French Armed Motor Launches

[FredC]

Two photos that I purchased a long time ago in in a tiny village in northern NSW.
Text on one of them is: "French armed motor launches which escorted Marshal Foch's steamer down the Rhine in May 1919. Photo taken at Koblenz. (Note American Soldiers)"
I am not sure of the spelling of Koblenz - it is not particularly clear.
Cheers,
Fred

[astraltrader]

A fascinating pair of photographs Fred which I greatly appreciate you showing to us. :)

[stontamar]

Two photos that I purchased a long time ago in in a tiny village in northern NSW.
Text on one of them is: "French armed motor launches which escorted Marshal Foch's steamer down the Rhine in May 1919. Photo taken at Koblenz. (Note American Soldiers)"
I am not sure of the spelling of Koblenz - it is not particularly clear.
Cheers,
Fred

Nice photos but are both views showing the same motor launches?

V1-3, V32-36 and V39, plus V38 which can be seen in one of the photographs, joined the Rhine Flotilla in 1919-20. These vessels were fitted with a 75mm army gun and this weapon can be seen fitted to the boats shown in the bows on photograph.

The 3 boats shown in the close-up broadside view are fitted with a 3pdr Hotchkiss quick firing gun suggesting these are RN units and not French.

The Royal Navy and French Navy both operated Motor launches on the Rhine during the post war period, in the case of the Royal Navy initially twelve launches were deployed forming the Rhine Patrol Flotilla under the command of Commander Acheson, MVO, DSO, RN. Two of the original batch were lost on route (121 and 566) and were replaced by two new boats. These were followed by another four boats to bring the flotilla strength up to sixteen boats. ML229 was lost in 1919 due to an explosion while she was refuelling in Cologne.

By the end of 1921 the flotilla was reduced down to five boats and these remained on station until January 1925.

Regards

stontamar

[r.morrison]

Can confirm, the 75mm was available in large quantities and was used as towed artillery and later on as a tank gun and served for many years in the french armies.

[Colin Smith]

Hi there all,

I am really interested in these, come across these completely by accident, I am doing research into ML.544 which my Grandad served on as part of the Coastal Forces. He scratch built a Radio Controlled Model which I have inherited and just doing some research into it's history. It appears ML.544 served as part of the coastal forces when it came into service in 1915 and was later sold to the French and renumbered V38 in 1917.

FredC - I would appreciate it greatly if you are able to e-mail me this pics as high res as I build up a portfolio on ML.544.

In return once I will post up some pics of her that I am having scanned currently.

Made my day anyway - Thank You !!

[cdsc123]

The 1st photo seems to show HMML542 alongside HMML473 at Cologne c.1919.

A very similar photo captioned as such can be seen here (8th photo down);

http://www.battleships-cruisers.co.uk/motor_torpedo_boats.htm

I think it is the same 3 launches, in different order and painted differently.