To make room for the gun, they removed the PT 109’s life raft.
The crew of the PT 109 was operating on the very edge of the front line of the Pacific War. From atop nearby Rendova Peak, one could easily see the series of Japanese-controlled or contested islands of the New Georgia group of the Solomon Islands, some of which held thousands of enemy troops. To the north and west was a fifty-mile network of Japanese-occupied jungle islands including the imposing Kolombangara, home to its 6,000-foot-high volcano and a Japanese garrison of thousands of soldiers.
Just five and a half miles north across a narrow channel from Rendova was Munda Point, where a Japanese airfield was under constant American bombardment from U.S. air and naval forces, and from Rendova’s long-range heavy 155 mm artillery guns. On Munda Island, the U.S. 43rd Infantry Division and 9th Marine Battalion were locked in a fierce stalemate with Japanese forces.
The PT base at Rendova was described by one sailor as a “lousy place” composed of “tents with water-filled slit trenches just outside the door.” It also was well inside the range of Japanese warplanes. Some twenty PT boats based at Rendova Island were moored close to shore in groups of two or three, ready to scatter in case of Japanese attack from the air.
PT boats docked at Rendova. (navsource.org)
In the midafternoon of August 1, as Kennedy and his crew pondered the problem of the antitank gun and waited for the carpenters, a Rendova radio operator decoded an urgent message from Admiral Theodore Wilkinson, the amphibious commander in the region, and rushed it to PT base commander Thomas Warfield in his tent. What Warfield couldn’t have known was that the message was the product of one of the war’s most closely held secrets: in mid-1942, Allied cryptologists had cracked a series of key Japanese naval codes, giving them advance warning of major enemy ship movements. By the time he finished the note, Warfield realized he was being ordered to orchestrate one of the largest mass PT boat attacks of World War II.
“Most secret indications,” the message read, were that the Tokyo Express Japanese naval supply convoy would run that evening, the night of August 1–2, evidently in a large operation to support the garrison on Kolombangara. The message ordered: “Warfield operate maximum number [of] Peter Tares [PT boats] in Area Baker,” which meant Blackett Strait, the stretch of water immediately west and south of Kolombangara. Additionally, it continued, Lieutenant Commander Robert Kelly, now stationed at the smaller Rice Station–Lever Harbor PT base on New Georgia, was to scramble all his available PT boats to Kula Gulf, as Admiral Arleigh Burke prepared to station no less than six of his destroyers north of Kolombangara by 12:30 A.M. on August 2 to strike the Express. The Express would hopefully be trapped at any one of three possible approach points.
Commander Warfield immediately grasped that a defining moment in his career was at hand. Even though his PT boats were a fallback force in case Admiral Burke’s destroyers and Lieutenant Commander Kelly’s PT boats missed the Express on the northern approaches to Kolombangara, Warfield knew that if his torpedo boats could stop or sink the ships of the Tokyo Express south of the island, the victory would be a major feather in his cap. He quickly formulated a plan to attack the Express, which he would unveil at his late afternoon planning briefing with his boat commanders.
Inside his command tent, Warfield read aloud the message’s ominous warning, “Jap air[craft] out to get Peter Tares [PTs].”
The radioman assured him, “We’re on Condition Red, sir.” This increased level of alert meant the enemy was in the vicinity or imminently expected, and boat crews were positioned on or near their vessels, prepared to scatter. “When they declared Condition Red,” according to PT skipper William Liebenow, “we hit the boats and got ready to go.”
Soon after, as if on cue, air raid sirens blared, and a voice cried, “Dive bombers!”
At least eighteen Japanese fighter planes suddenly appeared over the base from behind the protective cover of Rendova Peak, their machine guns blazing, swooping so low one American sailor remembered seeing an enemy pilot’s “droopy Charlie Chan mustache.”
Officers and enlisted men scrambled out of tents and dove into foxholes for cover as antiaircraft blasts peppered the sky, along with machine-gun fire from the berthed PT boats. John Kennedy, who was visiting one of the officer’s tents, jumped into a foxhole, and then rushed off to be with the PT 109, which was moored nearby.
On the PT 109, crewman Pappy McMahon froze at the sight of one Japanese plane bearing directly toward him, its bomb clearly visible under its wing. A thought gripped his mind: “If I don’t keep watching it, I’ll be hit.” With the help of Andrew Kirksey, Charles Harris pushed an ammunition drum into the PT 109’s 20 mm antiaircraft gun and fired upon an enemy plane, while Harold Marney jumped into one of the boat’s twin .50-caliber machine gun turrets and opened fire. Geysers of water erupted in the harbor as Japanese bombs and torpedoes fell.
“Cast off!” shouted Kennedy from the PT 109’s cockpit. He steered the craft through a scene of pandemonium. The other undamaged PT boats dashed out of the harbor while firing at the enemy planes, while overboard crewmen splashed in the water amid floating debris and drifting columns of smoke. A Japanese dive bomber crashed and exploded in a PT boat nest, detonating the PT 164 and killing two of its crewmen. The impact blew two torpedoes off the 164, which careened around the harbor before beaching themselves without exploding. The PT 117 was also destroyed, though its crew survived.
Minutes later the all-clear siren sounded. It was a “one-pass” raid—a Japanese tactic that reduced their exposure to antiaircraft fire but also minimized the damage they themselves could inflict. Warfield correctly figured the raid was an attempt to weaken the American PT force in advance of the Express convoy predicted for that evening. He also accurately estimated the convoy’s destination to be the Japanese outpost at Vila Plantation, on southern Kolombangara.
“It looks as if the Japs mean business this time,” declared Commander Warfield as he listened to battle damage reports from his skippers, who were crowded around chairs and on the floor in Warfield’s command tent.
Among the PT boat commanders gathered into the meeting along with Kennedy was Lieutenant (jg) William F. “Bud” Liebenow Jr., the youngest of the group at twenty-three years old. He was an athletic and highly respected Virginia-born skipper who had proved himself to be an aggressive, skilled commander in operations with Kelly’s Squadron 9 the previous month. For the past five days he had been John Kennedy’s bunkmate, along with Ensign William Battle, in the field tent they shared while their crews slept on the torpedo boats. Liebenow was pleased to see Kennedy at the base, as he remembered him fondly from the PT training facilities at Melville, Rhode Island. “He was a friendly, capable PT boat officer,” recalled Liebenow more than seventy years later. “I didn’t even know he was an ambassador’s son, that just didn’t register with me at the time.” Like Kennedy, he was attracted to the PT boat service because it gave him a chance at commanding his own boat much earlier than would be the case in the regular Navy.
“This is going to be a real big night,” announced Warfield, who then read Admiral Wilkinson’s message. Warfield stressed that the Japanese convoy would come down through Vella Gulf and then go back up, offering the PT boats two chances to attack it. It would soon become an especially dark, moonless night with heavy cloud cover, which would increase the difficulty of spotting the fast-moving Japanese warships hugging the blacked-out silhouettes of the Solomon Islands.
JFK’s tent mate William “Bud” Liebenow (center) with PT boat colleagues, 1943. (William F. Liebenow)
On August 1, 1943, Lt. Commander Thomas Warfield (pictured here with his officers in 1944) was given three hours to plan one of the biggest mass-torpedo-boat attacks of World War II. The resulting Battle of Blackett Straight was, according to one participant, “the most fouled-up PT operation in history.” (National Archives)
“We’ve got to use everything we have,” announced Warfield to the skippers. �
�How many boats are in condition?” Fifteen vessels were seaworthy, came the answer. Only four of them had primitive radar equipment. Warfield then announced a rudimentary plan of action, which assigned the boats into four groups that would lie in ambush along a southeast line through Blackett Strait, poised to strike the destroyers of Tokyo Express in the event Admiral Arleigh Burke’s destroyers failed to stop the convoy.
Warfield assigned Kennedy’s PT 109 and Liebenow’s PT 157 to a four-boat group, or “division,” led by PT 159’s combat-seasoned, twenty-six-year-old Lieutenant Henry “Hank” Brantingham, who also was deputized field commander of the entire operation. Brantingham was a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and former executive officer of Lieutenant Commander Kelly’s Squadron 9; he had served with Commander John Bulkeley in the Philippines and joined in the famous operation to smuggle General Douglas MacArthur and his family to safety. The fourth boat in Kennedy’s assigned group was the PT 162, commanded by Lieutenant (jg) John Lowrey, who, like Kennedy and several other skippers going out that night, did not have much combat experience.
These four PT boats—109, 157, 159, and 162—formed “Division B” of Warfield’s plan. They would occupy the northwesternmost patrol region, in Vella Gulf off a point on the west coast of Kolombangara called Vanga Vanga.
Next in the southeast-running line, was Division A, was led by Warfield’s executive officer at the Rendova base, Lieutenant Arthur Henry Berndtson. It was assigned to patrol in Blackett Strait off the southwest coast of Kolombangara across from a village named Gatere. Berndtson, another Naval Academy graduate, would be stationed in the PT 171. His formation included Lieutenant (jg) Stuart Hamilton’s PT 172, Ensign Edward H. Kruse’s PT 163, and Lieutenant (jg) Philip A. Potter’s PT 169. Potter was another “green” skipper with little combat experience in the PT boats.
To the southeast of Berndtson’s group was Division R, a three-boat formation led by Lieutenant Russell Rome in PT 174, assigned to patrol east of Makuti Island in Blackett Strait. The final of the four units, designated Division C, was led by Lieutenant George E. Cookman of PT 107 and was assigned to patrol Ferguson Passage as a reserve formation to back up the first three divisions—and to protect Rendova in case the Tokyo Express was not a resupply convoy, but rather an assault force.
Commander Warfield revealed his plan to his officers. When a target appeared on radar, the division leader would attack, launch his torpedoes, and then get out of the way so the other boats in the formation could fire their torpedoes. Those boats were supposed to stay in close visual contact with the leader, and follow his movements.
“When the leading boat saw something and attacked, the other boats were to follow right along without further ado and no further conversation,” Brantingham later said. “That was the practice of our squadron.” After the leaders transmitted initial contact reports, radio communications between the boats and with Warfield’s command tent at Rendova would be held to an absolute minimum to avoid tipping off the Japanese to the size and position of the PT boat formations. The Japanese ships had radio direction equipment that could pinpoint the location of the PT boats.
According to witness Lieutenant William Liebenow, there was no discussion of contingency plans should a boat got lost, damaged, or sunk. Nor were they provided search-and-rescue procedures in case men were lost at sea. “We always got the feeling that PT boat crews were expendable,” recalled Liebenow in 2015. “If you got in trouble and could get yourself out of it, well, fine, but you were on your own.” Warfield’s brusque manner discouraged any discussion or input from his officers. They were expected to follow orders, period.
In theory, Warfield’s plan appeared logical, but in practice, it was a recipe for mass confusion. Beyond the stunning ineffectiveness of the Mark VIII torpedoes, the operation would be plagued by a series of problems and contradictions that essentially doomed it from the start. On a battle map, it may have looked to Warfield as if he was setting up a solid picket line of mutually reinforcing attack craft that would be well positioned to ambush the Tokyo Express. But in reality, with fifteen boats scattered in the ocean in the black of night, enjoined to maximum radio silence, most of them operating without radar, they would be acting largely independently as if in their own worlds, and from a very weak position given the disparity in firepower between them and a Japanese destroyer.
Further, neither Kennedy nor any of the other PT boat skippers had successfully performed such a complex, multi-boat torpedo attack before. And while many were by now experienced combat veterans, a number of the newer PT boat commanders, Kennedy included, were relatively untested in combat. Kennedy had never directly engaged a Japanese surface vessel before, other than firing at an apparently unmanned Japanese barge a few weeks earlier. Warfield himself was fairly “green” and had yet to distinguish himself in commanding PT boat attacks.
Additionally, for a combat force to function effectively in battle, unit commanders in the field need to operate from a common set of procedures. However, many of the fifteen boat commanders headed for Blackett Strait that night were recently mixed in from different squadrons, and were therefore not familiar with each other’s operational practices and habits when under fire. At least two skippers at Warfield’s briefing, William Liebenow of PT 157 and Richard Keresey of PT 105, did not clearly understand that Warfield’s “hit and run” plan apparently meant the four radar-equipped lead boats, after firing their torpedoes, would withdraw not only from the skirmish line but in fact all the way back to the Rendova base, inexplicably leaving their formations without radar coverage.
On top of this, after weeks of constant operations in much smaller groups, many of the PT boat crews were exhausted. Keresey, the PT 105’s experienced commander, recalled the crews being especially tired on this evening. “Most of us had been out almost every night for two weeks,” he explained. “On the majority of those nights we’d been in gun battles with enemy barges, bombed by enemy floatplanes, or had a couple of mix-ups with our own forces. Sleep came in two-hour stretches. During the day there were things to get done. Refueling from fifty-gallon drums was a long process when a good two thousand gallons were needed. We also had to work on the engines, torpedoes, guns, and radio, all of which needed cleaning and adjustments after a night of bouncing around.”
But the biggest problem by far was Warfield’s stubborn refusal to go out on patrol with his own boats, which meant he failed to grasp the simple fact that when it was pitch dark, the blacked-out PT boats could often not see each other. On this evening, his order that the boats stay in close visual contact with each other was unrealistic: without effective radio coordination, it would condemn the PT boats to a state of near-total confusion in enemy waters. Warfield had banned the use of radio unless it was a dire emergency. To make matters even worse, the ship-to-ship radios most of the boats used for interboat transmissions were often unreliable, as they frequently hit dead spots and drifted off signal.
With no debate, no clarifying questions, and no input from his skippers, Warfield ended the briefing. “Those of you who weren’t supposed to be going out tonight will have to get ready in a hurry,” he announced. “Better get to it.”
It was now late afternoon. As John Kennedy headed to the PT 109 to break the news of the operation to his crew, he had a chance encounter with Ensign George “Barney” Ross, another acquaintance of his from the PT training base at Melville, Rhode Island. Ross was a “man without a boat,” as he had been executive officer of the PT 166, which was accidentally sunk by friendly fire by American B-25s ten days earlier. Seeing Kennedy, Ross had an idea.
“Do you mind if I come along, Jack?” he asked.
“No, come on,” said Kennedy. “I’m short of men anyway.”
When they reached the PT 109, Kennedy, referring to the weapon lashed to the foredeck, asked, “Do you know anything about these 37 millimeters?”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t,” said Ross.
“Well, I don’t think any of us are too well
informed on it, either,” Kennedy responded. The two officers fiddled with the 37 mm gun and eventually managed to figure out how it worked.
In this way, Ross joined the crew of the PT 109 that evening as a guest passenger, to act as a forward lookout on the vessel, and as the gunner on a weapon he never fired before. The addition of Ross brought the total number of crew to an unlucky thirteen. At least one man on the PT 109 crew thought such an arrangement, and the unusual addition of a “visitor” on an operation, were bad omens.
“We’re going out tonight,” announced Kennedy to his crew. “Let’s get ready.” This provoked scattered groans, as the PT 109 had been scheduled to take the night off.
In the boat’s galley after dinner, Andrew Jackson Kirksey’s hands trembled so badly he had to place his coffee cup on the table to sip from it. The persistent premonition of death he had felt for days was intensifying. He had as much courage and skill as any other sailor, but he could not shake the feeling of imminent doom.
“Will you take care of my things?” Kirksey asked fellow crewman Charles Harris.
“You’re nuts,” retorted Harris.
“I won’t be going home,” declared Kirksey.
Laughing, Harris repeated, “You’re nuts.”
Kennedy and several of the crewmen tried to talk Kirksey into not taking part in that night’s operation, assuring him no one would think differently about him. There would be no repercussions, they said.
Edman Mauer told Kirksey, “I think you ought to stay ashore tonight. No one will make anything of it. You’ll be okay in the morning.”
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