The RNLI and Operation Dynamo
My father worked for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution as Station Mechanic at their Dover station. This was a 'reserved occupation' which meant that he was exempt from military service but, nevertheless, he (like many other lifeboatmen) still got involved in wartime operations. That included an unusual role in connection with Operation Dynamo - where hundreds of small boats were recruited to help evacuate our troops from the beaches of Dunkirk in 1940. 19 RNLI boats were involved - two (Ramsgate and Margate) were manned by their normal volunteer crews and coxswains, the rest by Royal Navy officers and sailors. Dad was part of a small, hastily assembled, team of mechanics tasked with servicing and repairing each boat as it returned laden with soldiers. As the Navy had no mechanics available, this included not only 17 of the lifeboats but all motorboats sailing out of Dover for Dunkirk.
In addition to servicing the engines and other gear, patching up any damage inflicted by the Luftwaffe and carrying out other running repairs (the most common of which was removing ropes, clothing, webbing etc. from the propellors), he also, unenviably, sluiced the boats down throughout to remove all the blood before they made their next journey.
The RNLI keeps a 'journal' cataloguing all lifeboat services each year and the one covering 1939-1946 is the most detailed one ever produced. Dad had a copy (which I've now sent to RNLI archives) and it makes fascinating reading. Until I read this, I didn't realise the sheer ferocity of the attacks the "little ships" endured and the extreme heroism of their crews. You can get a flavour of this from the story of the Eastbourne lifeboat. On her final rescue mission, she had been rammed by a motor torpedo boat and strafed by the Luftwaffe. Outside Dunkirk her engine stopped, and she was strafed again and had to be abandoned. Two days later she was found drifting in the Channel. She had 500 bullet holes and was completely full of water. But she didn't sink - affirmation of the RNLI's claim that their boats were unsinkable.
The previous year Dad had taken part in an unusual rescue that resulted in him receiving the RNLI's bronze medal. The Dover boat was despatched to help a trawler on anti-submarine patrol which had lost power and was stranded in the middle of a mine field. A RNR lieutenant piloted the lifeboat using a chart of the minefields - a difficult task for both him and the coxswain as there was a full gale blowing and very heavy seas. With great skill the coxswain brought her alongside the plunging trawler and held her there for the rescue. This took some time because, in addition to transferring the 16 crewmen, the boat's secret papers had to be retrieved and the trawler scuttled. All the while the trawler was dragging them into an even more dangerous section of the minefield. By the time they got back to Dover "with seas continually breaking over her" four hours had elapsed. In those days, two motor mechanics controlled the engines from deep inside the cockpit in response to shouted commands from the coxswain - so they were completely blind to what was happening outside. The journal records that "the two mechanics could hardly keep their feet and were continually flung away from the controls". Dad said that he had been more scared then than on any other rescue he was involved in!
