The two MAS boats got clean away. The disaster forced the Austrians to give up all hope of mastery of the Adriatic Sea.

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Four months later, another raid was planned against the port of Pola. The old Italian battleship Re Umberto would push a large raft equipped with net cutters and paravanes through the nets and minefields guarding the port. As many as 40 MAS boats would then sweep in and strike at will at the assembled Austro-Hungarian ships. But it was October 1918; the Hapsburg Empire was in chaos, with mutinies rending its navy. Nothing came of the plan to attack Pola.

By the end of World War I, thanks to the pioneering work of the Italian navy, most developed nations considered small attack craft–whether armed with torpedoes or guns–an important part of their fleets. The Italians went on to develop 47­50-knot MAS boats in the 1930s, which were formidable opponents of the Allied navies in the Mediterranean during World War II.

The Austrians themselves designed an air-cushion hydroplane back in 1915, a craft way ahead of its time. Armed with 18-inch torpedoes and able to achieve 32 knots, it would have been an impressive weapon but for shortsighted senior naval officers who decided it had no use.

The British Thornycroft models continued to be improved until the Royal Navy was operating coastal motor boats (CMBs) at speeds of over 30 knots. Boats of that type operated in the Baltic against the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War, in 1919­20. CMBs were also the forerunners of the Royal Navy's efficient motor torpedo boats (MTBs) of World War II. The Germans, meanwhile, striving to beat the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles, launched a number of Schnellboote–the deadly E-boats, as they were known to the Allies during World War II. The U.S. Navy, with its need for larger vessels able to show the flag across the oceans, had been slow to introduce small torpedo boats, but as World War II approached, it quickly made up for its initial neglect by purchasing 23 70-foot boats of a new British design in 1937. Those fast, powerful patrol torpedo (PT) boats were soon to make a name for themselves from New Caledonia to Sicily.

Today, most advanced navies have small craft, often hydrofoils, powered by gas turbines and efficient diesels and armed with a variety of wire-guided torpedoes and missiles. All are the direct descendants of those noisy, gasoline-powered, fragile boats that roared into action against the mighty battleships of the Austro-Hungarian Empire more than 75 years ago.

This article was written by Barry Taylor and originally published in the April 1996 issue of Military History magazine.

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