Has History Been Fair to LTJG Kennedy & PT-109? | Channel Markers

On the night of 1-2 August 1943, in support of the New Georgia campaign, 15 PT boats pulled from 4 different Motor Torpedo Boat squadrons deployed to Blackett Strait in the Solomon Islands to intercept the notorious "Tokyo Express," the enemy destroyers used to reinforce Japanese army units, in this case on Kolombangara Island. When 4 Japanese destroyers did come on, they eluded both the destroyers and the PT boats meant to stop them. In a confused melee, the PT boats fired 32 out of 60 torpedoes, made no hits, and managed to lose PT 109 when it was rammed and sunk by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri at 0212 on 2 August. The skipper of the 109 was Lieutenant, junior grade, Jack Kennedy, 26, of Massachusetts, whose father Joseph P. Kennedy had recently served the US and President Roosevelt as Ambassador to Great Britain. Of Kennedy's crew of 13, 2 men died, but he and the other 10 were rescued nearly a week later. Kennedy was decorated for the rescue, but not his handling of PT 109 on the night of the collision. In 1944, an article about the crew's survival was written by the famed war journalist John Hersey. When Ambassador Kennedy arranged to have it condensed in Readers Digest, a war hero was made. Numerous controversies, a bit of scandal, and a major effort to control the narrative about his naval career is what happened when Jack Kennedy sought political office, which culminated in his election in 1960 as 35th President of the United States. The encounter between Amagiri and Kennedy's 109 is one of the best known and most scrutinized small-boat engagements in US naval history.
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For additional reading:
Joan and Clay Blair, Jr. The Search for J.F.K. NY: Berkley Publishing Corporation, distributed by G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1974. Although the Blairs produced the most authoritative account of JFK's naval career, their book remains out of print.
Robert Johns Bulkley. At Close Quarters: PT Boats in the United States Navy. WDC: Naval History Division, 1962.
LCDR Thomas J. Cutler, USN (Ret.). "Courage and Tenacity: JFK, USN," in Naval History (June 2022) and "JFK and PT-109: A Sailor's Assessment," in Naval History (August 2023). Tom Cutler of the US Naval Institute offers a sympathetic treatment of young JFK's closely scrutinized service in the South Pacific.
Robert J. Donovan. PT 109: John F. Kennedy in World War II. NY: McGraw Hill, 1961; fortieth anniversary edition, 2001. Jack Warner personally supervised the making of the film PT 109, which was reputedly based on Donovan's best-selling book; however, the studio was already developing a film when Donovan's book was published. President Kennedy personally approved casting actor Cliff Robertson, who turned 40 in 1963, as the 26-year-old JFK.
John Hersey. "Survival," in The New Yorker (17 June 1944) covers how the shipwrecked crew of PT 109 survived and was rescued. The Reader's Digest version, which Joe Kennedy arranged, made Jack Kennedy a war hero.
Dick Keresey. PT 105. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996; paperback reprint, 2003. The late Dick Keresey was a wonderful guy who never lost his PT skipper's swagger. His "105" was one of the 15 boats that went into Blackett Strait to intercept the Tokyo Express on the night of 1-2 August 1943. Its last chapter is entitled: "The Battle of Blackett Strait, or, the Night We Almost Lost JFK."
Image and video Sources: US National Archives; film clips: PT 109 (Warner Brothers, 1963). Note: in the 1963 film, the actor playing the helmsman onboard Amagiri is George Takei, who went to play Sulu, the helmsman in the starship Enterprise.
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