“This strafing was maintained at an almost unbelievable intensity during the entire time the boats were in the vicinity of the downed pilot. This was the ultimate factor in the success of the mission,” reads Lieut. Preston’s report, which makes no mention of another factor—the incredible tenaciousness of the two PT crews.
The first smoke screen was beginning to thin dangerously when the 363 hove to beyond the lugger and raked the beach with its guns.
The 489 went alongside the lugger.
“Immediately and on their own initiative, Lieut. D. F. Seaman and C. D. Day, MoMM1c, dove overboard and towed the pilot in his boat to the stern of 489. The pilot was in no condition to do this for himself and appeared to be only partly conscious of his circumstances and surroundings,” wrote Preston. The rescue took ten minutes.
The PTs were not through fighting yet. Lieut. Heston remembered that the primary mission of PTs in those waters was destruction of Japanese coastal shipping, so he ordered the two PTs to put a few holes in the lugger and set it afire before leaving.
The fighter cover ran low on fuel, and there was a near-disastrous breakdown in the shuttle timetable.
Preston reports what happened:
“While we were hove-to picking up Thompson there was a group of planes giving us the closest possible cover and support. As we left the scene the planes did not remain quite as close to us as they had previously.... It was shortly after this that we learned that the fighters were critically low on fuel and some of them out of ammunition. Nevertheless, they were still answering our calls to quiet one gun or another, sometimes having to dive on the gun positions without firing, because their own magazines were empty.... They were magnificent.”
The PTs zigzagged across the minefield with heavy shells bursting within ten yards on all sides. When they finally broke into the open sea and roared away from the enemy beach, Ensign Thompson had been in the water for seven hours, the PTs had been under continuous close-range fire from weapons of all calibers for two and one-half hours. The boats were peppered with shrapnel, but, miraculously, none of the PT sailors had been scratched.
Dr. Eben Stoddard had a job, though, trying to save the pilot’s left hand, which was so badly mangled by shrapnel that three fingers dangled loosely.