How about this great original Kodachrome of Type G class torpedo boats of the 29th Canadian Motor Torpedo Boat Flotilla. The lead boat, MTB-460, was lost to a German mine off the coast of Normandy on 2 July 1944, some 80 years ago this month, with a loss of 10 officers and men.
Library & Archives Canada MIKAN No. 4950981
As well as two more taken at the same time:
MIKAN 4821111
MIKAN 4821109
Displacing some 44 tons, these 71.75-foot MTBs had a beam of just 20 feet and could operate in anything over 6 feet of water at a combat load. Capable of 39 knots on a trio of Rolls-Royce V-12s running on 100 octane avgas, they carried a single 6-pounder forward, a twin 20mm AAA DP gun aft, and a pair of forward-firing 18-inch torpedo tubes. Complement was 3 officers and 14 men, about the same as the standard American 80-foot Elco PT boat which had a heavier armament. They were constructed by the British Power Boat Company at their Hythe, Southampton boat yard and originally designed as motor gun boats (MGBs) but modified to carry torpedoes.
The RCN fielded two squadrons of MTBs during the last two years of WWII, the aforementioned 29th Flotilla which exclusively used BPB-made G-Type MTBs (No. 459, 460, 461, 462, 463, 464, 465, 466, 485, 486, and 491) and the 65th, which used earlier Fairmile D types (Nos. 726, 727, 735, 736, 743, 744, 745, 746, 748, and 797).
As detailed by the Royal Canadian Navy:
Motor torpedo boats (MTBs) were small warships about 22 metres long and six metres wide. Equipped with powerful engines, torpedoes, light naval guns, and machine guns, the Canadian MTBs operated chiefly at night in the English Channel as fast attack boats that disrupted enemy shipping off the coast of occupied Europe and defended Allied shipping from the German’s own fast attack boats and midget submarines. The MTBs also played an important role on D-Day when they helped protect the huge Allied fleet from German warships.
The MTB crews had an extremely dangerous job – their boats were small, the seas of the English Channel were rough, and German guns and mines were never far away.
The worst day in the history of the 29th MTB came on 14 February 1945 when five boats of its remaining eight boats were destroyed in a conflagration in Oostende which left 26 of its members dead.