The Mosquito Fleet

by Bern Keating

Japanese Navy

Northern Decoy Force, under Vice-Admiral Ozawa:

Four fat carriers, prime targets for the aggressive Halsey, were screened by eight destroyers and one light cruiser. Mission of the force was suicidal. Without enough planes to make a serious fight, Admiral Ozawa nevertheless hoped to lure Halsey’s powerful Third Fleet away from the landing beach, thus exposing American transports to attack by two powerful Japanese surface striking forces that were to sneak into Leyte Gulf through the back door, or rather two back doors at San Bernardino and Surigao Straits, north and south of Leyte Island.

Central Striking Force, under Vice-Admiral Kurita:

Five battleships, ten heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and 15 destroyers. Admiral Kurita was to take this formidable surface fleet through San Bernardino Straits, at the northern tip of Samar, to come down on the transports “like a wolf on the fold” while Halsey’s force was wasting time on the sacrificial carrier decoy in the north.

Southern Striking Force, under Vice-Admiral Shima:

Formed of two task units—a vanguard under Admiral Nishima of two battleships, one heavy cruiser and four destroyers, plus a second section under Admiral Shima of two heavy cruisers, one light cruiser and four destroyers. These two southern forces were to come up from the East Indies and pass through Surigao Straits—happy hunting grounds of the PTs—to join with the Central Striking Force in Leyte Gulf for the unopposed and leisurely destruction of the Sixth Army.

The Japanese apparently could not believe that the U.S. Navy—once Halsey had been suckered into chasing off after the decoy carriers—had enough ships left afloat to resist the two striking forces. Had not the entire Japanese nation just celebrated an Imperial proclamation of the near annihilation of the American fleet?

All three Japanese forces converged on the Philippines simultaneously. By October 24th, the three forces had been spotted and reported by Allied scouts. Torpedoes and bombs from planes and submarines had made punishing hits on the advancing Central and Southern Striking Forces, but the ships kept plodding on toward the straits north and south of Leyte.

And Admiral Halsey snapped at the bait dangled by Admiral Ozuma’s carriers. For a man of Admiral Halsey’s temperament, the reported sighting of the northern carrier group was too much to resist. He lit out to get them all—leaving unguarded the Strait of San Bernardino, back gate into Leyte Gulf and the transport area.

For once, an American command staff had fallen into the chronic error of the Japanese. Admiral Halsey apparently believed the exaggerated claims of his pilots and thought that the Central Striking Force had been decimated and the remnants driven off. The Japanese had actually lost only three cruisers to submarines and a battleship to aircraft. After a short retreat, Admiral Kurita reconsidered and turned back during the night to resume the transit of San Bernardino Strait. His powerful fleet was steaming toward the transport area at 20 knots.

Admiral Kincaid misinterpreted a message from Admiral Halsey and thought a part of his Third Fleet was still on station, corking up San Bernardino, so Kincaid dismissed the central force from his mind and turned his attention to the southern force heading for Surigao Strait. Not even a scout submarine was watching the northern pass into Leyte Gulf.

Shortly after noon of October 24th, Admiral Kincaid notified his entire command to prepare for a battle that night. He cleared Surigao Strait of all unnecessary traffic, and gave Rear Admiral Jesse Oldendorf the job of not only stopping but destroying the enemy column.

Admiral Oldendorf had been commanding the bombardment and support forces, and had in his control all the heavy guns of the Seventh Fleet. In a phrase which infuriated the Japanese when they heard it, Oldendorf said that he deployed his forces according to the professional gambler’s code: “Never give a sucker a chance.”

Surigao Strait is a narrow strip of water about thirty-five miles long, running almost north-south between Leyte and Dinegat islands. By its shape and location, the strait was going to force the Southern Striking Force to approach Leyte Gulf in a long, narrow column. Admiral Oldendorf deployed his ancient but still hard-punching battleships in a line across the mouth of the strait where it opens into Leyte Gulf. Thus, without further maneuver, Oldendorf was certain to open fire with his battle line already crossing the T of the Japanese column. His fleet could swing its entire broadside to bear simultaneously; the enemy could fire only the forward turrets on the lead ship.

Admiral Oldendorf was not satisfied with depending entirely on this setup, murderous as it was, so he deployed every other fighting ship in his command to work maximum destruction on the Japanese. He posted cruisers and destroyers between the battleships and the mouth of the straits, as a combined screen and supplementary battle line. Other destroyer squadrons were posted near the strait, so that they could launch torpedoes and then get out of the way during the gunfire phase of the battle.

Admiral Oldendorf’s position was good—except for one thing. The warships had fired off most of their ammunition in beach bombardment, and magazine stocks were low, especially in the armor-piercing shells needed for fighting heavy battleships. Oldendorf ordered the battleships to hold their fire until they were sure of making hits—and he ordered maximum use of torpedoes.

That meant torpedo boats, so 39 of Commander Selman Bowling’s PTs were deployed in 13 sections of three boats each along the shores of Surigao Strait, and also along the coasts of Mindanao and Bohol islands, far into the Mindanao Sea on the other end of Surigao Strait. The farthest PTs were stationed 100 miles from the battleline.

The Seventh Fleet had no night scouting planes, so Admiral Oldendorf informed the PTs that their primary mission was scouting. The boats were to patrol the approaches to the strait and to hide along the wooded shores fringing the coming scene of battle. They were to relay radio contact reports as the Japanese passed their station.

Then they were to attack and do all the torpedo damage possible before the Japanese came within gunshot of the Seventh Fleet battleline.

The PTs took up their stations during the night, and all hands topside peered out to sea, watching for the telltale white bow wave of the first Japanese ship.

The torpedo boat actions that followed are often hard to understand. PTs, by the nature of their attack, provoke wild melees, and survivors of melees rarely remember precisely what happened. What they do claim to remember is usually faulty and contradicted by circumstantial evidence. PT skippers kept only sketchy logs, and those entries giving the time an action took place are often especially inaccurate. As nearly as a historian can tell, however, here is what happened to the PTs.

At 10:15 P.M. Ensign Peter B. Gadd, skipper of PT 131, on station 18 miles south of Bohol Island almost exactly in the middle of the Mindanao Sea and 100 miles from Admiral Oldendorf, picked up two targets on his radar screen. They were between the three-boat section commanded by Lieut. W. C. Pullen, and Bohol Island to the north. Lieut. Pullen tried to reach Admiral Oldendorf by radio, but failed, so he led the PTs 152, 130 and 131, in a torpedo approach.

The radar pips broke into five separate targets, and when a light haze lifted, the skippers clearly saw what they thought were two battleships, two cruisers and a destroyer. The enemy opened fire at three-mile range, with his biggest batteries. Starshells burst overhead and the PTs tore away through a ghastly glare that made them feel naked under the rain of high explosive.

An eight-inch shell hit a torpedo of 130 smack on the warhead and tore through the bow. Miraculously, there was no explosion.

The 152 was hit by a 4.7-incher, probably from a destroyer that was closing fast, with searchlight blazing. (This destroyer, the Shigure, was the only ship of the Japanese van to survive the coming massacre.) The explosion tore away the 37-mm. cannon, killed the gunner, stunned the loader, and wounded three sailors. The boat was afire.

Aboard the stricken 152, Lieut. (jg) Joseph Eddins dumped two shallow-set depth charges into his wake and pumped 40-mm. shells at the pursuing destroyer.

“Our 40 mm. made the enemy reluctant to continue the use of the searchlight,” said Lieut Eddins.

The destroyer snapped off the light and sheered away from the geysers of exploding depth charges.

The fight had lasted 23 minutes. Now there were two more targets on the radar screen and the PT sailors were frantic to get their radio report through to the waiting battleline.

Lieut. (jg) Ian D. Malcolm of 130 ran south until he found Lieut. (jg) John A. Cady’s section near Camiguin Island. He boarded PT 127 and borrowed its radio. Just after midnight on October 25th, Lieut. Malcolm made the first contact report of the position, course, and speed of the enemy. It was the first word of the enemy received by Admiral Oldendorf in fourteen hours.

Aboard the 152, the crew put out the fire, and the skipper gave the boat a little test run. The bow was stove in, but the plucky boat could still make 24 knots, so Lieut. Pullen ordered a stern chase of the disappearing Japanese. He had to abandon the attack, however, because the Japanese were too fast for him to catch. There is something touching and ludicrous in the picture of the tiny, bashed-up PT trying to catch the mammoth Japanese battleline.

Lieut. (jg) Dwight H. Owen, in charge of a section near Limasawa Island next picked up signs of the approaching fleet. He tells how it looked:

“The prologue began just before midnight. Off to the southwest over the horizon we saw distant flashes of gunfire, starshells bursting and far-off sweep of searchlights. The display continued about fifteen minutes, then blacked out. Squalls came and went. One moment the moon shone bright as day, and the next you couldn’t make out the bow of your boat. Then the radar developed the sort of pips you read about.”

Lieut. Owen jumped for the radio, but the enemy was jamming the circuit and he could not get his report off. He did the next best thing—he attacked.

At 1,800 yards, the cruiser Mogami snapped on its searchlight and probed for the boats. PT 146 (Ensign B. M. Grosscup), and 150 (Ensign J. M. Ladd), fired one fish each, but missed. The destroyer Yumagumo caught the 151 and the 190 in a searchlight beam, but the boats raked the destroyer with 40-mm. fire and knocked out the lights. The boats zigzagged away behind smoke.

Admiral Nishimura, commanding this van force of the two-section Southern Striking Force, was delighted with himself at this point, and sent a message to Admiral Shima, congratulating himself on having sunk several torpedo boats.

At the southern entrance to Surigao Strait, Lieut. Commander Robert Leeson, on PT 134, commanded the section posted on the western shore. The boat crews saw flashes of the battle with Lieut. Owen’s boats, and half an hour later picked up radar pips ten miles away. Leeson promptly passed the radar sighting to Admiral Oldendorf, and then—the milder duty done—led a torpedo attack.

Lieut. (jg) Edmund F. Wakelin’s 134 was caught by a searchlight while still 3,000 yards from the two battleships. Shells fell close aboard on both sides, splashing water over the boat, and shrapnel from air bursts banged against the deck, but the skipper bore in another 500 yards to launch his fish. The boat escaped from the Japanese and hid in the shadow of Panaon Island, where later in the night the sailors fumed helplessly as four Japanese ships steamed, “fat, dumb, and happy,” past their empty torpedo tubes at 1,000-yard range.

All the torpedo tubes of the section were not empty, however, for Lieut. (jg) I. M. Kovar, in 137, at 3:55 A.M., picked up an enemy formation at the southern end of the strait and attacked. He had no way of knowing it, but this was Admiral Shima’s second section, coming up to the relief of Admiral Nishimura’s van that had already entered the strait, and indeed had at that very moment been shattered by a vicious American destroyer-torpedo attack.

Lieut. Kovar crept up on a Japanese destroyer, maneuvering to take station at the rear of the enemy column. He let fly at the can and had the incredible good luck to miss his target entirely and smack a light cruiser he hadn’t even seen. Aboard the cruiser Abukuma, the explosion killed thirty sailors, destroyed the radio shack and slowed the cruiser to ten knots, forcing it to fall out of formation.

The crippled Abukuma was caught and polished off by Army bombers the next day. It was the only victim of Army aviation in this battle and the only positively verified victim of PT torpedoes, though there is some evidence that a PT may have made one of the hits claimed by American destroyers.

The rest of Admiral Shima’s formation sailed majestically up the strait, fired a spread of torpedoes at two small islands it mistook for American warships, and managed somehow to collide with the fiercely burning cruiser Mogami, only survivor—except for the destroyer Shigure—of the vanguard’s slaughter by the torpedoes and guns of the Seventh Fleet.

Gathering in the two surviving ships, Admiral Shima led a retreat down the strait. At the moment Shigure joined the formation, Lieut. C. T. Gleason’s section attacked, and the Japanese destroyer, which was doing some remarkably able shooting, hit Ensign L. E. Thomas’ 321.

Most sorely hit of the torpedo boats, however, was Lieut. (jg) R. W. Brown’s 493, which had had John F. Kennedy aboard, as an instructor, for a month in Miami. The crew had named the boat the Carole Baby after the skipper’s daughter, who, incidentally, was celebrating her first birthday the night of the Battle of Surigao Strait.

Lieut. Brown tells the Carole Baby’s story:

“I was assigned a division of boats to take position directly down the middle of the strait between Panaon and Dinegat.

“While we were under way to take station, the moon was out but heavy overcast on the horizon threatened to bring complete darkness later. We spotted an occasional light on the beach and we passed an occasional native sailing craft, so the crew’s light mood changed to tension, because they thought we were being spied on.

“When we were on station, strung out across the channel so that the Japs couldn’t get by without our seeing them, I stretched out on the dayroom deck for a little relaxation, but the radio crackled the report that the first PT patrols had made contact.

“‘All hands to General Quarters,’ I ordered. ‘Take echelon formation and prepare to attack.’

“The radarman called up ‘Skipper, eight targets distant twelve miles, estimated speed 28 knots.’

“We closed to three miles, and seconds later my number two boat reported its four torpedoes were in the water. Number Three reported two more fish off and running. I had been maneuvered out of firing position and hadn’t launched any torpedoes yet, so I came around for another attack and was separated from the rest of the section.

“Powerful searchlights pinpointed the two other boats, and starshells lit up the night with their ugly green glare. The two other boats shot up the enemy can and knocked out two of the lights. I didn’t open fire, because the Japs hadn’t seen the Carole Baby yet and I wanted to shoot my fish before they found me.

“At about 500 yards, I fired two and opened up with my guns. The enemy fired starshells and turned on the searchlights. At this close range we could see Japanese sailors scrambling about the ship, and we poured it into them, but the concussion of their exploding shells was creeping steadily closer, so I ordered my executive officer, Nick Carter, to come hard left, open the throttles and GET OUT!

“I went aft to release smoke for a screen so we could return to fire our remaining torpedoes, but we had penetrated an outer destroyer screen without knowing it and had Japs all around us. Eight searchlights pinned us down like a bug on a needle.

“It’s a funny thing how the mind works. I took time at that moment to notice that all those searchlights were turning the sea about us to a beautiful phosphorescent green.

“Our guns blew up two of the searchlights, but we were being hit hard. A. W. Brunelle reported from the engine room that the boat was badly holed at the waterline. I found out later that he took off his kapok life jacket and stuffed it into the hole as the only cork he could find right at hand.

“A blinding flash and terrific concussion threw me out of the cockpit. Stunned, I reeled forward to find that most of the chartroom had been blown away.

“I told Nick to head the Carole Baby for the Island of Panaon, and we limped off with the Jap cans chasing us. When we were out of torpedo range of the capital ships, they turned back but kept throwing shells at us to be sure we didn’t return to attack.

“Return to attack! We weren’t even sure we could stay afloat. The engines were almost completely underwater and though they were still working, they couldn’t chug along forever with water steadily rising in the hold.

“The last destroyer left us just as the bow of the Carole Baby scraped on a coral reef one hundred yards off the beach at Panaon.

“When the shooting stopped, a weird silence settled over us. I went over the boat to see what condition we were in. We were in bad condition. The Carole Baby had been hit by five shells. Two of them had passed clean through us without exploding, but the one that had exploded in the charthouse had killed two and wounded nine of my crew.

“And that isn’t all. We were high on a reef, within rock-throwing distance of an enemy shore. I had to know if those lights we could see came from a Japanese camp, so I armed ten of us with machine guns and grenades and we slipped over the side.

“We found a little village. Somebody had been there, but had run off as we approached, so we decided to search farther. This type of warfare was different from the one the crew was used to, and everybody was ill at ease.”

It is interesting to note that by inference the sailors were not “ill at ease” in the type of warfare they had just been subjected to.

“One of the sailors was almost strangled by what he thought was a low-hanging vine, but we found it was a telephone wire leading to a small hut. We crept close to the hut and listened. No good. Japanese!

“We cut the wire and returned to the safety of our reef.”

Again, consider the character of sailors who talk about the “safety” of a shattered boat, filled with dead and wounded shipmates, stranded on a rock in the midst of history’s greatest naval battle and within pistol range of an enemy shore.

“We expected that wire-cutting bit would stir up some Jap patrols, so we made ourselves into a Little Gibraltar with all the weapons we could scrape together—and on a PT boat that is plenty of weapons.”

Lieut. Brown tells of settling down to enjoy the unaccustomed role of spectator at a battle. Through the night the crew watched the flash and glare of gunfire and exploding ships up the straits.

“We couldn’t tell who was faring best. Through binoculars we could see ships afire and sinking, but we couldn’t tell if they were Japanese or American. Long before dawn the eastern sky looked like sunrise, because of the orange glow of burning ships.

“When day did break we saw natives creeping back to their village, so we waved and yelled ‘Americanos’ and ‘Amigos’ and friendly stuff like that. They finally believed us and waded out to our boat where the sailors set about their eternal bargaining for souvenirs. I believe an American sailor would bargain with a cannibal tribe while they’re putting him into the pot.

“One of the crew yelled and pointed out to sea. Three PTs were roaring up the straits in broad daylight and we could see what they were after—it was the crippled cruiser Mogami, trying to limp home after the fight.

“I watched one of the PTs fire two fish and then race toward us when the cruiser fired at her. We were glad to see her coming, but then we realized with horror that the skipper thought our poor beat-up old Carole Baby was a Japanese barge, and he was getting ready to make a strafing run on us. We jumped up and down and waved our arms and yelled like crazy, even though we knew they couldn’t hear us.

“Just before they got to the spot where I would have opened fire if I had been skipper, we saw the gunners relax and point those gun muzzles away as they recognized us. It was PT 491 that came to our rescue.

“We tried to pull the Carole Baby off the reef, but she was too far gone. She went down in deep water—the only American ship, incidentally, lost in the Battle of Surigao Strait.”

Admiral Chester W. Nimitz radioed from Hawaii:

THE SKILL, DETERMINATION AND COURAGE DISPLAYED BY THE PERSONNEL OF THESE SMALL BOATS IS WORTHY OF THE HIGHEST PRAISE.... THE PT ACTION VERY PROBABLY THREW THE JAPANESE COMMAND OFF BALANCE AND CONTRIBUTED TO THE COMPLETENESS OF THEIR SUBSEQUENT DEFEAT.

By contrast to the corking of Surigao Strait, at the unguarded San Bernardino Strait, the powerful Central Striking Force that morning passed unopposed into Leyte Gulf and jumped the escort carriers and their screen. Something close to worldwide panic broke out in American command centers when the brass realized that the Central Striking Force was already in the gulf and Admiral Halsey’s force was off chasing the carrier decoy—too far off to engage Kurita’s fleet.

A handful of destroyers and destroyer escorts of the screen threw themselves between the Japanese wolf and the transport sheep. Planes from the escort carriers made real and dummy bombing runs on Kurita’s ships. Between them the desperate escort forces—planes and destroyers—battled Kurita to a standstill in the most spectacular show of sheer fighting courage in all of naval history.

Incredibly, Admiral Kurita, with a victory as great as Pearl Harbor within his grasp—the very victory that the northern decoy carrier force was being sacrificed to buy—turned his mighty fleet about and steamed back through San Bernardino Strait, content with sinking two of the escort carriers and three of the screen ships whose gallant skippers had put their destroyers between the enemy and the helpless transport fleet.

Admiral Halsey sank all four carriers, three destroyers, one light cruiser and a fleet oiler of the decoy force.

The Sho plan had worked almost perfectly for the Japanese—but with an unexpected outcome; the Japanese surface fleet, instead of wiping out the American transport fleet, was shattered. Its carrier force virtually vanished. His Imperial Japanese Majesty’s navy could never mount a major attack again.

With the main battleline of the Japanese fleet driven from the scene, the PTs were right back where they had been in New Guinea and Guadalcanal—busting barges and derailing the Tokyo Express.

On the far side of Leyte Island the waters are reef filled, the channels shallow and tortuous. The Japanese were using the dangerous waters of the Camotes Sea and Ormoc Bay to land supplies at night behind their lines. A familiar enough situation for the PT sailors, so the skippers took their shallow-draft torpedo boats into Ormoc Bay, looking for trouble.

On the night between November 28th and 29th, Lieut. Roger H. Hallowell took PTs 127, 331, 128, and 191 around the tip of Leyte and headed up the western shore for Ormoc Bay in the first combat patrol of these waters.

PTs 127 and 331 entered the bay while the other two boats patrolled the islands outside. In the light of a tropical moon, the skippers inside saw a subchaser and crept to within 800 yards before the Japanese opened fire. The two boats launched eight torpedoes and a ripple of rockets (enough explosive to tear a battleship in two, much less a little patrol craft). The retiring PT skippers reported the usual loud explosion, indicating a torpedo hit, which virtually all retiring torpedo-boat captains always reported. This time, however, they were right. The Japanese themselves later admitted the loss of the subchaser SC 53.

The two retiring boats, all their torpedoes spent, met the 128 and 191 at the entrance to the bay, and Lieut. Hallowell “transferred his flag” to the 128 to lead the two still-armed boats in a second attack.

All four boats went in, the two boats with spent tubes planning to give gunfire support to the armed duo. All hands searched for the original target, but could not find it—for the good reason that it was on the bottom.

Lieut. Hallowell saw what he thought was a freighter tied to a dock, so the two skippers, ignoring fire from the beach, launched all torpedoes.

Ten days later, when the Army had landed at Ormoc and taken over the harbor, the PTs promptly moved in and discovered that Lieut. Hallowell’s “freighter” was the Japanese PC 105, clearly visible at the dock, sitting on the bottom with a fatal gash in her side.

Lieut. Melvin W. Haines, early on the morning of December 12th, led PTs 492 and 490 in a classic attack on a convoy in Ormoc Bay. The PTs stalked silently to close range, launched torpedoes, and retired zigzagging behind smoke in a maneuver right out of the PT textbook. They were rewarded by a great stab of light behind them. One of the boats, or perhaps both, had hit the destroyer Uzuki, which went up in a great column of orange flame.

This kind of night warfare was only too tediously familiar to PT sailors, but right then the war took a nasty new turn for them—indeed for the whole Pacific Fleet.

Desperate because of the swift deterioration of their position, the Japanese switched from all reasonable kinds of warfare—if there are such—and developed the suicidal kamikaze tactic.

Through the war, Japanese fliers—and Americans, too, for that matter—already hit and doomed, often tried to crash-land on ships under attack, to take the enemy down to death with them.

During the Leyte surface-air battles, however, many of the Japanese were dedicated, with great ceremony, to making deliberate suicide dives into American ships, as a kind of human bomb. The toll was already frightening to American naval men, and threatened to get worse.

In mid-December two kamikaze planes crashed into the 323 in Surigao Strait, and destroyed it utterly so that the PTs crews were served notice that they were not too small a prize to merit attention from the sinister new air fleet.

MacArthur had returned, all right, when he went ashore at Leyte, but it was only a kind of tentative return—a one-foot-in-the-door return. Until he landed on Corregidor in Luzon, he wouldn’t really be back where he started. Luzon was the goal.

Just across the narrow Verde Island Passage from Luzon is the island of Mindoro, and MacArthur’s air commanders sorely coveted that piece of real estate for airstrips so that they could bring Luzon under the gunsights of their fighters before the Luzon landings began.

On December 12th MTB Squadrons Thirteen and Sixteen, plus PTs 227 and 230, left Leyte Gulf in a convoy with the Eighth Army’s Visayan Task Force to invade Mindoro Bay, 300 miles to the northwest. Because of the sharply mounting kamikaze attacks, the Navy did not want to risk a tender in Mindoro waters, so the squadrons, with the help of the ingenious Seabees, planned to set up a base of sorts on an LST.

During the afternoon of December 13th, a kamikaze slipped through the air cover and crashed into the portside of the invasion force flagship, the cruiser Nashville. The pilot carried two bombs, and their explosion touched off five-inch and 40-mm. ammunition in the ready lockers topside. The shattering blast killed 133 officers and men, including both the Army and Navy chiefs of staff and the colonel commanding the bombardment wing. The Nashville had to return to Leyte Gulf.

Later, ten more Japanese planes attacked and one got through to the destroyer Haraden. The explosion killed 14 sailors and the destroyer had to go back to Leyte. The PTs huddled close to the rest of the convoy, to add their batteries to the curtain of fire.

Troops went ashore on Mindoro at 7 A.M. on December 15th, and met little opposition. Half an hour later, PTs were operating in the harbor. The infantry quickly set up a perimeter defense, pushing back the small Japanese garrison to make room for an airfield at San Jose. As they had at Bougainville, American planners wanted only enough room on Mindoro to establish and protect a fighter base. It was not Mindoro but Luzon that was the basic goal.

The Japanese didn’t intend to let the Americans have even that much land, however, without lashing back furiously at the invaders of this island almost within sight of the city of Manila.

Just after 8 A.M. the kamikazes arrived. Three of the planes dove on destroyers and were shot down by the combined fire of all ships. The fourth flew over the stern of Ensign J. P. Rafferty’s PT 221, caught the full blast of the PT battery, and cartwheeled along the surface of the bay, spraying water and flames until it sank from sight.

Outside the bay, the sailors saw the kamikazes coming, so Lieut. Commander Alvin W. Fargo, Jr., commanding Squadron Thirteen, ordered the PTs still escorting the convoy to get between the LSTs and the approaching planes. Seven kamikazes strafed the PTs ineffectively, and the boats brought down three of them. Of the four that penetrated the screen, two were shot down by the combined fire of the LSTs and the PTs. The other two dived into LST 472 and LST 738, setting them afire. Eventually, destroyers had to sink the burning hulks with gunfire. PTs picked up a hundred survivors.

Next morning all the PTs were in Mangarin Bay at Mindoro, site of the landings, and the LST 605, destined to be their base ship, was unloading on the beach. PTs 230 and 300 were entering from the night’s patrol, when a single plane glided out of the sun and strafed the 230, without hitting it. The kamikaze circled and started his dive on the LST 605. The landing ship and all the PTs opened fire and shot off the plane’s tail. The kamikaze crashed on the beach fifty yards from the LST, killing five men and wounding 11.

Half an hour later eight planes came after the PTs.

Lieut. (jg) Byron F. Kent, whose 230 was a target, tells of applying broken-field running football tactics to the problem:

“Three of the planes chose my boat as their target. All our fire was concentrated on the first as it dove for the boat in a gradual sweep, increasing to an angle of about seventy degrees. I maneuvered at high speed, to present a starboard broadside to the oncoming plane. When it was apparent that the plane could not pull out of the dive, I feinted in several directions and then turned hard right rudder under the plane. It struck the water thirty feet off the starboard bow.

“The second plane began its dive. When the pilot committed himself to his final direction, I swung the boat away from the plane’s right bank. The plane hit the water fifty feet away.

“The third plane came in at a seventy-degree dive. After zigzagging rapidly as the plane came down, I swung suddenly at right angles. The plane landed in the water just astern, raising the stern out of the water and showering the 40-mm. gun crew with flame, smoke, debris, and water. All of us were slightly dazed, but there were no injuries and the boat was undamaged.”

Lieut. (jg) Frank A. Tredinnick, in 77, was attacked by a single. He held a steady course and speed until just before impact, and then chopped his throttle. The kamikaze pilot, who had quite properly taken a lead on the speeding boat, crashed ten yards ahead.

Lieut. (jg) Harry Griffin, Jr. swung his 223 hard right just before impact, and his attacker showered the boat with water.

With two planes after him, Lieut. (jg) J. R. Erickson maneuvered at top speed.

“The gunners fired a steady stream of shells into one plane as it came down in a steep dive and crashed fifteen feet off the port bow. The second plane circled until he saw his partner had missed, and he dived on our stern, strafing as he came. The gunners fired on him until he crashed three feet off the starboard bow, spraying the deck with debris and water. One man was blown over the side by the concussion but was rescued uninjured.”

The last plane was shot down by the combined fire of the PTs before it could even pick a target.

That afternoon as 224 and 297 were leaving for the night’s patrol, two planes dropped three bombs but missed. The ships in the bay shot one plane into the water. The other was last seen gliding over the treetops, trailing fire.

On the afternoon of December 17th, three planes came into the bay. One went into a steep dive aimed at Lieut. Commander Almer P. Colvin’s 300. The kamikaze had been studying the failure of his comrades, with their suicidal sacrifice, to inflict any damage on the swift PTs. Lieut. Commander Colvin gave the 300 a last-second twist to the right, but the pilot outsmarted him, anticipated that very move, and crashed into the engine room, splitting the boat in two. The stem sank immediately and the bow burned for eight hours. Lieut. Commander Colvin was seriously wounded, four men were killed, four reported missing, one officer and four men wounded. Only one man aboard escaped without injury.

That night Lieut. Commander N. Burt Davis’ boats carried sealed orders from General MacArthur to a guerrilla hideout on the other side of Mindoro and delivered them to Lieut. Commander George F. Rowe, U. S. Navy liaison officer to the Mindoro Underground. The boats picked up eleven American pilots, who had been rescued and sheltered by the guerrillas, and brought them back to Mindoro.

Some of the Japanese High Command wanted to write Mindoro off as already lost; others wanted to make a massive counterlanding on the north beaches to fight it out at the perimeter defense and push the American airfield off the island. The two groups compromised, and as often happens in a compromise, they sent a boy to do a man’s job.

Admiral Kimura left Indo-China with a heavy cruiser, a light cruiser, and four destroyers, on a mission of bombarding the Mindoro beachhead. It wasn’t much of a naval task force to send into those waters, but as it happens, every American capital ship in the area was at Leyte, too far off to help. The only naval forces handy were the PTs.

The PTs had been up against this very problem before. Twice, at Guadalcanal, they had tangled alone with a bombardment force and a far mightier bombardment force than the one approaching from Indo-China.

“Recall all patrols to assist in the defense of Mindoro,” Lieut. Admiral Kincaid ordered Lieut. Commander Davis.

A patrol line of the nine most seaworthy boats was strung out three miles off the beach. Two more boats, under Lieut. P. A. Swart, had already left to call on the Mindoro guerrillas, but Davis called them back, vectoring them toward the approaching Japanese, with instructions to attack on contact.

Army bombers attacked the Japanese bombardment flotilla all night long (and attacked the patrolling PTs, too, seriously damaging 77 with a near miss and wounding every member of the crew—which was more than the kamikazes had been able to do in days of ferocious attack).

Admiral Kimura bombarded the beach for about thirty minutes. It was a most desultory job, did almost no damage, and caused not a single casualty. He fired three poorly aimed salvos at the PTs and left.

Halfway up the western coast of Mindoro, Admiral Kimura ran into Lieut. Swart’s two PTs, hustling back to get into the scrap. Just after midnight the two boat skippers and the Japanese discovered each other simultaneously. The Japanese illuminated 220 with a searchlight and fired dangerously accurate salvos—the first good shooting that force had done that night.

Lieut. (jg) Harry Griffin, Jr., closed his 223 to 4,000 yards and fired both his starboard fish. Three minutes later a long lance of flame shot up from the ship’s side and she went under the waves.

The next afternoon PTs picked up five Japanese sailors from the water. They were survivors of the brand new destroyer Kiyoshimo, victim of Lieut. Griffin’s steady eye.

The worst ordeal of the Mindoro landings was prepared on December 27th, when a resupply convoy shaped up near Dulag on Leyte Island. The convoy led off with 25 LSTs in five columns of five ships; next came three Liberty ships, one Navy tanker, six Army tankers, two aviation gasoline tankers and the PT tender Orestes in five columns at the center of the convoy; last came 23 LCIs in five columns. Nine destroyers formed an outer screen; 29 PTs formed an inner screen on each flank.

Aboard the Orestes was Captain G. F. Mentz, commander of the Diversionary Attack Group of LCIs and PTs which was being moved to Mindoro for mounting amphibious landings behind the Japanese lines.

A Japanese night snooper spotted the convoy about 4 A.M. on December 28th, and at the same time the convoy commander learned that the weather was so bad over Leyte airfields that he could expect no air cover until noon the next day. Unfortunately the weather was fine over the convoy—perfect weather for the kamikazes to draw a bead on the slow ships of the supply train.

In midmorning three planes attacked. The first tried to crash-dive the LCIs and was shot down by LCI 1076. Another overshot the aviation gasoline tanker Porcupine, and splashed.

The third kamikaze made perhaps the most spectacular suicide crash of the war. It hit the John Burke, a merchant ship loaded with ammunition, and pilot, plane, ship, cargo, and crew disappeared in a blinding flash. A small Army freighter went down with the John Burke. The LCI flagship, LCI 624, ran to the rescue, but only two heads bobbed in the water, both survivors of the Army ship, and one of those died almost immediately. All sixty-eight merchant sailors had been vaporized in the explosion.

Another kamikaze hit the merchant ship William Ahearne on the bridge, setting it on fire. The ship was towed back to Leyte. Loss of this ship was a sad blow to the forces ashore at Mindoro, for included in her cargo was a large stock of beer.

Friendly air cover arrived and ran off that particular flight of planes, but the convoy was under almost constant attack that night. In the moonlight, about 7 P.M., a torpedo bomber put a fatal fish into LST 750.

Three LCIs each shot down a plane. Sailors on the LCI flagship had the harrowing experience of hearing a torpedo scrape along the ship’s flat bottom from stem to stem without exploding. Some of the LCIs had surgical units aboard, and many of the wounded were run over to these handy, impromptu hospital ships.

Air attack was incessant, in daylight and dark, and too monotonously similar to recount in detail unless there was scoring.

During the morning of December 30th, three planes were shot down, one by a PT that knocked down its victim as the kamikaze was diving on an escorting destroyer.

The last attack of the morning came just as the convoy was entering the harbor at San Jose. The landing-craft flagship shot down a kamikaze with a short burst of 40 mm.

Inside Mangarin Bay the ships hurried with the stevedoring, because the sailors were eager to leave this unfriendly land. No planes appeared until almost 4 P.M.

Five Japanese dive-bombers pierced the friendly fighter cover and whistled down from 14,000 feet in their suicide dives. One hit the destroyer Pringle and did only light damage. Another hit the aviation gasoline tanker Porcupine with such an impact that its engine went clear through the decks and out the bottom, tearing a large hole in the hull. Seven men were killed and eight wounded. The stern burst into flames, a dangerous development on a ship carrying a tankful of aviation gasoline forward.

The fourth plane dove on the destroyer Gansevoort and crashed it amidships. The main deck was peeled back like the lid of an empty sardine can. The impact cut power lines and set fires, but caused surprisingly light casualties.

The destroyer Wilson came alongside and exercised the fire-fighting crew by putting them aboard the Gansevoort to fight the flames.

The Gansevoort was towed to the PT base. There she was given the bizarre task of torpedoing the burning Porcupine to knock off the blazing stern before the fire reached the gasoline tanks forward. The trick didn’t work, for the blast just spread burning gasoline on the water, endangering the Gansevoort herself and setting new fires, so she had to be towed to a new anchorage. There she was abandoned, but a volunteer crew of a nearby PT boarded the destroyer and put out the fires. Porcupine burned to the waterline.

The most grievous blow of the kamikaze attack, however, was struck at the PT navy.

The fifth Japanese dive bomber dove on the PT tender Orestes, was hit by tracers from PTs and LCIs, hit the water and bounced upward into the starboard side of the tender. The plane’s bombs punched through the side and exploded within, blowing many officers and men into the bay. The ship burst into violent flame, and fire mains were ruptured by the blast. Fifty-nine men were killed and 106 seriously wounded.

The waters around the Orestes were teeming with swimming sailors, and PTs bustled about, pulling in the stunned survivors of the blast.

The LCI 624 went alongside and Commander A. V. Jannotta, the LCI flotilla commander, led a volunteer fire-fighting and rescue party aboard the ship, which had become a hell of exploding ammunition and burning aviation gasoline.

Commander Jannotta was awarded a Navy Cross for his heroic salvage work of that afternoon. Captain Mentz had been severely wounded in the kamikaze blast, and his chief of staff, Commander John Kremer, Jr., had been killed, so Commander Jannotta took over as commander of the whole task group. He was given a Silver Star for his performance in that capacity.

Led by Lieut. Commander Davis, many PT sailors went aboard the burning Orestes to pull wounded shipmates out of the fire.

By 9:45 P.M., flames were out on the Orestes and Commander Jannotta lashed an LCI to either side and pushed it up on the beach.

At dusk, PTs and LCIs scattered and hugged the shoreline, to make the worst possible targets for night marauders. The small craft had good reason to be shaken. The five kamikazes had made 100 per cent hits, and any weapon that is 100 per cent effective is a fearsome weapon.

That same night four PTs shot down a plane as they left the bay on patrol.

Early in the morning of New Year’s Day, 1945, bombers came over the base again. One fragmentation bomb killed 11 men and seriously wounded ten others, most of them survivors of the Orestes.

The kamikazes were not through with the Mindoro shipping. On the afternoon of January 4th, PTs 78 and 81 set fire to one of four enemy fighters that flew over the bay. Trailing smoke and flame, the plane glided into the side of the ammunition ship Lewis Dyche, anchored a quarter mile from the two PTs.

The ship exploded with a roar, taking her 71 merchant sailors to the bottom with her and lifting the PTs out of the water. The concussion badly damaged the boat hulls; two PT sailors were killed and ten men wounded by the blast and falling debris. It was the last visit of the kamikazes to Mindoro, but a spectacular one.

As Commander Jannotta said in his report: “This new weapon employed by the enemy—the suicide diver or human torpedo—constitutes a serious threat to naval forces and to shipping.”

The Mindoro PTs won a Navy Unit Commendation which read:

As the only naval force present after retirement of the invasion convoy, this task unit served as the major obstruction to enemy counterlandings from nearby Luzon, Panay, and Palawan, and bore the brunt of concentrated hostile air attacks through a five-day period, providing the only antiaircraft protection available for persons ashore. The gallant officers and men ... maintained a vigilant watch by night and stood out into the open waters close to base by day to fight off repeated Japanese bombing, strafing, and suicide attacks, expending in three days the ammunition which had been expected to last approximately three weeks in the destruction or damaging of a large percentage of attacking planes.

When fighter planes began to fly in Mindoro, Americans went ashore on Luzon. Some hard fighting remained, but the war was nearing the end.

The last two PTs lost in the war were, sadly enough, victims of their own mates.

During the landings at Nasugbu, in western Luzon, on the night of January 31st, ships of the screen were attacked by twenty or more Japanese midget submarines. One of the little craft sank the PC 1129. Immediately afterward the destroyer escort Lough attacked a swarm of thirty or more kamikaze explosive boats. Naturally the screen vessels were nervous about small vessels in those waters.

On the following night, Lieut. John H. Stillman set out to hunt the suicide flotillas with PTs 77 and 79. (The 77 had already been treated roughly by friendlies; it was the boat damaged by American Army bombers during the repulse of Admiral Kimura’s bombardment flotilla.)

Lieut. Stillman’s orders were to stay south of Talim Point, because the American destroyers were patrolling north of there. While the PTs were still three miles south of Talim Point—well within their assigned area—they ran into the destroyer escort Lough, the same ship that had shot up the explosive boats the night before, and the destroyer Conyngham.

The Lough fired starshells and the PTs fled south at high speed, trying to identify themselves by radio and signal light. The destroyers meanwhile were trying to raise the boats by radio but failed. They did not see the PT light signals.

The PTs still might have escaped, but hard luck 77 picked that evil moment to run aground. A shell from Lough hit her, blowing the crew into the water. The Lough shifted fire to 79, and hit her on the portside. The boat exploded and sank, carrying down with her the skipper, Lieut. (jg) Michael A. Haughian, Joseph E. Klesh, MoMM1c, and Vincent A. Berra, QM3c.

The 30 survivors of the two boats, swimming in the light of the burning 77, assembled and held a muster. Besides the three dead on the 79, Lieut. Stillman was missing. He was never seen again.

The shipwrecked sailors swam together to an enemy-held shore two miles away. Guerrillas sheltered them until February 3rd, when they were picked up by PTs 227 and 230.

On March 2, 1945, just two weeks short of three years after he left the Rock on Lieut. Bulkeley’s PT, General MacArthur landed on recaptured Corregidor. Finally, he had returned. And he returned the same way he had left—by PT 373.

In the last days of the war, the PTs fought the familiar kind of mop-up action against bypassed pockets of Japanese troops that they had been fighting for three years in the Pacific. Nightly patrols fought minor actions, but targets became harder and harder to find. When the war ended on August 14, 1945, the Japanese came out of the woods and the PTs learned for the first time the tremendous enemy power they had kept bottled up far from the fighting front.

At Halmahera, for instance, six PTs picked up Lieut. General Ishii, Commanding General of the army forces there, and Captain Fujita, Naval Commander, and took them to 93rd Division headquarters on Morotai, where they surrendered 37,000 troops, 4,000 Japanese civilians, 19,000 rifles, 900 cannon, 600 machine guns, and a mountain of miscellaneous supplies.

For almost a year the PTs of Morotai—down to two understaffed squadrons at the end—had held at bay a Japanese force powerful enough, in the days of Japanese glory, to conquer whole nations and to hold vast stretches of conquered lands in iron control.

The Japanese themselves paid the top tribute to the PT fleet. “The enemy has used PT boats aggressively,” one of their tactical publications read, “On their account our naval ships have had many a bitter pill to swallow.”

So much for the past of the torpedo boat. What about its future?

The PT fleet was quickly disbanded after the war. Today, although the Soviet navy has more than 500 motor torpedo boats—according to Jane’s Fighting Ships—and even though Soviet-built torpedo boats ply Cuban waters almost within sight of American shores, the U. S. Navy has not a single PT in commission.

But in the waters of Long Island Sound and in sheltered bays on the Pacific Coast strange craft are roaring about—experimental craft that lift out of the water to skim along on hydrofoils at dazzling speeds (though even the modern hydrofoil cannot attain the breath-taking speeds ascribed to the PTs by overeager reporters during the days of the MacArthur rescue run).

The Navy is puttering about with these hydrofoils, arming them with homing torpedoes, experimenting with tactics to use against swift nuclear submarines—the capital ships of future navies.

There may again be a job in the Navy for the dashing young sailor who prefers the swift give and take of small-boat service to the staid and plodding duty on ships of the line. There may still be room in America’s arsenal for David’s giant-killing slingshot.

Appendix 1
Specifications, Armament, and Crew

American PT boats, with only a few exceptions, were of two types, 78-foot Higgins-built boats and 80-foot Elcos. Draft to the tips of propellers was five feet six inches. Power supply was from three Packard V-12 engines giving 4,500 shaft horsepower. Tanks held 3,000 gallons of high-octane gasoline and 200 gallons of potable water. Normal crew was three officers and 14 men, though the complement varied widely under combat conditions. The boat could carry enough provisions for about five days. The boat weighed 121,000 pounds, of which 30,000 were contributed by four torpedoes and tubes, a 40 mm., two twin 50 caliber, and one 20-mm. antiaircraft gun, one 37-mm. cannon, two rocket launchers with eight 5-inch rockets, a 60-mm. mortar, and a smoke-screen generator. In combat, PT skippers often improvised other armaments to adapt to local conditions. Pound for pound, the PT boat was by far the most heavily armed vessel afloat. Top speed under ideal conditions was 43 knots. Conditions were seldom ideal.

Appendix 2
Losses Suffered by PT Squadrons

Destroyed by surface ships: by gunfire, 5; by ramming, 1 (this one, 109, was destined to become one of the most famous boats of all time, because of the subsequent employment of its skipper, John F. Kennedy). Destroyed by aircraft: strafing, 1; bombing, 4; kamikaze, 2. Destroyed by shore batteries: 5. Destroyed by mines: 4. Damaged by surface ships and beached to prevent capture: 1. Lost in transit on transports sunk: 2. Grounded in enemy waters and destroyed to prevent capture: 18. Destroyed to prevent capture: 3 (the boats left behind by Lt. Bulkeley’s squadron on quitting the Philippines). Destroyed by U. S. aircraft: 3; by Australian aircraft, 2. Destroyed by surface friendlies: 2. Destroyed possibly by enemy shore battery, possibly by friendly destroyer: 1. Lost in storms: 5. Destroyed by fire and explosion in port: 6. Destroyed in collision: 3. Total: 69.

Appendix 3
Decorations Won by PT Sailors

Congressional Medal of Honor: 2. Navy Cross: 19, plus two Oak Leaf Clusters. Distinguished Service Medal: 1. Distinguished Service Cross, Army, with Oak Leaf Cluster: 1. Distinguished Service Cross, Army: 2. Distinguished Service Medal, Army: 1. Silver Star with Oak Leaf Cluster: 30. Silver Star: 342. Legion of Merit, Degree of Officer: 1. Legion of Merit with Gold Star: 2. Legion of Merit: 29. Navy and Marine Corps: 57 (including one awarded to John F. Kennedy). Bronze Star with Gold Star: 4. Bronze Star: 383. Commendation Ribbon with Gold Star: 3. Commendation Ribbon: 120. Distinguished Conduct Star, Philippines Government: 4. Distinguished Service Cross, British: 6. Distinguished Service Medal, British: 2.

Camouflage paint and nets protect PT boats from detection by Japanese air patrols. (New Guinea, 1943)

High-speed, lightweight “Mosquitoes” on patrol at Midway (1943)

The old and the new: Filipino outriggers and PT boats combine forces for a sea rescue operation. (1944)

PT boats not only spot and attack Japanese craft, but also pick up survivors. (Battle of Surigao Strait, 1944)

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