One force of American soldiers was going ashore at Licata. Twenty-four miles west, at Port Empedocle, was a flotilla of Italian torpedo boats which so worried the high command that Empedocle had been ruled out as a possible landing beach. To keep the Italian boats off the back of the main naval force, a special screen was thrown between Port Empedocle and the transport fleet, a screen of seventeen of Lieut. Commander Barnes’ PTs and the destroyer _Ordronaux_. After the war, historians discovered that the much-feared Italian torpedo boats at Empedocle had accidentally bumped into the invasion fleet the night before the landings, and had fled in panic to a new base at Trapani at the farthest western tip of the island. Another one of those terrible blind battles between friendly forces was prepared when nobody told the westernmost destroyers of the main landing force that PTs would be operating nearby. The skippers of the destroyers _Swanson_ and _Roe_, nervous anyway because of the Italian torpedo-boat nest at Empedocle, charged into the PT patrol area when they saw radar pips on their screens. Lieut. Commander Barnes flashed a recognition signal, but the destroyer signal crews ignored it. [Illustration: TYRRHENIAN SEA] TUNISIA PT 205 "CAPTURES" BIZERTE SICILY PT FAKE LANDINGS U.S. LANDING FORCS LANDING FORCES ITALIAN PATROL BASE PT BASE AELIAN ISLES CAPTURED BY PTS AXIS FERRY ITALY SWAY SHOOTS UP GEN. MARK CLARK IN PT 201 ANZIO LANDINGS SARDINIA PT BASE Just as the destroyer unit commander was about to open fire at 1,500 yards, Roe rammed Swanson at the forward stack. _Roe’s_ bow folded up and both ships went dead in the water. The _Swanson’s_ forward fireroom was partly flooded. Both ships had to be sent to the rear for repairs, carrying with them, of course, their five-inch cannon which were sorely missed by the assault troops of that morning’s landings. Two nights later, on July 12th, Lieut. Commander Barnes split his PTs into two forces to escort twelve crash boats for another fraudulent demonstration of strength at Cape Granitola. The two forces ran parallel to the beach behind smoke, and noisily imitated the din of a force a thousand times their true size. Searchlights blazed out from the shore, and the second salvo from shore batteries landed so close to the boats that the skippers hauled out to sea. “The shore batteries were completely alerted,” said Lieut. Commander Barnes. “Apparently the enemy was convinced that a landing was about to take place when it detected the ‘large number’ of boats in our group approaching the beach, for they opened a heavy and accurate fire with radar control.... I immediately reversed course and opened the range. One shell damaged the rudder of a crash boat and another fell ten yards astern of a PT. “The demonstration was called a success and we withdrew.”