I assume this is under the proper heading of War in the Pacific, as I have looked on line and could not find the answer, could one of you old “salts” please tell me what the two “things” that I have drawn the two arrows to indicating, are used for on a PT Boat? (the six on the stern and that device about three quarters back on the deck.
Those are not simply holes in the stern. They are mufflers that allow the PT-Boat to approach almost silently, while at slow speed. The bars are not for loaders to hang on to or climb on,,,They prevent the barrel of the 40mm from being swung towards the superstructure, torpedoes, and other topside areas that you would not want to ventilate with 40mm gunfire.
Somebody lied to you. That would be me. A PT boat veteran said the "don't shoot the skipper" was secondary to "don't fall off the boat".
Ok, what are the instances of enemy warships / merchantmen sunk or torpedoes by PT boats? I recall one case in the English Channel ports by hit-and-run German Schnellboot attacks but that was it. I also recall a lot of PT boat bases in the Med. Maybe hunting was a little better there.
I couldn’t find anything pertaining to U.S. Navy pt boats and according to this article there were none. The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia: Motor Torpedo Boats (PT) Then there is this one: The Truth About Devil Boats PT Boats Galore: How These Venerable Small Ships Helped Defeat Imperial Japan
How about that young wannabee politician from New England, Dad used to be ambassador to England despite being fervently Irish? I heard his brother got killed in some secret project.
Takao is correct about the purpose of those safety bars. It will not do to blast one's own ship. There's some good books on MGB/MTB/SGB/PT boats and their development. Theodore Mason who served aboard the ocean going salvage tub Pawnee didn't think too highly of the PT boat skippers. The Pawnee was almost sunk by one.
Here ya go. Some light reading. It even has pictures ! HyperWar: At Close Quarters: PT Boats in the U.S. Navy
Happy happy New Year, LJ! I was on hyperwar looking for surrender details re: Okinawa. Is this Col. Yahara? Can you identify the American officers? Is Gen. Hodges there?
The Schnellboote incident you are thinking of may be Exercise Tiger, in which the Germans encountered a group of LSTs exercising in preparation for the Normandy invasion and sank IIRC two of them, with about 700 Allied fatalities. AFAIK the Germans were just sweeping along the coast, prepared to attack whatever they encountered rather than having specific knowledge of the operation. A couple of Schnellbooten had an exciting voyage at the time of the Italian surrender in 1943. Leaving Taranto they laid mimes which a few days later sank the minelaying cruiser Welshman which was carrying troops to occupy the port. Heading up the Adriatic they sank a couple of Italian ships including a troop transport, then ended up in Venice where they helped secure the port for the Axis. During Operation Pedestal, the famous convoy to Malta, two Italian MS boats sank the cruiser Manchester, IIRC the largest warship sunk by MTBs in WWII. MSs were similar to Schnellbooten and were adopted as being more seaworthy than the smaller MAS type. American PTs sank the light cruiser Abukuma during the battle of Surigao Strait, part of the battle of Leyte Gulf. Earlier, in 1942, they sank the large destroyer Terutsuki (Akizuki class) off Guadalcanal; she was serving as flagship for the famous destroyer admiral Tanaka Raizo. The biggest warship ever sunk by an MTB was the Austrian dreadnought Szent Istvan (~20,000 tons) in WWI, by an MAS commanded by Luigi Rizzo. This was Rizzo's second battleship; he had previously sunk the older battleship Wien at anchor in some harbor on the Adriatic coast.