Spitfires of the Sea

Coastal Forces of the Second World War

Spitfires of the Sea was the sobriquet given to the ‘little ships’ of the Royal Navy — Great Britain’s Coastal Forces of the Second World War. Between 1939 and 1945, almost 2,000 small boats, built of wood and only between 20 and 35 metres long, served around the world, defending coasts and convoys, raiding the enemy’s shores and striking at their shipping. This website aims to tell the story of that war.

Please note that this is very much a ‘spare time’ indulgence from webmaster Stephen Fisher, so it will be some time before it is complete.

Spitfires of the Sea was created to provide a clear and concise overview of Coastal Forces in the Second World War. It seeks to explain their development, provide details of their design, cover their actions and the crew that served in them and, where possible, identify survivors from that period that still survive today.

Coastal Forces have not perhaps received the full amount of attention in history that they deserve. Whilst there have been many excellent books written about Coastal Forces, they are not as easy to obtain today as books on other subjects. This website seeks to help redress that balance by providing information for the general reader that enables them to get a better understanding of their fascinating history.

To ensure accuracy throughout, only reliable sources, either published works or original documents (such as Admiralty reports held at The National Archives) are used to put the content of this website together. That said, identifying surviving craft is not something that can be easily looked up and much original research has gone into finding and verifying the existence of these boats.

In creating the website, it has been necessary to create a few standards where they do not always exist in sources. MGBs are usually known as Motor Gun Boats, but occasionally as Motor Gunboats. On this site, Motor Gun Boat has been used, in order to provide consistency with MTB and Motor Torpedo Boat. Similarly, the term S-boat is used throughout rather than E-boat. In The Battle of the Narrow Seas, Peter Scott explains that the term E-boat was officially adopted by the Royal Navy in 1940 as an abbreviation for Enemy War Motorboat. However, S-boat is an abbreviation for the boat’s German name ‘Schnellboote’ and is more consistent with the abbreviation of R-boat for Räumboote.

All content © Spitfires of the Sea, unless otherwise stated.