From: mcgrew@dropout.rutgers.edu (Charles Mcgrew)
Newsgroups: alt.war
Subject: Re: Greatest Military luck-outs of all time
Keywords: As a foil to the greatest blunders thread, how bout the times someone should have caught their lunch and didn't. My favorite:
Date: 15 Oct 92 04:36:29 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.


	frank@rover.uchicago.edu (Frank - Hardware Hacker - Borger) writes:
	Despite standing orders, JFK turns off his PT boat motors, then
	can't start the cranky things again and gets run over by a destroyer.
	Only his heroic rescue of wounded men saves him from a very probable
	court-martial, and the whole thing is glamorized by Hollywood.


... almost.  One of the three engines of the PT 109 was actually in
gear, but this did not provide enough power to avoid the Amagiri.  And
it wasn't Hollywood (per se) that glamorized it, it was Joe Senior,
the mover and shaker of Jack's entire life.  Some tidbits:

	* Jack claimed he tried to turn and attack the Amagiri, and
had only 10 seconds of warning; but visibility that night was,
according to one eyewitness, 1500-1800 yards.  

	* At least one other boat in the 3-ship picket force saw the
Amagiri (by its bow-wake), and radioed a warning to PT-109; but the
radio operator was not at his post -- he was up talking to Kennedy.
(Two crewmen were asleep, and two others away from their posts lying
down... a less than alert status.)

	* Certain of the Kennedy-friendly accounts afterward claimed
that Kennedy had no warning that Japanese destroyers were in the area.
But in fact PT-109 was part of a force of 15 PT's that engaged the
"Tokyo Express" destroyers (including the Amagiri) earlier that
evening (PT-109 withdrew from this action soon after it began), and
was part of a 3-ship picket force to intercept the destroyers on their
return trip.

	* PT-109 did not carry a life raft in the bow (which is why
the crew had to improvise one out of planking when they decided to
abandon the still-floating bow) because Kennedy had removed it to
emplace a 37mm gun, a violation of regulations.

	* JFK's famous "cocoanut shell note" had nothing to do with
rescuing himself and the crew.  The wreck of the PT-109 had been
spotted by an Australian coast watcher, Lt. Arthur Reginald Evans.  He
sent natives in canoes out to search for survivors, who found the
crew, minus Kennedy and Barney Ross (who were out exploring another
island in search of water -- Kennedy and Ross actually spotted the
natives, but both groups hid from each other, thinking the other were
Japanese.  The natives then paddled off and found the rest of the PT
crew).  The natives gave the crew food and water.  Lennie Thom (senior
in Kennedy's absence) gave the natives a note for Lt. Evans.  Kennedy
returned and gave the natives the now-famous cocoanut note (both were
taken to Evans.)  Evans used his radio to whistle up a PT-boat to
rescue the crew.  Wartime censors removed all mention of Evans (his
coastwatching perch was still secret) from accounts, leaving Jack the
only hero available.

	* Joe Sr. orchestrated a masterful publicity campaign for his 
second son -- articles by John Hershey (a friend of Jack's) in the New
Yorker; condensed into a Reader's Digest article at Joe's direction
(reprinted en masse in 1946 and 1952 for Jack's campaigns).  JFK
himself, commenting on the distortions of the PT-109 story (shortly
after the Bay of Pigs) to Robert Donovan, said "that whole story was
more f*cked up than Cuba."

Charles

PS - Source: "A Question of Character", by Thomas Reeves.