Wartime "Dad's Army" chaos revealed over Nazi boat

LONDON, Mar 2 (Reuters) A two-week delay in reporting a German dinghy washed up on the English coast in 1941 reveals a picture of ''Dad's Army'' incompetence in Britain's wartime defences, released Security Service papers today showed.

The 11-foot long rubber dingy, without its oars but with rowlocks stamped with a Nazi swastika, was found on the shore at Selsey, Sussex, in early August of that year.

Was it just a piece of Nazi flotsam or had it been used to land enemy agents? But it was nearly the end of the month before the Selsey coastguard rang the Air Ministry asking for anyone with knowledge of ''rubber dinghies (German Naval Type)'', the documents show.

''It was washed up on August 9th and the Naval people were a bit slack, and having had a look at it, did nothing about it till now,'' the coastguard was reported as saying.

The local police chief was furious at the delay and wrote a stinging report to a Major Grassby, based in nearby Tunbridge Wells.

''From the security point of view, I think you will agree that the matter has been very badly handled by the coastguard personnel,'' he wrote.

''The fact that a German boat can ground on this coast without information reaching either the police or the military for over two weeks is somewhat alarming.'' A naval interrogation officer and an RAF colleague had eventually inspected the boat and concluded it had been at sea for some time and that there was no sign it had landed anyone.

But the police chief was still upset at the gap in coastal security.

''The interrogation officer tells me that he walked for several hundred yards along the shore without seeing a single soldier, so that it looks as though enemy agents would have a fair chance of getting through unseen.'' Coastal watching was the responsibility of the Ministry of War Transport, under the charge of a retired naval officer who was also the coastguard's chief inspector.

Sussex and neighbouring Kent, both near to the coastline of occupied France, were meant to be maintaining a ''constant watch'' for German incursions, the released documents show.

Where there were insufficient troops for constant watch, ''bicycle patrols at dawn'' operated.

But a handwritten note, probably made by a Security Service (MI5) officer, suggests the affair should be viewed in its ''right perspective''.

''The distribution of troops is made to meet the main threat -- INVASION -- not the prevention of illicit landings.

''I doubt very much if you can persuade the Army to alternate itself along the coastline to any greater extent,'' the note reads.

''You'll never get 100 percent satisfaction on this subject.

After all, what about agents from the skies?'' REUTERS SHB RAI1010