WARTIME HEROISM
With the publication of the uncensored version of We Fought Them in Gunboats, Julia Jones reflects on the book’s author, Robert Hichens, and the role he and others played in protecting vital convoy routes
Several of the World War II Coastal Force bases on the south and east coasts of England were named after stinging or biting insects: there was HMS Wasp at Dover, Bee at Weymouth, Midge Great Yarmouth, Mantis Lowestoft, Hornet at Gosport. The best-named however was surely HMS Beehive at Felixstowe.
This was the first base on the East Coast and was chosen for its pre-existing facilities. As well as the old Felixstowe Dock basin itself (now filled in as part of the 2012 extension of the modern container port), there was an RAF flying boat development site adjacent. No longer in full use, it offered all the necessary infrastructure for a base–a powerful crane, engineering sheds, accommodation and quick access to the sea.
When Robert Hichens arrived there with the 6th MGB Flotilla in March 1941 he was impressed by the facilities, much less impressed by the workforce. His boat, MGB 64, had a leaking stern gland, which could potentially have been repacked with the boat in the water. Instead, she was floated into a cradle and craned out ‘with much shouting and strife’. MGB 64’s measurements had not been taken correctly and both propeller shafts were badly bent in the process. As the main asset of these boats was their powerful Rolls Royce Merlin 1100hp engines, this was a disaster, as Hichens explains.
‘Within the first 17 days of our time at Beehive, we were slipped and unslipped no less than five times, in an endeavour to correct the misalignment of shafts, stern glands and P-brackets that ensued. Only a gunboat or MTB officer who has experiences of these things can appreciate fully the labour and discouragement involved in all this continual slipping; taking down the mast and aerials, removing guns, deammunitioning ship and so on, with no chance to get on with our training and final working up.’
Leader of the pack
Hichens, the first volunteer officer to command a gunboat, would become the most successful, influential and highly decorated officer in Coastal Forces before his death in April 1943. In civilian life, he was a sol
