Brave and resourceful, Donald Gould Bradford was a swashbuckling naval hero who rose to become one of Coastal Forces’ greatest fighting commanders. Steve Snelling charts the courageous career of the man who waged war beneath the ‘dagger’ ensign.
WAR AT SEA | SECOND WORLD WAR
The churned waters glowed a phosphorescent green in the wake of the small force of motor torpedo and gun boats, forcing them to slow to a crawl to escape detection in the danger-filled waters off the Dutch coast. A sliver of moon was visible through the high cloud and the flickering lights of buoys could be seen marking the shallows close to the Hook.
It was an hour before midnight on 19 September 1943 and Lt Don Bradford’s ‘seek out and sink’ sortie was about to bear unimagined fruit. His boat’s radar had picked up the presence of a large vessel that appeared to be lying stopped about three-quarters of a mile off the port of IJmuiden.
From the bridge of MTB 617, he turned his ‘glasses’ towards the harbour, where he could just about make out a dark shape. But he was not convinced. “It looked too big for a ship and I just could not believe it,” he later wrote.
He called for another radar check, which confirmed the first report. There…
