteen-minute action against odds of four to one.

A Royal Navy force of speedy gunboats and motor torpedo-boats crept through the darkness and attacked an outnumbering force of 600-ton tor-pedo-boats and E-boats seven miles from the Belgian coast. It was hazy, and there was visibility of about 440 yards. The attack began at 200 yards. The first torpedo'from one boat missed a German vessel by 20 yards, but the second scored a hit amidships, causing

a viyldVflJish. The Germans began firing *frpin "all angles, and killed a 22----year-old English sub-lieutenant, but the force returned safely. The coxswain, who was wounded by the same bullet that killed the sub-lieutenant, steered through a hail of;fire before he collapsed. .■■.•.;' ,-.'

.The men who manned the;fgurtboats.r and torpedo-boats: were, little, more than boys, the eldest being only 25, while Lieutenant Macdonald was the youngest commanding officer. \ .; The senior naval officer commanding the base said: "My boys are fine. Their job is hunting E-boats and attacking the infrequent enemy convoys. Every time they have been in action they have been outnumbered by at least two to one, but they knocked hell out of the Jerries."'

Lieutenant George James (Jim) Macdonald,' who is 20 years of age and a son of Mr. J. W. Macdonald, Deputy Commissioner of the Government Life Insurance Department, is an old boy of Wellington College and is well known also for his active part in swimming, he being a member of the Lyall Bay Surf Club and having been a representative as a junior at the New. Zealand surf and life-saving champion-; ships. For service in attacks on convoys he was recently awarded the D.S.C. He joined the R.N.V.R. in June, 1938, and left at the outbreak of war as a gunner on a merchant ship. Some eighteen months, later he qualified for a commission, and .subsequently received special training in motor torpedo-boat work. His exciting war experiences in torpedo-boats include brushes .with the enemy in the English Channel. In one of these of recent date he was first lieutenant of a tor-pedo-boat which sank a 1500-ton German merchant ship. The thrilling story of that encounter was given recently in "The Post."