Twenty-five miles south of Anzio, the minesweeper _Sway_ patrolled the southern approaches to the beachhead. The captain had just been warned that enemy airplanes were attacking Anzio, and he knew that the Germans often coordinated air and E-boat strikes, so when he saw two small boats ripping along at high speed and coming down the sun’s track, he challenged them by blinker light. Without reducing speed, Lieut. Patterson answered with a six-inch light, too small a light for that distance in the daylight. Besides, the signalmen on the _Sway_ were partly blinded by the glare of the sun, just rising behind the 201. _Sway’s_ guns opened fire. Lieut. Patterson fired an emergency recognition flare, but it burst directly in the face of the sun, and the _Sway’s_ bridge crew missed the second friendly signal from the torpedo boat. The 201 even reduced speed as a further friendly gesture, but the slower speed only made the boat a better target. The next shot hit the boat in the charthouse, wounding Lieut. Patterson and his executive officer, Ensign Paul B. Benson, and killing an officer passenger and a sailor. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” suggested General Clark. Ensign Benson, though wounded, took the wheel from the sagging skipper and zigzagged the boat away at high speed back toward Naples, until he was out of range of the _Sway’s_ batteries. A few miles down the coast the crew of 201 transferred dead and wounded to a British minesweeper. The _Sway_ still stood between the boat and Anzio, but General Clark wanted to go to the Anzio beach, so the 201 crept back at a peaceful-looking speed and spoke up from long distance with a bigger light. The sun was higher, _Sway’s_ signalmen read the message, and the skipper waved them by. Lieut. Commander Barnes still restlessly experimented with armaments and tactics, looking for a combination of weapons and methods that would counter the dangerous weapons of the F-lighters. Rocket launchers were being mounted on landing craft, and the small vessels were delivering devastating ripples on enemy beaches. Their firepower was all out of proportion to the size of the craft. A few PTs were playing around with rocket launchers in the Pacific. It’s worth at least a try, thought Lieut. Commander Barnes. On the night of February 18th, 1944, Barnes went out in Lieut. (jg) Page H. Tullock’s 211, with Lieut. Robert B. Reader’s 203 and Lieut. (jg) Robert D. McLeod’s 202. As Lieut. Commander Barnes tells the story: “I saw a small radar target come out from behind the peninsula and head over toward one of the small islands south of Giglio. Thinking it might be an F-lighter, I ordered rocket racks loaded.