Amagiri Rams and Sinks PT-109, Kennedy Saves Crew
PT boat
What was Amagiri Rams and Sinks PT-109, Kennedy Saves Crew?
PT-109 was an 80-foot (24 m) Elco PT boat (patrol torpedo boat) last commanded by Lieutenant (junior grade) John F. Kennedy, future United States president, in the Solomon Islands campaign of the Pacific theater during World War II. Kennedy's actions in saving his surviving crew after PT-109 was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer earned him several commendations and made him a war hero. Back problems stemming from the incident required months of hospitalization at Chelsea Naval Hospital and plagued him the rest of his life. Kennedy's postwar campaigns for elected office often referred to his service on PT-109.
How the event took shape
PT-109 began as a British design before it ever reached the Pacific. Hubert Scott-Paine of the British Power Boat Company had developed planing hulled fast motor boats in the United Kingdom, and he brought a 70 foot design to the Elco company in the United States in 1939, amid a wartime shortage of suitable engines back home. Elco enlarged that licensed design and eventually produced its own 80 foot Patrol, Torpedo boat for the U.S. Navy. PT-109 itself, the seventh boat of the PT-103 class, had her keel laid on March 4, 1942, in Bayonne, New Jersey, and was delivered to the Navy that July, powered by three Packard engines rated at 1,500 horsepower apiece and capable of 41 knots.