Startled gunners on the F-lighters, unused to this kind of treatment in waters where vessels with 4.7-inch guns had never dared venture before, took the lights for plane flares and fired wildly into the clouds. The Royal Marine gunners took their time for careful aim under the bright glare of the slowly sinking magnesium lights. At the first salvo, one of the F-lighters blew up with a tremendous explosion. Within ten minutes three F-lighters were burning briskly. The gunboats spread out and pinned the surviving boats against the beach while the Marine artillerymen methodically pounded them to scrap. “Of the six F-lighters destroyed,” says Commander Allan, “two, judging by the impressive explosions, were carrying petrol, two ammunition, and one a mixed cargo of both.” With what sounds like a note of wistful disappointment, Commander Allan added: “The sixth sank without exploding.” The Operation Gun Task Force sortied again on the night of April 24th. The coastal waters around the Tuscan Archipelago were swarming with traffic that night. Early in the evening the gunboats blew two F-lighters out of the water. Burning debris, cascading from the sky after the explosions, set fires on the beach. Shortly afterward the Marine sharpshooters picked off a tug and three more F-lighters. Radar picked up still another group and star-shell from the gunboats showed that they were three flak lighters—medium-size craft powerfully armed as antiaircraft escorts for daylight convoys. The Royal Marine gunners smacked their first salvos into two of the flak lighters, which burned in a fury of exploding ammunition. The third lighter poured an astonishing volume of fire at the unarmored gunboats, and Commander Allan, in PT 218, made a fast run at the enemy to draw fire away from his gunboats. The Marines put a shell into the flak lighter, and it ran off behind smoke, but the 209 led a charge through the smoke, fired off its fish, caught the flak ship squarely amidships, and blew it in two. Lieut. Dubose’s scouting torpedo boats found a convoy escorted by a flak lighter, but at that moment the gunboats were engaged in another fight, so rather than break up the show of the main battle line, the PTs attacked the enemy themselves. At least one of three fish connected, for the flak lighter blew up in a jarring explosion. Ashore, fifty miles away at Bastia, squadron mates sat outdoors to watch the flash and glare of the all-night battle against the eastern sky. Things were just threatening to get dull after midnight when shore radio at Bastia called Commander Allan with a radar-contact report of an Axis convoy between the gunboats and Corsica. The PTs got there first and found two destroyers and an E-boat in column.