The next day a search plane found the body of a sailor from the 509, and ten days later a bullet-riddled section of the hull was found floating in the Channel. It was not until after the war that the fate of the 509 was learned from the sole survivor, a liberated prisoner of war named John L. Page, RdM3c. Here is his story:
“After firing one torpedo by radar, the 509 circled and came in for a gunnery run. I was in the charthouse on the radar. Lieut. (jg) John K. Pavlis was at the wheel. I remember we were moving fast and got pretty close before receiving return fire. When it came it was heavy and accurate.
“One shell burst in the charthouse, knocking me out. When I came to, I was trying to beat out flames with my hands. I was wounded and the boat was on fire, but I pulled the detonator switch to destroy the radar and then crawled on deck.
“The bow of our boat was hung up on the side of a 180-foot minesweeper. From the deck of the enemy sweeper, Germans were pouring in small-arms fire and grenades. Everything aft of the cockpit was burning. I struggled forward through the bullets and bursting grenades to the bow—I have no idea how long that journey took—and the Germans tossed me a line. I had just enough strength to take it and they hauled me aboard.”
The Germans stretched Page out on the deck and attacked the PT’s carcass with crowbars, frantically trying to pry themselves loose from its clutches. Just as the PT broke loose, it exploded with a tremendous roar.
“I couldn’t see it,” says Page, “but I felt the heat and the blast.”
Free of the PT, the minesweeper ran for the shelter of home base at St. Helier. The Germans carried Page back to the crew’s quarters to tend his wounds. He had a broken right arm and leg, thirty-seven bullet and shrapnel holes in his body, and a large-caliber slug in his lungs. While they were working on him they were carrying in their own dead and wounded.
“I managed to count the dead. There were fifteen of them and a good number of wounded. It’s difficult to estimate how many, because they kept milling around. I guess I conked out for a while. The first thing I remember is a first-aid man putting a pack on my back and arm. Then I could hear the noise of the ship docking.
“After they removed their dead and wounded, they took me ashore at St. Helier. They laid me out on the dock for quite a while, and a couple of civilians—I found out later they were Gestapo agents—tried to question me, but they saw I was badly shot up, so they didn’t try to question me further.”
Page was taken to a former English hospital at St. Helier, where skillful German surgeons performed many operations—he couldn’t remember how many—to remove dozens of bullets and fragments from every part of his body. The final operation was on December 27, 1944.