PT109 The Movie

[lg325]

I always like watching this movie it is on now. For those who don,t know it about JFKs time in the navy commanding a PT boat.
A fellow by the name of Drawdy was part of his crew and from a well-known family in my hometown. So when the movie came to our town the theaters were packed.

He is secound from the left back row.

 

[jwoodie]

JFK was transferred to the South Pacific because he was screwing a Soviet spy in Hawaii. His father also saved him from a court martial after getting his PT boat sunk.

 

[Mikeoxenormous]

I always like watching this movie it is on now. For those who don,t know it about JFKs time in the navy commanding a PT boat.
A fellow by the name of Drawdy was part of his crew and from a well-known family in my hometown. So when the movie came to our town the theaters were packed. View attachment 678783He is secound from the left back row.

JFK was an idiot. A PT boat was way faster than a destroyer yet it got rammed by said destroyer.

 

[whitehall]

JFK's Boat was the only one to be run over by a Japanese ship in WW2. JFK faced a Court Martial but his father had connections and hired a novelist to rewrite the account and the Navy backed down.

 

[Flopper]

JFK's Boat was the only one to be run over by a Japanese ship in WW2. JFK faced a Court Martial but his father had connections and hired a novelist to rewrite the account and the Navy backed down.

He serve his country, in battle, and peace time and lost his life doing so. Where military service and fighting for your country was once seen as an important qualification for the presidency, that is not the case today. Donald Trump typifies the attitude of many when he said, “Why should I go to that (military) cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” I think many people today have the attitude that military service is for losers.

Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’

The president has repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members, and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades, multiple sources tell The Atlantic.

www.theatlantic.com

 

[Mikeoxenormous]

He serve his country, in battle, and peace time and lost his life doing so. Where military service and fighting for your country was once seen as an important qualification for the presidency, that is not the case today. Donald Trump typifies the attitude of many when he said, “Why should I go to that (military) cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” I think many people today have the attitude that military service is for losers.

Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’

The president has repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members, and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades, multiple sources tell The Atlantic.

www.theatlantic.com

Yeah, he lost his life, and made a bunch of Cuban's lose their lives in the "Bay of Pig" and got US involved in the Vietnam War when he put boots on the ground. JFK was also fucking around on his wife, which was why it was a Camelot story. In other words JFK was a typical Democrat.

 

[whitehall]

He serve his country, in battle, and peace time and lost his life doing so. Where military service and fighting for your country was once seen as an important qualification for the presidency, that is not the case today. Donald Trump typifies the attitude of many when he said, “Why should I go to that (military) cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” I think many people today have the attitude that military service is for losers.

Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’

The president has repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members, and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades, multiple sources tell The Atlantic.

www.theatlantic.com

Let's focus on the issue rather than being bogged down with politics like Trump's military school and Biden's asthma. Ample evidence indicates that JFK's boat was sitting idle in a shipping lane and the Japanese destroyer didn't even see it. It was the only loss of a PT Boat like this in the entire war. The Navy wanted to court martial JFK for negligence but old Joe had an ace up his sleeve and hired a novelist (maybe the same guy who ghost wrote JFK's best seller) to write a heroic account. You almost gotta gasp that the music industry issued a hit song and Hollywood created a puff piece all in about six months.

 

[Flopper]

Yeah, he lost his life, and made a bunch of Cuban's lose their lives in the "Bay of Pig" and got US involved in the Vietnam War when he put boots on the ground. JFK was also fucking around on his wife, which was why it was a Camelot story. In other words JFK was a typical Democrat.

I did not say or imply that he was a war hero just that he served his country both in war and peace.
Of the 14 president since WWII, Kennedy was only one of 5 that served in military in combat, Truman, Kennedy, Ford, H.W Bush, and G.W. Bush and the only won who fought and died for his country, not in Pacific but here on our on soil.


John F. Kennedy’s heroics during World War II earned him a Navy and Marine Corps Medal and a Purple Heart—he is the only U.S. president to have earned either of those honors. Kennedy’s political supporters made a big deal of JFK’s military honors, but when asked exactly how he became a war hero, Kennedy famously said, “It was involuntary. They sunk my boat.”

The Navy Disaster That Earned JFK Two Medals for Heroism | HISTORY

In a harrowing ordeal, JFK helped ensure the survival of his men, taking actions that would earn him a Navy and Marine Corps Medal and a Purple Heart in World War II.

www.history.com

 

[Mikeoxenormous]

I did not say or imply that he was a war hero just that he served his country both in war and peace.
Of the 14 president since WWII, Kennedy was only one of 5 that served in military in combat, Truman, Kennedy, Ford, H.W Bush, and G.W. Bush and the only won who fought and died for his country, not in Pacific but here on our on soil.


John F. Kennedy’s heroics during World War II earned him a Navy and Marine Corps Medal and a Purple Heart—he is the only U.S. president to have earned either of those honors. Kennedy’s political supporters made a big deal of JFK’s military honors, but when asked exactly how he became a war hero, Kennedy famously said, “It was involuntary. They sunk my boat.”

The Navy Disaster That Earned JFK Two Medals for Heroism | HISTORY

In a harrowing ordeal, JFK helped ensure the survival of his men, taking actions that would earn him a Navy and Marine Corps Medal and a Purple Heart in World War II.

www.history.com

Uhm George Bush 41 was a war hero..

LTJG George Bush in World War II

On that sunny morning of September, Bush woke aboard San Jacinto prepared to fly one of the 58 attack missions he would fly during the war.

Wrong again bucko...

 

[Mikeoxenormous]

I did not say or imply that he was a war hero just that he served his country both in war and peace.
Of the 14 president since WWII, Kennedy was only one of 5 that served in military in combat, Truman, Kennedy, Ford, H.W Bush, and G.W. Bush and the only won who fought and died for his country, not in Pacific but here on our on soil.


John F. Kennedy’s heroics during World War II earned him a Navy and Marine Corps Medal and a Purple Heart—he is the only U.S. president to have earned either of those honors. Kennedy’s political supporters made a big deal of JFK’s military honors, but when asked exactly how he became a war hero, Kennedy famously said, “It was involuntary. They sunk my boat.”

The Navy Disaster That Earned JFK Two Medals for Heroism | HISTORY

In a harrowing ordeal, JFK helped ensure the survival of his men, taking actions that would earn him a Navy and Marine Corps Medal and a Purple Heart in World War II.

www.history.com

Yeah, i watched the show, only an idiot would have his fastest boat on the water, sunk by a destroyer that rammed his PT. In the realm of the Democrat party, the more you fuck up, the more you move up.

 

[Flopper]

Yeah, i watched the show, only an idiot would have his fastest boat on the water, sunk by a destroyer that rammed his PT. In the realm of the Democrat party, the more you fuck up, the more you move up.

Didn't see the movie and I wasn't there.

 

[Stryder50]

Read the book, saw the movie. The story is one of the more fascinating and unusual out of the PTO~WWII. It was night time conditions and very little light, the destroyer was moving rather fast and spotted from a short distance.
Note that JFK was commended for keeping his crew together and exercising effective rescue of them.
EXCERPT:
...

Separation of the 109 from her division​

Lieutenant JG Kennedy, official naval photo, 1942

Lieutenant Brantingham on PT-159, leader of Kennedy's division, and originally stationed near Kennedy, first saw radar blips indicating the southbound destroyers just arriving on the scene, and fired his torpedoes from about 1 mile (1.6 km) away. As he advanced, he did not radio Kennedy's 109 to follow, leaving Kennedy and his crew behind in the darkness. All of Brantingham's torpedoes missed the destroyers, and his torpedo tubes caused a small fire, requiring Lieutenant Liebenow's PT, also in Kennedy's division, to swing in front of Brantingham's PT to block the light emitting from his burning torpedo tubes as they could have given away their location to the destroyers. Liebenow's 157 fired two more torpedoes that failed to hit their target as well, then both boats laid smoke from their smoke generator and zigzagged away to avoid detection. No signal of the destroyer's presence was ever radioed or received by Kennedy's 109, or the other boat in the division, and skippers Brantingham and Liebenow headed blindly west to Gizo Island and away from the destroyers and Kennedy's 109.[25]

Many of the torpedoes that were fired exploded prematurely or ran at the wrong depth. The odds that a Mark 8 torpedo that made it to a destroyer would explode was less than 50%, due to faulty calibration of the detonators, a problem that was not known nor corrected by the Navy until later in the war. A few other PTs, including the leader of Division A to the south of Kennedy, intercepted the destroyers on their southbound route close to Kolombangara, but were unable to hit any with torpedoes. The boats were radioed by Warfield to return when their torpedoes were expended, but the four boats with radar fired their torpedoes first and were ordered to return to base. Commander Warfield's concept of sending orders to the PTs in darkness by radio from 40 miles (64 km) away and without a view of the battle, was inefficient at best. The radar sets the four boats carried were relatively primitive, and sometimes malfunctioned. When the four boats with radar left the scene of the battle, the remaining boats, including PT-109, were deprived of the ability to determine the location or approach of the oncoming destroyers, and were not notified that other boats had already engaged the enemy.

Late in the night, Kennedy's 109 and two accompanying PTs became the last to sight the Japanese destroyers returning on their northern route to Rabaul, New Britain, New Guinea, after they had completed dropping their supplies and troops at 1:45 a.m. on the southern tip of Kolombangara.[26] The official Navy account of the incident listed radio communications as good, but PT commanders were also told to maintain radio silence until informed of enemy sightings, causing many commanders to turn off their radios or not closely monitor their radio traffic, including Kennedy.[27][28][29]

Collision with the Amagiri, 2 August​

Destroyer Amagiri in 1930

By 2 a.m. on 2 August 1943, as the battle neared its end, PT-109, PT-162, and PT-169 were ordered to continue patrolling the area on orders previously radioed from Commander Warfield.[30] The night was cloudy and moonless, and fog had set amidst the remaining PTs. Kennedy's boat was idling on one engine to avoid the detection of her phosphorescent wake by Japanese aircraft when the crew realized they were in the path of the Japanese destroyer Amagiri, which was heading north to Rabaul from Vila Plantation, Kolombangara, after offloading supplies and 902 soldiers.[31]

Contemporary accounts of the incident, particularly the work of Mark Doyle, do not often find Kennedy at fault for the collision. The lack of speed and maneuverability caused by the idling engines of the 109 put the ship at risk from passing destroyers, but Kennedy had not been warned by radio of destroyers in the area. Kennedy believed the firing he had heard was from shore batteries on Kolombangara, not destroyers, and that he could best avoid detection by enemy sea planes by idling his engines and reducing his wake.[27][32]

Kennedy said he attempted to turn PT-109 to fire a torpedo and have Ensign George "Barney" Ross fire their newly installed 37 mm anti-tank gun from the bow at the oncoming northbound destroyer Amagiri. Ross lifted a shell but did not have time to load it into the closed breech of the weapon that Kennedy hoped might deter the oncoming vessel.[33] Amagiri was traveling at a relatively high speed of between 23 and 40 knots (43 and 74 km/h; 26 and 46 mph) in order to reach harbor by dawn, when Allied air patrols were likely to appear.[34][35]

Kennedy and his crew had less than ten seconds to get the engines up to speed and evade the oncoming destroyer, which was advancing without running lights, but the PT boat was run down and severed between Kolombangara and Ghizo Island, near 8°3′S 156°56′E.[36] The 109 was struck on her starboard side at a 20-degree angle, shearing off a piece of the boat.[37] Conflicting statements have been made as to whether the destroyer captain had spotted and steered towards the 109 with the intention of ramming her, or tried to avoid her at the last minute. Most contemporary authors write that Amagiri's captain intentionally steered to collide with the 109. Amagiri's captain, Lieutenant Commander Kohei Hanami, later admitted it himself and also stated that the 109 was traveling at a steady pace in their direction.[38]
...

Patrol torpedo boat PT-109 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

JFK was transferred to the South Pacific because he was screwing a Soviet spy in Hawaii. His father also saved him from a court martial after getting his PT boat sunk.

Screwup Medals

Having to compete with Johnny's incompetent captaining, brother Joe crashed his bomber in France.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Uhm George Bush 41 was a war hero..

LTJG George Bush in World War II Wrong again bucko...

You Can Figure Out What He Was Then by What He Did Later

A war hero wouldn't have helped his sissyboy son weasel out of fighting the Communists. Therefore, Daddy Bush in World War Two was nothing more than a bored rich kid looking for a thrill. The same motivation Osama bin Laden had.

 

[Flopper]

Screwup Medals

Having to compete with Johnny's incompetent captaining, brother Joe crashed his bomber in France.

I think Joe's plane crashed NE of Ipswich. It exploded and crashed near a small lake killing Joe and the crew. He was awarded the Navy Cross for “extraordinary heroism and courage in aerial flight.”

The loss of his firstborn son was devastating to Joe Kennedy Sr. who had so much hope for the future of his beloved namesake. He therefore turned his attention to his next eldest son . JFK who had little interest in politics and certainly no asperations of being president. He said serval times that his brother Joe should be the one running for president.

As a child John Kennedy was a voracious reader and often sickly but pushed by his father he went out for various sports which resulted in a painful back injury that he never fully recovered from. He attempted to join the service in 1940 but was turned down because of his back injury. However, his dad pulled strings and the next year he was in the service.

If it hadn't been for Joe Sr., JFK would probably not have served during the war nor entered politics. His deep interest in literature, history, military history in particular and his 159 IQ plus his lack of interest in business seem to point to a career as a college professor or writer.

 

[Stryder50]

Screwup Medals

Having to compete with Johnny's incompetent captaining, brother Joe crashed his bomber in France.

I'd suggest you do research and get some facts before spouting verbal manure.
The aircraft Joe flew was essentially a flying bomb which detonated prematurely.
EXCERPT:
...

Born to fly​

Even though Joseph had goals of entering politics, he was too enticed by the siren call of aviation. After prematurely leaving Harvard Law School, he signed up to join the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1941. The following year, he began his basic training for naval aviation and accepted his wings. After being assigned to a number of patrol squadrons in the U.S., he was appointed to a bomber squadron in England in 1944. At that point, he had successfully finished 25 missions and had the opportunity to go back home. However, he had one last mission in mind: a voluntary one with Operation Aphrodite.

This classified mission involved an extensive bombing procedure in Normandy, France. Joseph’s job was to steer a drone filled with bombshells into a rocket missile site in Germany via remote control. He radioed his final words, the aerial code “Spade Flush.” Just a few minutes later, the drone’s bombs exploded early, killing Kennedy and his co-pilot Wilford John Willy. About the horrific incident, President Kennedy reflected, “It may be felt, perhaps, that Joe should not have pushed his luck so far and should have accepted his leave and come home.” But he continued, “he considered the odds at least fifty-fifty, and Joe never asked for any better odds than that.” Joseph was only 29 years old.
...

The incredible story of bomber pilot Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. | History 101

We all know President John F. Kennedy, but have you heard of his older bro Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.? That’s…

www.history101.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. - Wikipedia​

~~~~~~~~~~~~
EXCERPT:
...
On August 12, 1944, Kennedy and Lieutenant Wilford John Willy took off in a converted B-24 Liberator (the drone versions were designated BQ-8) from Royal Air Force Station Fersfield, near Norwich. Their target was a massive underground military complex called the Fortress of Mimoyecques that had the potential to launch devastating attacks directly at London. Several minutes short of the planned bail out, an electrical fault in the Liberator caused the Torpex to detonate. In a thunderous instant, the plane and both men flying it simply ceased to exist.

I'd like to tell you that Joseph Kennedy Jr. gave his life helping to develop an amazing superweapon that dealt a crushing blow to the Nazis and accelerated the end of the war in the European theater. Unfortunately, Operation: Aphrodite was a complete disaster. Of more than a dozen missions, only one plane caused damage to the intended target, and that was only because it happened to crash somewhat close to the target purely by chance. More American airmen were killed than Nazis, and more damage was done to the British countryside than to Germany.
...

The Secret Drone Mission that Killed Joseph Kennedy Jr.

In 1944, Joseph Kennedy Jr. (older brother of JFK) took off from a British airfield in a B-24 Liberator filled with 20,000 pounds of explosives. He'd

gizmodo.com

 

[Mikeoxenormous]

I'd suggest you do research and get some facts before spouting verbal manure.
The aircraft Joe flew was essentially a flying bomb which detonated prematurely.
EXCERPT:
...

Born to fly​

Even though Joseph had goals of entering politics, he was too enticed by the siren call of aviation. After prematurely leaving Harvard Law School, he signed up to join the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1941. The following year, he began his basic training for naval aviation and accepted his wings. After being assigned to a number of patrol squadrons in the U.S., he was appointed to a bomber squadron in England in 1944. At that point, he had successfully finished 25 missions and had the opportunity to go back home. However, he had one last mission in mind: a voluntary one with Operation Aphrodite.

This classified mission involved an extensive bombing procedure in Normandy, France. Joseph’s job was to steer a drone filled with bombshells into a rocket missile site in Germany via remote control. He radioed his final words, the aerial code “Spade Flush.” Just a few minutes later, the drone’s bombs exploded early, killing Kennedy and his co-pilot Wilford John Willy. About the horrific incident, President Kennedy reflected, “It may be felt, perhaps, that Joe should not have pushed his luck so far and should have accepted his leave and come home.” But he continued, “he considered the odds at least fifty-fifty, and Joe never asked for any better odds than that.” Joseph was only 29 years old.
...

The incredible story of bomber pilot Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. | History 101

We all know President John F. Kennedy, but have you heard of his older bro Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.? That’s…

www.history101.com

It was supposed to be the first unmanned drone that Joe Jr, had volunteered to fly. Seems that when Joe Sr made a pact with the Devil, the Devil got his dues......

The Dark Side Of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., The Patriarch Of The Kennedy Family

Joseph Kennedy may have been JFK's father and a powerful diplomat, but his anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathies cast a dark cloud over his story.

allthatsinteresting.com

 

[Stryder50]

Yeah, i watched the show, only an idiot would have his fastest boat on the water, sunk by a destroyer that rammed his PT. In the realm of the Democrat party, the more you fuck up, the more you move up.

I suggest you read post #12 and the link.

 

[Stryder50]

It was supposed to be the first unmanned drone that Joe Jr, had volunteered to fly. Seems that when Joe Sr made a pact with the Devil, the Devil got his dues......

The Dark Side Of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., The Patriarch Of The Kennedy Family

Joseph Kennedy may have been JFK's father and a powerful diplomat, but his anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathies cast a dark cloud over his story.

allthatsinteresting.com

Wrong again!
Try post #16 also.

Joe Jr. was flying mission #7.

Operation Aphrodite - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Mikeoxenormous]

Read the book, saw the movie. The story is one of the more fascinating and unusual out of the PTO~WWII. It was night time conditions and very little light, the destroyer was moving rather fast and spotted from a short distance.
Note that JFK was commended for keeping his crew together and exercising effective rescue of them.
EXCERPT:
...

Separation of the 109 from her division​

Lieutenant JG Kennedy, official naval photo, 1942

Lieutenant Brantingham on PT-159, leader of Kennedy's division, and originally stationed near Kennedy, first saw radar blips indicating the southbound destroyers just arriving on the scene, and fired his torpedoes from about 1 mile (1.6 km) away. As he advanced, he did not radio Kennedy's 109 to follow, leaving Kennedy and his crew behind in the darkness. All of Brantingham's torpedoes missed the destroyers, and his torpedo tubes caused a small fire, requiring Lieutenant Liebenow's PT, also in Kennedy's division, to swing in front of Brantingham's PT to block the light emitting from his burning torpedo tubes as they could have given away their location to the destroyers. Liebenow's 157 fired two more torpedoes that failed to hit their target as well, then both boats laid smoke from their smoke generator and zigzagged away to avoid detection. No signal of the destroyer's presence was ever radioed or received by Kennedy's 109, or the other boat in the division, and skippers Brantingham and Liebenow headed blindly west to Gizo Island and away from the destroyers and Kennedy's 109.[25]

Many of the torpedoes that were fired exploded prematurely or ran at the wrong depth. The odds that a Mark 8 torpedo that made it to a destroyer would explode was less than 50%, due to faulty calibration of the detonators, a problem that was not known nor corrected by the Navy until later in the war. A few other PTs, including the leader of Division A to the south of Kennedy, intercepted the destroyers on their southbound route close to Kolombangara, but were unable to hit any with torpedoes. The boats were radioed by Warfield to return when their torpedoes were expended, but the four boats with radar fired their torpedoes first and were ordered to return to base. Commander Warfield's concept of sending orders to the PTs in darkness by radio from 40 miles (64 km) away and without a view of the battle, was inefficient at best. The radar sets the four boats carried were relatively primitive, and sometimes malfunctioned. When the four boats with radar left the scene of the battle, the remaining boats, including PT-109, were deprived of the ability to determine the location or approach of the oncoming destroyers, and were not notified that other boats had already engaged the enemy.

Late in the night, Kennedy's 109 and two accompanying PTs became the last to sight the Japanese destroyers returning on their northern route to Rabaul, New Britain, New Guinea, after they had completed dropping their supplies and troops at 1:45 a.m. on the southern tip of Kolombangara.[26] The official Navy account of the incident listed radio communications as good, but PT commanders were also told to maintain radio silence until informed of enemy sightings, causing many commanders to turn off their radios or not closely monitor their radio traffic, including Kennedy.[27][28][29]

Collision with the Amagiri, 2 August​

Destroyer Amagiri in 1930

By 2 a.m. on 2 August 1943, as the battle neared its end, PT-109, PT-162, and PT-169 were ordered to continue patrolling the area on orders previously radioed from Commander Warfield.[30] The night was cloudy and moonless, and fog had set amidst the remaining PTs. Kennedy's boat was idling on one engine to avoid the detection of her phosphorescent wake by Japanese aircraft when the crew realized they were in the path of the Japanese destroyer Amagiri, which was heading north to Rabaul from Vila Plantation, Kolombangara, after offloading supplies and 902 soldiers.[31]

Contemporary accounts of the incident, particularly the work of Mark Doyle, do not often find Kennedy at fault for the collision. The lack of speed and maneuverability caused by the idling engines of the 109 put the ship at risk from passing destroyers, but Kennedy had not been warned by radio of destroyers in the area. Kennedy believed the firing he had heard was from shore batteries on Kolombangara, not destroyers, and that he could best avoid detection by enemy sea planes by idling his engines and reducing his wake.[27][32]

Kennedy said he attempted to turn PT-109 to fire a torpedo and have Ensign George "Barney" Ross fire their newly installed 37 mm anti-tank gun from the bow at the oncoming northbound destroyer Amagiri. Ross lifted a shell but did not have time to load it into the closed breech of the weapon that Kennedy hoped might deter the oncoming vessel.[33] Amagiri was traveling at a relatively high speed of between 23 and 40 knots (43 and 74 km/h; 26 and 46 mph) in order to reach harbor by dawn, when Allied air patrols were likely to appear.[34][35]

Kennedy and his crew had less than ten seconds to get the engines up to speed and evade the oncoming destroyer, which was advancing without running lights, but the PT boat was run down and severed between Kolombangara and Ghizo Island, near 8°3′S 156°56′E.[36] The 109 was struck on her starboard side at a 20-degree angle, shearing off a piece of the boat.[37] Conflicting statements have been made as to whether the destroyer captain had spotted and steered towards the 109 with the intention of ramming her, or tried to avoid her at the last minute. Most contemporary authors write that Amagiri's captain intentionally steered to collide with the 109. Amagiri's captain, Lieutenant Commander Kohei Hanami, later admitted it himself and also stated that the 109 was traveling at a steady pace in their direction.[38]
...

Patrol torpedo boat PT-109 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

do not often find Kennedy at fault for the collision.

No it was the reckless Japanese SUV that rammed into the PT109 speedboat.