The PT Grows Up

In "PT Corner," an austere office in the sprawling Navy building, officers and their civilian helpers could afford to grin. The returns were all in. Their charges, the skittering, mighty midgets that the Navy calls motor torpedo boats, had well and truly proved their worth. In the Philippines they had shown themselves first-class weapons in a last-ditch fight. In the Solomons they had proved more: that they were indispensable in the defense of any beachhead.

Now the Navy had a new PT (see cut), stouter and better armed than the "expendables" that made Navy legend in the Philippines and off Guadalcanal. But more important to PT Corner was the fact that big-ship men now recognized the thunder-throated little craft as something more than a nuisance to maintain.

Now Navy men know that they rate the attention they get. On the night of Oct. 14-15, when the Jap made one of his biggest bids to retake Guadalcanal, it was a squadron of PTs, out on their first mission, that thundered into his "Bougainville express." Off Lunga Point, Lieut. Commander Alan Montgomery slipped in behind three destroyers while they were hammering away at Henderson Field.

Before he could send his four boats into the attack the darkness split apart. In the flare of big guns, the PT men saw what they had run into. Back of the destroyers were a battleship, three cruisers, at least seven destroyers.

The PTs bellowed to the attack, flicked torpedoes at every ship they could get at, spilled out smoke screens and roared in wide circles with phosphorescent roosters' tails streaming from their sterns. A Jap destroyer blew up as searchlights probed for the attackers. Four-point-sevens from the Jap "cans" pounded at the PTs when they could see them. But they did not see them often. Apparently the Japs concluded they had been attacked by something more than motor boats. Anyhow, they retired. Next evening, when darkness fell again, Montgomery's water cavalry came out of the coves where they had hidden during the day, and went looking for more trouble.

From then on, Guadalcanal's PTs saw busy nights. On the Japs' last attempt to evacuate or reinforce their force there, PTs were patrolling when the sea lit up with flares from enemy aircraft. The PTs raced for darkness, while their anti-aircraft guns jabbered at the planes--and piled into ten Jap destroyers.

It was the perfect setup. By torpedo and the swiftness of their run, the PTs sank one destroyer, damaged two. Again the Jap task force turned back. From that night's work, three PTs did not return. But, they had added the last figure to an imposing column: in less than four months in the Solomons, PT Corner's high-speed craft had sunk or damaged more than 250,000 tons of Japanese shipping.

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