The first word from the night fighter, however, was a disconcerting, “I’m being attacked by the float plane.”
“Bring him down to two feet,” said the PT skipper, “and we’ll get on his tail.”
Nobody was hurt.
PTs fought some lively barge actions on July 23rd and 27th, but the big battle—the naval battle which has earned what is surely the most exaggerated fame of all time for its importance—the battle of the 109, took place the night between August 1st and 2nd.
On the afternoon of August 1st, search planes saw four Japanese destroyers coming down The Slot. They were loaded with 900 soldiers and supplies for the embattled defenders of the Munda airfield. It was a typical run of the Tokyo Express and a prime target for PTs.
During the afternoon, when the Japanese destroyers were still far from Rendova, the Japanese showed their deep respect for motor torpedo boats by socking the Rendova base with bombs from 25 planes.
Two PTs were sunk by a bomber which crashed into their nest. One of the PTs destroyed was 164, which had survived the tragic strafing by B25s just eleven days before.
At sunset 15 PTs—four of them equipped with the new-fangled gadget called radar—sortied from the base under the command of Lieut. Henry I. Brantingham aboard 159. Brantingham was another veteran of the MacArthur rescue run in the Philippines. The PTs were deployed around the approaches to the Japanese landing beach for resupplying Munda airfield.
Lieut. Brantingham, naturally, had chosen a radar-equipped boat for his flagship, and so was the first to pick up the Tokyo Express, just after midnight on August 2nd. Brantingham, for some reason, thought his radar pips were from landing craft, and closed for a strafing run, but 4.7-inch shells from the destroyers persuaded him that his targets were fair torpedo game. He and Lieut. (jg) William F. Liebnow, Jr., in 157, fired six torpedoes. No hits. The two boats escaped behind puffs of smoke.
Worse than the six misses was the lack of communication. The other PTs, most of them without radar, didn’t even know the destroyers had arrived on the scene, much less that they had been alerted by the torpedo runs of 157 and 159.