Two nights later the pair jumped a convoy of three armed barges, and sank two of them. For the next nine nights they tangled almost hourly with F-lighters (four sunk), armed barges (eight sunk), and even a full-grown corvette, the UJ 2216, formerly the French _l’Incomprise_, which they riddled and sent to the bottom as the top prize of their 11-day spree. Hunting got progressively meager as winter came on. PTs prowled farther afield and closer inshore in a ferocious search for targets. On November 17th, Lieut. B. W. Creelman’s PT 311 pressed the search too far, hit a mine, and sank. Killed were the skipper and his executive officer and eight of the 13-man crew. The last big fight of the American PTs with enemy surface craft came two nights later when Lieut. (jg) Charles H. Murphy’s 308 and two British torpedo boats sank a thousand-ton German corvette, the UJ 2207, formerly the French _Cap Nord_. The naval war was nearing its end for the Germans, and they turned to strange devices—human torpedoes, remote-control explosive boats, and semisuicide explosive boats. The remote-control craft didn’t work any better for the Germans than they had for Americans in the Normandy landings. So it was, also, with the human torpedo. Lieut. Edwin Dubose, on PT 206, on September 10th, spotted a human torpedo in the waters off the French-Italian frontier. The PT sank the torpedo and pulled the pilot from the water. With great insouciance, the pilot chatted with his rescuers and treacherously told them where to find and kill a comrade piloting another torpedo. In those waters that same day, planes, PTs and bigger ships sank ten human torpedoes. As naval resistance lessened, the Western Naval Task Force, under American Rear Admiral H. K. Hewitt, was broken up and redistributed. Many PTs were assigned to the Flank Force, Mediterranean. Since most of the ships in the force were French, the PTs came under the command of French Contre-Amiral Jaujard. Because Mark XIIIs were arriving in good numbers—the torpedo targets were getting scarce—the French admiral authorized the PTs in his command to fire their old and unlamented Mark VIIIs into enemy harbors. On the night of March 21st, PTs 310 and 312 fired four Mark VIIIs, from two miles, into the harbor of Savona, Italy. Three exploded on the beach. The same boats, on April 4th, fired four at the resort town of San Remo. Two exploded, one of them with such a crash that it jarred the boats far out to sea. On April 11th, the 313 and the 305 fired four into Vado, touching off one large explosion and four smaller ones. The last three Mark VIIIs were fired from the 302 and the 305 on April 19th. Lieut. Commander R. J. Dressling, the squadron leader, launched them into Imperia where a single boom was heard.