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.
“During these torpedoings of the harbors,” said Dressling, “Italian partisans were rising against the Germans, and there is little doubt that the explosions of our torpedoes were taken by the enemy as sabotage attempts by the partisans. At no time were we fired on, despite the fact that we were well inside the range of enemy shore batteries.”
Lieut. Commander Dressling thought that “to a small extent the actions assisted the partisans in taking over the Italian ports on April 27th.”
The night after the Italian ports all fell to the Italian Underground, Admiral Jaujard, with a fine Gallic sense of the ceremonial, led his entire Flank Force, including PT Squadron Twenty-two, in a stately sweep of the Riviera coast. It was partly the last combat patrol and partly a victory parade.
Ten days later, on May 8th, the Germans surrendered and the war was over—the war was over in Europe, that is, for on the other side of the world the PTs were involved in the bitterest fighting yet.
PTs had operated in the Mediterranean for two years. The three squadrons lost four boats, five officers and 19 men killed in action, seven officers and 28 men wounded in action. They fired 354 torpedoes and claimed 38 vessels sunk, totaling 23,700 tons, and 49 damaged, totaling 22,600 tons. In joint patrols with the British they claimed 15 vessels sunk and 17 damaged.
With the whole of New Guinea and the island base at Morotai in Allied hands, the Philippine Islands were within reach of Allied fighter planes and it was time for General MacArthur to make good his promise.
There was a lot of mopping up to do around Morotai, however, because the taking of the island had been a typical MacArthur leapfrog job. Morotai was a small and lightly defended island, but twelve miles away was the big island of Halmahera, defended by 40,000 Japanese. MacArthur had jumped over it to continue his successful New Guinea policy of seizing bases between the Japanese and their home, then isolating the by-passed garrison with a naval blockade.