Commander Robert A. Allan, British Commandant of the Sardinia base, cut three landing craft out of the British amphibious fleet and armed them with 4.7 naval guns and 40-mm. autocannon. The landing craft were big, flat-bottomed tubs, wonderful platforms for the hard-hitting 4.7 inchers. To man the guns, he assigned crack gunners of the Royal Marine Artillery. Commander Allan organized an interesting task force around the three landing-craft gunboats (designated LCGs) as his main battle line. They were screened against E-boat attack by British torpedo boats, and controlled by the radar-equipped American PT scouting force. Commander Allan himself went out on the first sweep of his beefed-up inshore patrol on the night of March 27th. He rode Lieut. (jg) Thaddeus Grundy’s PT 218, so that he could use American radar to assign targets to his gunboats and give them opening salvo ranges and bearings by remote control. When the gunboat battle line arrived off San Vicenzo, south of Leghorn, a scouting group of two PTs, under Lieut. Dubose, went off on a fast sweep, looking for targets. At 10 P.M. the PTs had found six F-lighters going south, and Commander Allan brought his main battle force up quickly to intercept them. At 11 P.M. Lieut. Dubose sharply warned the main force that two destroyers were escorting the lighters on the seaward side. “I am preparing to attack the destroyers,” he added. Commander Allan continues the story: “Until he carried out this attack, it was not possible for us to engage the convoy, as our starshells being fired inshore over the target [to illuminate the F-lighters for the gunboats] would illuminate us for the escorting destroyers which were even farther to seaward than we were. Fire was therefore withheld during several anxious minutes.” During this ten-minute wait for the PT scouts to take on the destroyers, both the German forces, escort and convoy, came on Commander Allan’s radar screen. The PT scouts crept to within 400 yards before firing torpedoes, and ran away behind heavy smoke. Nevertheless, the destroyers laid down such a heavy fire that they hit 214, even in the smoke screen, wounding the engineer of the watch, Joseph F. Grossman, MoMM2c, and damaging the center engine. Grossman ignored his wounds and tended the stricken engine until it was running well again, staying below with his engines until the boat was out of danger. The skippers of the scouting PTs heard the usual large explosions on one of the destroyers and hoped they had scored but couldn’t be sure. Hit or no hit, the destroyers reversed course and ran up the coast, abandoning their convoy—an unthinkable act of cowardice for Allied escorts. Sunk or run off, it was all the same to Commander Allan, who wanted only a free hand with the F-lighters. When the destroyers were gone, he passed radar ranges and bearings to the gunboats, and the Royal Marines lit up the night over the convoy with a perfect spread of starshells.