British MTBs Were Made of Plywood and Cost £30,000 — But Destroyed Millions in Enemy Shipping скачать в хорошем качестве

British MTBs Were Made of Plywood and Cost £30,000 — But Destroyed Millions in Enemy Shipping

April 1940. German E-boats were striking Channel convoys with impunity, disappearing before destroyers could respond. The Royal Navy possessed exactly the wrong tools—destroyers cost £200,000 each, required eighteen months to build, and were too valuable to risk in shallow coastal waters. Britain needed something different: fast, cheap, and expendable. The answer was the Motor Torpedo Boat. These vessels cost roughly £30,000 each—one-seventh the price of a destroyer—and could be built in six months by yacht builders. Constructed from Honduras mahogany and Canadian rock elm plywood, held together with 43,000 copper rivets, they were racing yachts with weapons bolted on. No steel. No armor. Just wood, glue, and three Packard engines generating 3,300 horsepower for 48 knots. Commander Peter Du Cane designed MTB 102 as a private venture in 1936, gambling £25,000 that war would require exactly what he was building. The Admiralty tested it in 1937. Naval traditionalists argued plywood boats were toys. They had no armor, couldn't survive heavy seas, their petrol engines created fire hazards. All true. None of it mattered. May 1940 changed everything. France collapsed, E-boats began nightly raids. Orders flooded to Vosper, British Power Boat Company, Thornycroft. Not naval dockyards—yacht builders, furniture makers, companies that built pleasure craft. They understood wooden hull construction intimately. An MTB hull took six weeks. Total construction: eight to ten weeks versus twenty-one months for a destroyer. HMS Javelin, a J-class destroyer, cost £200,000 and required 400,000 man-hours over twenty-one months. She was superior in every way—but only one ship. In those twenty-one months, British yards completed ninety MTBs. For the price of one destroyer, Britain deployed seven MTBs. June 1940: MTB 102 evacuated troops from Dunkirk, crossing the Channel eight times under fire, serving as flagship when HMS Keith was sunk. The plywood toy was performing missions under combat conditions. MTB tactics developed rapidly: hunt at night, approach on silent engines, unleash 40+ knots for torpedo attacks, disappear behind smoke. Hit hard, run fast, survive. By mid-1943, Britain operated over 300 MTBs in Coastal Forces. This numerical superiority transformed coastal defense. Every E-boat sortie encountered British MTBs. German coastal convoys required destroyer escorts to defend against plywood boats. The cumulative tonnage destroyed—millions of tons of shipping, supply barges, ammunition vessels—tied down German coastal defenses. When MTB 238 was sunk October 1942, Britain lost £30,000. Seven weeks later, Vosper launched MTB 380 to replace her. Between 1940-1945, Coastal Forces lost approximately 200 MTBs. Replacing them cost £6 million total. Replacing 200 destroyers would have consumed £40 million. British yards built approximately 400 MTBs during the war, Canadian yards another 100+. Production cost roughly £12 million total—six percent of an equivalent destroyer force. A destroyer-based coastal defense strategy would have cost £60 million and been impossible to implement. That £48 million difference funded other operations that won the war. HMS Javelin was torpedoed twice, spent years in repair, enormous cost. MTB 102 survived, now preserved as a museum piece. The lesson: wars are won by matching resources to requirements. Britain couldn't afford hundreds of destroyers, couldn't risk them in shallows, couldn't replace them quickly. But Britain could build hundreds of MTBs, risk them anywhere, replace losses within weeks. Adequate weapons available immediately beat perfect weapons arriving too late. #ww2 #royalnavy #militaryhistory SOURCES: Primary: National Archives Kew - Admiralty MTB operational records; Vosper Ltd construction records and specifications; British Power Boat Company archives; Coastal Forces war diaries 1940-1945. MTB 102 & Development: Du Cane, Commander Peter - MTB 102 design documentation; MTB 102 Museum Trust records; Imperial War Museum Duxford archives; Sea trials reports 1937-1938. Construction & Costs: Lambert, John & Ross, Al "Allied Coastal Forces of World War II Volume 2: Vosper MTBs" (1993); Estimated costs based on contemporary records showing MTBs at 1/7th destroyer price; Destroyer costs from Admiralty budgets. Operations: Reynolds, Leonard "Home Waters MTBs & MGBs at War" (2000); Lenton, H.T. & Colledge, J.J. "Warships of WWII, Part 7: Coastal Forces" (1963); Operation Dynamo records - MTB 102 Dunkirk service. Technical: Scott, Richard "Vosper: A History" (1990); Construction materials: Honduras mahogany, Canadian rock elm, 43,000 copper rivets per hull; Packard V-12 marine engine specifications; Plywood construction techniques. Statistics: Approximately 400 British MTBs + 100+ Canadian built 1940-1945; Approximately 200 MTBs lost to all causes; Coastal Forces casualties: ~1,400 personnel; Estimated £12 million total program cost vs £60 million destroyer equivalent.