After a successful Friday night-out with my buddies, I groped my way back to the condo intending to hit the sack by 12midnight. But after almost 30minutes under the sheets sleep just could not come, so using the remote control surfed the cable channel on my plasma TV. Just then a movie opened-up, a rerun of the PT-109 starring Cliff Robertson and a story of the exploits of John F. Kennedy during World War II, a film that I missed.
In one of the scenes, the PT-109 was cruising, regal in posture complete with all the outfitted armaments and an
American flag billowing at the mast. It looks just one of the over 100 PT boats ordered by the Navy, to complement its naval armada. The boat is sleek being only 80feet in length weighs 40tons but has a cruising speed of 41knots. The boat has a crew of three officers and 14 sailors.
PT-109 was tasked to patrol the sea-lanes of the Solomon group of islands, an area that was controlled by the Japanese Imperial Navy. Since the boats can maneuver at top speed, it should be able to assist the US Navy in gathering information and thwart whatever naval maneuvers the enemy may device.
In one of its sojourn into enemy territory, a dark night it was rammed by a Japanese destroyer that split the boat in two and exploded in flames. Two crewmen immediately died and the rest survived including its skipper John F. Kennedy. A swimmer in college at Harvard, Kennedy secured the survivors and personally towed McMahon to a nearby island and swam back to look for help. On the water most of the time, he evaded enemy patrols and deadly shark attacks.
by:
The Flagman
