Wartime torpedo boat that launched the JFK legend found near Solomon Islands
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Your support makes all the difference.The Second World War patrol boat commanded by the former US president John F Kennedy, which was cut in two by a Japanese destroyer and from which the young lieutenant saved most of his crew by leading them in a 15-hour swim to safety, has been discovered in the Pacific Ocean.
The remains of torpedo boat PT-109 have been located off the Solomon Islands by a team led by Robert Ballard, the underwater explorer who discovered the wreck of the Titanic. Mr Ballard declined to provide full details of the discovery to local media, saying he had contractual obligations with a forthcoming television documentary.
The story of the future president and PT-109 has – as with many stories relating to JFK – entered the realms of legend. In 1943, Kennedy was commanding the 25m (80ft) wooden torpedo boat when it was struck and cut in half by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri.
Two of Kennedy's crew were killed but he and 10 other survivors swam for 15 hours to reach a nearby island. Kennedy towed one badly burned survivor, engineer Patrick Henry, by swimming with a strap from his life-jacket in his teeth. They later swam to a second island where they found coconuts to eat and Kennedy carved a message into one coconut and gave it to a native islander to take to rescuers.
Kennedy's heroics helped in no small measure when he ran for the presidency. "Any man who may be asked in this century what he did to make his life worthwhile, I think can respond with a good deal of pride and satisfaction," he wrote in 1963. "I served in the United States Navy." Just how much of the wooden vessel remains intact is unclear. Some reports said there may be little more than the 12-cylinder petrol engines. Water is expected to have damaged the hull, believed to have been made of mahogany. Plywood was used for the internal structures and gun turrets.
Mr Ballard told the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation that he located the remains of PT-109 on the seabed in the Blanket Strait near Gizo in the New Georgia group of islands after searching for about a week. Gizo is about 235 miles north-west of the capital of the Solomons, Honiara. A worker at the Gizo hotel where Mr Ballard had been staying said the explorer had left the Solomons.
Boats such as PT-109 were used primarily to attack surface ships but they also were used to lay mines and smoke screens, to rescue downed aviators and to gather intelligence for Allied forces.
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