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[StartQuote] Hi Al, I have the hand typed Squadron history of RON16 by CCS Al Piotter that was donated to STPTB Inc by his widow a few years ago. At the end of the book is attached an 11 page cursive manuscript from Don Shallow of Santa Barbara. In his MS he describes how he and one other PT crewman from RON16 PT223, Chet Bell were at Melville and were recruited by a CPO who worked for Wild Bill Donovan, head of the OSS. They volunteered and were taken to be trained as Naval Observers in the Special Weapons Division Covert Operations. for a secret project code named JAVAMAN. They were taken to a secret base in St Petersburg FLA. They were trained as crewmen on B17 and B29 bombers, qualified to operate all gun turrets, and then high altitude pressurized oxygen training, crash landing procedures etc, Next came training for operating LORAN navigation equipment and also in operating television equipment. He said it felt very much like Buck Rogers. They soon started training to operate by a remote control joystick located inside of a bomber at 30 to 35,000 feet altitiude either a Crash Rescue boat, a PT Boat, or a tugboat disguised to look like a local craft. The tugboat was to be used in Europe and the PT and Crash boat for the Pacific. They would start the boat running and then transfer to another craft which took them to a nearby airfield. They could change engine speed and course of the vessel completely by remote control and observed it on the TV monitor inside the airplane. He said the rest of the boat was completely gutted, so he surmised that it must be for a lot of explosives. After the war had ended, he kind of figured the boat was being considered for a surface delivery of the atomic bomb. The final decision was not made to drop the bomb from an aircraft until late in the war, so they may have been keeping the options open. I dont know how many PT Boats he was working with, but it was at least one or two. I hope this is helpful. Jerry Jerry Gilmartin[EndQuote]
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