The pilot of the surviving Corsair reported to his base at Green Island, in the South Pacific zone, that he had attacked two Japanese gunboats 125 feet long in Lassul Bay. (The PTs were slightly more than half that long. Lassul Bay was actually 20 miles from Cape Pomas, the true scene of the attack, and hence fifteen miles inside the South Pacific zone and not in the Southwest Pacific zone.)
Green Island scrambled four Corsairs, six Avengers, four Hellcats, and eight Dauntless dive bombers to finish off the stricken PTs. The powerful striking force, enough air-power to take on a cruiser division, found no boats in Lassul Bay, but they, too, wandered across the dividing line and found the PTs at Cape Pomas.
By then the 346 had arrived. The skipper saw the approaching planes, but recognized them as friendly types and thought they were the air cover from Cape Gloucester, so the PT crews ignored the planes and continued with the salvage and rescue work.
First hint that something had gone wrong was a shower of bombs that burst among the PT boats. The PT officers frantically tried every trick in the catalogue to identify themselves, and in despair finally turned loose their gunners, who shot down one of the planes. The loss of one of their mates angered the pilots and they pressed their attacks harder. Two of the three PTs went down.
The plane flight commander called for a Catalina rescue boat to pick up the downed pilot. The Cat never found the pilot, but instead picked up thirteen survivors of the torpedo boats. Their arrival at Green Island was the first word the horrified pilots there had that their targets had been friendly.
Three PT officers and 11 men were killed, two plane pilots were lost, four officers and nine men were wounded, two PTs and two planes were destroyed, in this useless and tragic encounter.
Most PT patrols were not as disastrous, of course, but it was a rare night that did not provide some adventure. Lieut. (jg) James Cunningham kept a diary during 1944, and a few extracts from this journal show the nature of a typical PT’s blockade duty:
March 12, 1944: PTs 149 (The Night Hawk) and 194 patrol the north coast of New Britain. At 2300 we picked up a target on radar—closed in and saw a small Jap surface craft. We made a run on it and found out it was aground and apparently destroyed. We destroyed it some more.
We moved to the other side of Garove Island, where we saw a craft under way heading across the mouth of the harbor. Over one part of the harbor were very high cliffs, an excellent spot for gun emplacements. We blindly chased the craft and closed in on it for a run. Just then the guns—six-inchers—opened up from the cliffs on us, and it seemed for a while that they would blow us out of the water. We left the decoy and headed out to sea, laying a smoke screen. The concussion of the exploding shells was terrific. I still believe the craft was a decoy to pull us into the harbor, and we readily took the bait. The thing that saved us was that the Japs were too eager. They fired too soon before we were really far into the harbor. On the way home, about 10 miles offshore from New Britain, we picked up three large radar pips and figured they were enemy destroyers, because they were in enemy waters and we were authorized to destroy anything in this grid sector. We chased within one mile, tracking them with radar, and got set to make our run. We could see them by eye at that range and identified them as a destroyer and two large landing craft.
We radioed for airplanes to help us with this valuable prize. Just as we started our torpedo run from about 500 yards away, the destroyer shot a recognition flare and identified themselves as friendly. It was a close call. We were within seconds of firing our fish. The task unit was off course and had wandered into a forbidden zone.
June 23, 1944: PTs 144 (The Southern Cross) and 189 departed Aitape Base, New Guinea, for patrol to the west.
We closed the beach at Sowam after noticing lots of lights moving. They appeared to be trucks, moving very slow. Muffled down, hidden by a black, moonless night, we sneaked to within 150 yards off the beach and waited for a truck to come around the bend and onto the short stretch of road that ran along the beach. Here came one, lights blazing. Both boats blasted away. The truck burst into flames and stopped, lights still burning. The last we saw of the truck (shore batteries fired on us immediately, so we got out) it was still standing there with headlights burning and flames leaping up in the New Guinea night. It has become quite a sport, by the way, shooting enemy trucks moving along the beach with lights on. The Japs never seem to learn. We fire at them night after night. They turn off the lights briefly, then they turn them back on again when they think we have gone. But we haven’t gone. We shoot them up some more, and they turn off the lights again. And so on all night long.
The Japanese apparently smarted under these truck-busting attacks, for Lieut. Cunningham’s entry three nights later tells a different story:
June 26, 1944: PTs 144 and 149 left Aitape Base, New Guinea, to patrol toward Sowam Village, where the road comes down to the beach. We were after trucks. We closed cautiously to three-quarters of a mile off the beach, then it seemed that everything opened up on us, 50 and 30 calibers, 40 mms and three-inchers. At the time they fired on us we were dead in the water, with all three engines in neutral. To get the engines into gear, the drill is to signal the engine room where the motor mack of the watch puts the engine in gear by hand. There is no way to do it from the cockpit. Then, when the gears are engaged, the skipper can control the speed by three throttles.
I was at the helm in the cockpit when the batteries opened fire, and I shoved all three throttles wide open, forgetting that the gears weren’t engaged. Of course, the boat almost shook apart from the wildly racing engines, but we didn’t move. The motor mack in the engine room below wrestled against me to push the throttles back. He was stronger than I was and finally got the engines slowed down enough to put them into gear. Then we got moving fast. We made it out to sea OK without being hit, but I sure pulled a boo boo that time.
August 28, 1944: PTs 188 and 144 west toward Hollandia, with a squad of Army radio-men aboard to contact a land patrol. This is enemy-held territory and the patrol was in hopes of taking a few prisoners.
Just after sunrise we received a radio message to pick up Jap prisoners at Ulau Mission. We proceeded to the mission and I asked some P 39s that were strafing the beach to cover us while we made the landing.
Lieut. (jg) Harry Suttenfield, skipper of the 188, and I launched a life raft and headed in to pick up prisoners from the Army patrol.
We made it OK until we got into the surf, then the breakers swamped us. There were many dead Japs lying around, and the soldiers were burning the village. The natives took the prisoners out to the boats and then swam us through the surf, pushing the raft.
We turned the prisoners over to the Army at Aitape.