Canadian Military History Volume 11 Issue 3 Article 2 2002 The Case of the Phantom MTB and the Loss of HMCS Athabaskan Michael Whitby
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh Part of the Military History Commons Recommended Citation Whitby, Michael "The Case of the Phantom MTB and the Loss of HMCS Athabaskan." Canadian Military History 11, 3 (2002) This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Canadian Military History by an authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Whitby: Phantom MTB and the HMCS <em>Athabaskan</em> The Case of the Phantom MTB and the Loss of HMCS A th abaskan Michael Whitby n the early dawn hours of 29 April 1944, the It was not unusual, therefore, for HMCS Idestroyer HMCS A th a b a ska n plunged to the H aida an d A th a b a ska n to learn during the depths of the English Channel, her hull wracked forenoon of 28 April that they had been ordered by two powerful explosions. One hundred and to screen HOSTILE 26, a minelaying mission twenty-eight young Canadians died with her. off the French coast about a 100 miles south of Fifty-two years later, in the article “I Will Never Plymouth.5 The Tribals’ role was to act as distant Forget the Sound of Those Engines Going Away: covering force for eight Motor L aunches (MLs) A Re-examination into the Sinking of HMCS of the 10th ML Flotilla that were to lay mines Athabaskan” that appeared in this journal, Peter about nine miles north of the eastern point of Dixon advanced the theory - which was the lie de Bas.6 Two MTBs were to provide close presented as fact - that the second explosion, escort to the minelayers, with Lieutenant- the one that sealed the destroyer’s fate, was Commander T.N.