The surprise was over. From here on the whole Japanese task force would be alarmed and shooting back—but that big boy the PT sailors had been after was in the bag. The 38’s crew was sure of it. Searles had the good sense not to hang around the hornet’s nest he had stirred up. His torpedoes were gone anyhow, so he lit out for home, convinced that he had scored the first PT victory of the comeback trail.
The other PTs had scattered, looking for other targets in the dark. There were plenty of targets, for they had penetrated the destroyer screen, without either side knowing it, and were in the heart of the Japanese formation. After the blast from the 38’s torpedo attack on the cruiser, the PTs themselves were as much targets as they were hunters.
Lieut. Commander Montgomery, riding with John Searles on the 60, was stalking a big ship—possibly the same cruiser Bob Searles had already attacked—but the escorting destroyers were roiled up and rallying around.
A searchlight poked about the water, looking for the 60 which had probably been dimly spotted by a lookout. The searchlight never found the 60, but it did silhouette the PT for another destroyer. Japanese shells from the second destroyer screamed over the PT, but Montgomery held steadily to his attack course on the cruiser—or whatever it was—until two of the 60’s fish were off and running.
John Searles spun the rudder over hard left and shoved the throttles up to the stops. Smoke poured from the generator on the stern, to cover their escape, and so the crew of the 60 didn’t see the end of the torpedo run, but it claimed a hit, anyhow, from the sound of a massive explosion.
If it was a torpedo hit and if the hit was on the same cruiser Bob Searles said he hit, that cruiser was in sad shape. Not so the destroyers. They were full of fight and boring in on the 60.
Smoke makes a fine screen for covering escape, but only for a time. After the initial escape is successful, a continuing smoke cloud only marks the course of the fleeing PT boat, just as a tracer’s phosphorescent trail tracks a bullet through the night. So Montgomery shut off the smoke when he thought they were free, but he had waited a moment too long.
Just as the smoke-screen generator hissed to a halt, a destroyer pinned the 60 down in the blue glare of a searchlight and a salvo of Japanese shells, landing 20 feet astern, almost lifted the 60 out of the water.
The Japanese destroyer captain did not know it, probably still doesn’t know it if he is even alive, but when he turned his light on the 60, he simultaneously lost the chance to sink one PT boat by ramming and just possibly saved his own ship from being sunk by still another PT.
Robert Wark’s 48 was sneaking up on the destroyer in a torpedo attack on one side; Henry Taylor’s 46 was roaring across the water, looking for targets on the other side, quite unaware that the destroyer was in its path. When the searchlight glare hit the 60, Taylor saw the Japanese ship dead ahead and put the rudder of the 46 over hard. He barely missed a collision with the can, a collision that would have reduced his little warship to a floating carpet of matchsticks. But, in skimming by the destroyer, Taylor almost rammed Wark’s 48 and spoiled its torpedo attack. Wark lost contact with the destroyer in the wild careering around the sound that followed the double near-collision, and he didn’t get off his torpedoes.