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John F. Kennedy and PT-109
John F. Kennedy and PT-109
John F. Kennedy and PT-109
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John F. Kennedy and PT-109

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From the bestselling author of Guadalcanal Diary: The thrilling true story of the future president’s astonishing act of heroism during World War II.

In the early morning hours of August 2, 1943, US Navy motor torpedo boat PT-109 patrolled the still, black waters of Blackett Strait in the Solomon Islands. Suddenly, the Japanese destroyer Amagiri loomed out of the darkness, bearing directly down on the smaller ship. There was no time to get out of the way—the destroyer crashed into PT-109, slicing the mosquito boat in two and setting the shark-infested waters aflame with burning gasoline. Ten surviving crewmembers and their young skipper clung to the wreckage, their odds of survival growing slimmer by the instant.
 
Lt. John F. Kennedy’s first command was an unqualified disaster. Yet over the next three days, the privileged son of a Boston multimillionaire displayed extraordinary courage, stamina, and leadership as he risked his life to shepherd his crew to safety and coordinate a daring rescue mission deep in enemy territory. Lieutenant Kennedy earned a Navy and Marine Corps Medal and a Purple Heart, and the story of PT-109 captured the public’s imagination and helped propel the battle-tested veteran all the way to the White House.
 
Acclaimed war correspondent Richard Tregaskis—who once beat out the future president for a spot on the Harvard University swim team—brings this remarkable chapter in American history to vivid life in John F. Kennedy and PT-109. From the crucial role torpedo boats played in the fight for the Solomon Islands to Kennedy’s eager return to the front lines at the helm of PT-59, Tregaskis tells the full story of this legendary incident with the same riveting style and meticulous attention to detail he brought to Guadalcanal Diary and Invasion Diary.
 
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Richard Tregaskis including rare images from the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming.
 
LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 15, 2016
ISBN9781504040037
Author

Richard Tregaskis

Richard Tregaskis (1916–1973) was a journalist and award-winning author best known for Guadalcanal Diary (1943), his bestselling chronicle of the US Marine Corps invasion of the Solomon Islands during World War II. Born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Tregaskis graduated from Harvard University and reported for the Boston American before joining the International News Service. Assigned to cover the Pacific Fleet operations after Pearl Harbor, he was one of only two reporters to land with the Marines on Guadalcanal Island. His dramatic account of the campaign was adapted into a popular film and became required reading for all Marine Corps officer candidates. Invasion Diary (1944) vividly recounts the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy and Tregaskis’s brush with death when a chunk of German shrapnel pierced his skull. Vietnam Diary (1963) documents the increased involvement of U.S. troops in the conflict between North and South Vietnam and was awarded the Overseas Press Club’s George Polk Award. Tregaskis’s other honors include the Purple Heart and the International News Service Medal of Honor for Heroic Devotion to Duty. He traveled the world many times over, and wrote about subjects as varied as the first space ship (X-15 Diary, 1961), John F. Kennedy’s heroism during World War II (John F. Kennedy and PT-109, 1962), and the great Hawaiian king Kamehameha I (Warrior King, 1973). On August 15, 1973, Tregaskis suffered a fatal heart attack while swimming near his home in Hawaii. After a traditional Hawaiian funeral, his ashes were scattered in the waters off Waikiki Beach.  

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Rating: 2.9807692076923074 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Interesting book that I first read as a kid, though given its focus a more accurate title would have been "PT boats and Kennedy's service on them."
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Good account of JFK's war experience.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    From history classes and documentaries I was definitely familiar with John F. Kennedy and in a cursory way familiar with his naval career, especially as it related to action with PT-109. Until reading this book, however, I was unaware of the full story of not only Kennedy’s service, but of the PT boat program as a whole.Richard Tregaskis is perhaps best known for his gripping account Guadalcanal Diary, but I had been unaware that he also wrote several more WWII histories, this one in particular. First published in 1962 during the Kennedy administration, John F. Kennedy and PT-109 serves to highlight the military career and heroism of who was then the sitting President of the United States. Tregaskis seems to have written it through that lens, as there is very little that does not paint JFK in the most glowing light, and honestly, I can see why. The calm and poise he seemed to show throughout the harrowing days after the sinking of PT-109 and his efforts to save himself and his crew are second to none.As for Tregaskis’ account, it is very methodical to say the least. He does an excellent job painting the scene, not only of a young Lt. Kennedy’s military career up to that fateful day in 1943, but how he came to be in the Pacific Theater and on a PT boat specifically. We are walked through step by step the young officer’s entry to naval service while at the same time learning about the development and implementation of the little PT boats that served so heroically in the war. Tregaskis had taken very little liberty with the facts surrounding events and this makes John F. Kennedy and PT-109 a good piece of source material for research on this subject.My only real knocks on this text is that first, because of the methodical nature of the prose I was not as gripped in the story or held in suspense as much as I would have liked to be. I had trouble imagining myself serving there alongside Kennedy and really experiencing the danger and horror and fear that must have swept over each crew member (whether they would have admitted it or not) after their boat was lost. This could also be in part because I knew how it would all turn out in the end! My second fault was the lack of maps, diagrams, and pictures about Kennedy and his PT boat and crew. I am not sure if this is a feature of just my copy, or is the final publication will have these items. As a visual learner, I would have enjoyed reading much more if I was able to see and experience these within the text or as an insert, rather than looking elsewhere. Overall these are not enough to dissuade me from recommending John F. Kennedy and PT-109 to anyone interested in the subject matter and I would consider this as a possible addition to my high school library collection.

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John F. Kennedy and PT-109 - Richard Tregaskis

1.

A Lieutenant Joins the PTs

At 1:43 on the morning of Sunday, August 9, 1942, the cannonading began. Men of the First Marine Raider Battalion saw the flashes against the rainy night sky to the southwest. But they did not stir from their sleeping places, for it was a rule among the marines that anything moving at night would be shot at.

After two days of hard fighting, the Raiders had virtually secured the tiny island of Tulagi, across the bay from Guadalcanal in the South Pacific. Colonel Merritt A. Red Mike Edson’s First Marine Raider Battalion had encountered suicidally determined resistance from the tough defending Japanese forces dug into the caves and ravines of jungly Tulagi. And through the night there had been occasional crackling outbursts of small-arms fire as marines fired at isolated enemy snipers, real or imagined. But for the most part, the island of Tulagi—once the seat of British colonial government in the Solomon Islands—had been quiet until the cannonading broke out.

The men looked up from the foxholes they had dug, or peered out the windows of the few remaining shacks which had not been smashed by the fighting. Tired eyes, gleaming white in faces begrimed by two days of sweating, fighting and suffering in the jungle, watched the greenish-white flashes. Ears keyed to the slightest of sounds listened to the steady brroom-brroom of the distant cannons.

As the Raiders listened and watched, they realized that a major sea battle was being waged somewhere between Tulagi and Guadalcanal. They sensed that their future was being settled among the green flashes and metallic thunderings of the naval guns. As the crashing of the guns increased in tempo, it also grew louder, and seemed to be moving toward Tulagi. Then, at about 2:30 A.M., the flickering lights began to fade in the sky, and the thunder of guns grew fainter. No one on Tulagi knew whether the lull in the heavy firing meant that the engagement was over or would renew itself with mounting fury a second later.

Not until years later, when the war was over, were the facts of this First Battle of Savo Island known. Japanese Admiral Mikawa, in his flagship Chokai, had led a marauding force of Japanese cruisers and destroyers into The Slot between Guadalcanal and Savo Island. Here he had pounced upon the unaware force of American cruisers and destroyers supposedly guarding the transport ships which had just landed the Marine forces invading the islands of Guadalcanal, Tulagi, Gavutu and Tanambogo.

Mikawa’s forces had quickly made expert torpedo and gunnery attacks, and left four Allied heavy cruisers burning—the United States ships Quincy, Astoria and Vincennes, and the pride of the Australian Pacific navy, the Canberra. During the night, all four were to sink, with a loss of more than 1,000 lives. The engagement was the first of the many violent sea battles to rage in the waters around the Solomon Islands.

Back in the United States very little information was reaching the public beyond the brief Navy communiqués reporting that marines had landed in the Solomon Islands at Guadalcanal, Tulagi and Gavutu. But at the very moment when the marines on Tulagi were wondering about the meaning of the naval action out there in the dark, a small group of men at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York was making its own contribution to eventual victory for America.

At the Navy yard, 10,000 miles away from the Solomons, it was 11:30 A.M., bright midday. And the crew of PT Boat 109 (PT meaning Patrol Torpedo) had just taken a hard-earned lunch break from their work of fitting out PT-109 at the Brooklyn yard. PT-109 was one of the latest models of a so-called miracle weapon—an 80-foot plywood-and-mahogany speedboat armed with torpedoes and machine guns. General Douglas MacArthur had said this weapon might have made a considerable difference in the defense of the Philippines if it had been available in much larger quantities. Now, four months after the fall of the Philippines to the Japanese war machine, mass production of the PT boats had just begun.

The 109 boat was the sixth of a new class of PTs designed to be mass-produced at the Elco Boat Works at Bayonne, New Jersey. As the crewmen of the 109 boat stopped for lunch, nine more boats in the same series were coming off the Elco production lines, and a hundred more would be built in the next year.

Like Kaiser’s Liberty ships, which were built in large sections like automobile parts and assembled on a giant factory line, the Elco 80-footers came together in two major pieces, hull and deckhouse. After the decks were in, a giant hoist lifted the 30-ton hull and swung it into the water. From there it was guided to the giant, hangar-like fitting-out building where the hull would be made into a fighting boat with the addition of two dual .50-caliber gun mounts on the right forward and left rear sections of the deckhouse. Four torpedo tubes, two even with the bridge structure amidship, and two on the afterdeck, were also installed on the boat. Like fat steel crayons, these were oriented fore and aft, so that they were aimed generally in the same direction as the boat. When an attack was to be made, they would be trained out a few degrees. In this way the torpedoes, when fired, would clear the side of the boat. Then, once in the water, they would be trained by gyroscope mechanism so that their course would follow the direction the boat had been pursuing. Besides the .50-caliber dual mounts and the torpedo tubes, some of the boats were equipped with two depth-charge mountings on the bow.

With the mountings of the armor-plated deckhouse, the rakish windshield with its base of armor-plate, the guns, the four torpedo tubes, and the depth-charge cradles, the little plywood destroyers began to look more formidable.

In July of 1942, PT-109 was ready to leave the Elco Boat Works. At the Bayonne fitting-out basin, a crew went aboard the spic-and-span new motor torpedo boat and started the short trek down Newark Bay toward New York Harbor and Brooklyn.

At the Brooklyn Navy Yard the fitting out of the PT boat was completed and she was taken on a series of shake-down cruises. PT-109 had been routinely assigned to Ensign Bryant L. Larson as part of a squadron of six new boats under the command of Lieutenant Commander Clifton B. Maddox. The squadron was as yet unassigned but rumor had it that they would be sent to action in the South Pacific.

At this time the Navy skipper who was later to win fame for his command of PT-109 had not the slightest inkling that she would ever be his boat. A tall, slim, intense young man with gray eyes and a pug nose, he was attending the Naval Reserve Officers’ Training School at Northwestern University, Chicago. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was one of tens of thousands of young American men wearing the single gold bar of ensign.

This young freckle-faced, mop-haired ensign differed from the average, however, in that he bore a famous name. His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, a Boston multimillionaire, had until recently been American Ambassador to the Court of St. James, at that time considered America’s top diplomatic post.

John Kennedy, the second oldest son of former Ambassador Kennedy, had succeeded in joining the naval service in October of 1941. He had tried unsuccessfully to volunteer for duty in the Army. But the Army had rejected him on account of a back injury incurred while he was playing junior varsity football at Harvard University. After his rejection by the Army, he had taken a course of corrective exercises and had at last managed to be accepted as an officer in the U. S. Navy.

His first assignments had been dull ones. The young officer had felt restive and frustrated (especially since his older brother Joe had gone to a fighting front in Europe). John had quickly volunteered his services for a more exciting and dangerous assignment, somewhat nearer the front. But the wheels of bureaucracy, even during wartime, turn very slowly, and weeks went by with no change of assignment.

Finally, at the same time the first communiqués of action in the Solomons were being released, new orders were put in the works for Ensign John F. Kennedy. He was being assigned to the PT training school at Melville, Rhode Island, the Little Annapolis of the torpedo boat squadrons. Some students already called it Mudville, a newly constructed line of Quonset huts ranged along the shore of Narragansett Bay. But at the time it was the best and only school for officers and crewmen being trained to man the fleet of thunder boats which the United States Navy was to send out into the Solomons area to battle with Japanese destroyers and cruisers.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been in many ways well prepared through his twenty-five years of life for the job he was to undertake as a PT skipper and naval officer. Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917, he was the second son of a man who had proved to be a financial genius. Consequently young John grew up in wealthy surroundings, and for recreation he was used to sailing small boats at various yachting centers. He had also acquired a fine education at Harvard University and the London School of Economics. It was almost an automatic requirement for officership in the armed services that a young man must have at least two years of college training. And Navy Procurement always looked for yachting and motorboating experience in the men they sent to the PT

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