Operation Claymore combined assault, support, and mechanised landing craft with destroyer gunfire, revealing the continuing need for more close support. HMS Somali came so close to the shore that troops warned the destroyer to stand farther off, while converted Dutch passenger ferries such as HMS Queen Emma carried the landing force. After Crete, the Royal Navy converted LCTs into heavily armed flak vessels loaded with pom-poms, 40 mm weapons, and other available anti-aircraft guns. Landing craft could provide this protection close inshore when gunboats, destroyers, sloops, and corvettes were unavailable or too valuable to risk there. The solution grew through interwar exercises, Namsos, Claymore, and Crete. That sequence shows how repeated evidence eventually overcame assumptions that conventional escorts would always cover the beach.
Chapter · 47:27-54:12
Operation Claymore, Crete, and specialised support craft
Operational experience showed that landing forces needed both close gunfire and dedicated anti-aircraft craft near the beach.