All this adrenalin-fuelled action, of course, would be framed in the gun-sights of the target vessel, which would be firing with every weapon that could bear. No wonder the Linse attacks were referred to by their operators as ‘Opferkämpfer’, or ‘suicide missions’.
Despite the drawbacks, these devices were actually taken into action. Their first recorded use was during an attack on the Anzio beachhead in April 1944 in conjunction with Neger units. That attack was a complete failure. However, it appears that Linse operators sank the Hunt-class destroyer HMS Quorn off the Normandy beaches on 3 August 1944, with the loss of 130 officers and men.
The final fling for the Linse occurred at Split on 12 February 1945, when six motorboats crossed the defensive boom and entered the harbour. They attacked the AA cruiser HMS Delhi and were engaged by the ship’s 20mm Oerlikons. They missed Delhi but one hit LCF 8 (landing craft flak) lying alongside and blew up. The resultant blast seriously damaged one of Delhi’s propeller shaft brackets and jammed her rudder. She had to be towed to Malta, and after surveying back at Chatham, she was deemed to be beyond economic repair.
It was suggested that perhaps the Linse units could also act as lifeboats for Neger pilots who had got into difficulty. Another scheme was to employ them to lay down smokescreens off the beaches. But finally, a degree of sanity prevailed and these extra tasks were dropped.
Towards the end of the Second World War the Japanese, faced with the overwhelming naval and air superiority of the Americans, turned to individual heroism and self-sacrifice with their suicide weapons, and one of these was to be the explosive motorboat.
The Imperial Japanese navy and army remained rivals throughout the Second World War, going to the extreme lengths of building their own aircraft production factories. The army even built and operated its own submarines to supply its far-flung island garrisons. So it is not surprising that both services produced their own type of small attack boat.
The navy version was the ‘Shinyo’ (‘sea quake’), intended as a suicide weapon to be rammed into enemy ships, and carrying a large explosive charge in the bow. Speed was around 23 knots, falling to only 18 knots when the explosive charge was in place.
The Japanese army shied away from asking its men to crew suicide craft, and their version, the ‘Maru-ni’, was normally intended to carry two depth charges. The pilot would run alongside the target ship and release the depth charges, set to shallow, then attempt to escape at speed in the 6 seconds before they exploded. The firepower of his American opponents meant that in fact his mission was virtually a one-way trip.
Cheap to build out of wood, with automobile engines, and simple to operate, the Japanese built over six thousand Shinyo and around three thousand Maru-ni boats. They were intended to be hidden in caves and camouflaged lairs all around the coasts of the Japanese islands, to sortie en masse and fall upon the American invasion fleet. Unfortunately for the Japanese, complete units of attack motorboats, along with their pilots and support teams, were to be lost en route to their intended bases when their transport ships were sunk by American submarines.
Of those units that did get into action, they succeeded in sinking LCI(M) 974, sub-chaser PC 1129, LCS(L)(3) 26, LCS(L)(3) 7, LCS(L)(3) 49, LSM 12 and LCI(G) 82. Seriously damaged were attack transport USS War Hawk, LCI(G) 365, LST 925, LST 1028,LCS(L)(3) 27, DD USS Badger, YMS 331, DD USS Hutchins, VC2-S-AP3 Bozeman Victory and USS Carina (AK 74).
One has to ponder on the mayhem which could have been caused by the four thousand Shinyo and Maru-ni retained in the Japanese home islands to await the expected Allied invasion.
An Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, 505ft (124m) long, displacing 8900 long tons at full load, and capable of a speed of 30 knots, Cole was the target of a suicide attack by al-Qaeda terrorists on 12 October 2000.
Earlier, on 3 January 2000, al-Qaeda operatives had planned to attack the destroyer USS The Sullivans with a boat loaded with explosives, while she was anchored at Aden. The plot failed when the terrorists so overloaded their boat that it sank. The group convened in Kuala Lumpur to discuss what had gone wrong and to relaunch the attempt to destroy another American warship.
Their chance came on the morning of 12 October when the USS Cole called at Aden for a routine refuelling stopover. She had completed mooring by 0930, and commenced refuelling an hour later. At 1118 local time a small boat loaded with between 400 and 700lbs of high explosive (200–300kg) approached the Cole’s port side and rammed into the ship’s hull amidships. The suicide bombers detonated their explosive charge, and blew a 40ft wide hole in the side of the Cole.The blast impacted on the ship’s galley where crew members were lining up for lunch; seventeen were killed and a further thirty-nine others injured.
First rescue ship on the scene was the Royal Navy frigate HMS Marlborough, whose crew provided medical and damage-control assistance. A quick-response force was airlifted in to secure both the damaged Cole and the US embassy. In the following days, seven US warships arrived to provide assistance to the crew of the Cole. Divers confirmed that her keel was undamaged, and she was towed to the heavy lift ship MV Blue Marlin, which transported her back to the States for repairs. USS Cole was taken in hand by Northrop Grumman Ship Services in Pascagoula, and transported overland to a construction bay near to where she had been built five years earlier. Refloated in September 2001, Cole rejoined the fleet on 19 April 2002.
CHAPTER 4
Whitehead and the Copies
Having jumped ahead to consider the legacy of de Luppis’ Küstenbrander, we must now return to the main protagonist of the torpedo saga, Robert Whitehead.