Project Dobbin The story of a South African patrol boat - P1558

摘要

This is the tale of the South African Navy's minor warship P1558, a fast patrol boat that proved to be one of the more spectacular failures of naval planning during the 1970s. To place the story in perspective, this account begins with another ship completely, the Harbour Defence Motor Launch 1204, or HDML 1204 for short.rnHDML 1204 was the last survivor of a class of eleven wooden launches built in various SouthrnAfrican boat-building centres in 1943. This class did sterling service in the Second World War and afterwards, but all except HDML 1204 were gone by 1971.