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[StartQuote] Here is the photo of PT103 in New York after LT Montgomery smashed her into the pier. As related to me from Jack Duncan.
This is an excerpt from Jack Duncans numerous tales where he mentions being a crew on PT103 and Montgomery ramming the boat into the dock. Idiots, more properly called “Base Force B******s,” kept us busy filling 55-gallon drums with sand to form a seawall for weeks while we awaited orders. Those orders finally were discovered awaiting us on Morotai and we were able to stop shoveling sand against the tide, rest our blistered palms and board a transport at Biak enroute home after more than 18 months without seeing an iota of civilization. The only women we had seen were an occasional member of the OCC. No capish? Officers’ Convenience Corps; sometimes known as Red Cross girls. And I always heard that Robert Montgomery slammed the side of the 3-boat into the dock at Bayonne – or so the original crew told me, proudly showing me where the rub strake had been replaced, while bragging about the movie star. Rather than a “shortage of torpedo tubes at Tulagi” when those would have been originally fitted-out in Bayonne, not in theater, the story I was told was when the boats were being chased by the fast Jap tincans around Savo Island (late 1942) that one boat dropped ashcans into its wake to discourage the Jap destroyer riding up that wake. I’ve long-forgotten the number of the anecdotal boat. Therefore, inasmuch as our Mk VIII torpedoes dated as far back as 1911 – my newest one was 1919 – sometimes/occasionally ran “straight, hot and true,” it’s more likely that the ashcans exchanged for tubes would have been anti-destroyer weapons. The timing and my guess would say so. Of course, many of the Melville training boats had depth charges in case they “tripped over” a U-Boat while training around Martha’s Vineyard and New London. For instance, when I asked for exchanging to the PT-62, we had a compartment immediately aft (???), or was it forward, of the turrets called the “Sound Room” from the days when the 77-footers were mistakenly believed to be another version of submarine chaser. The bedlam and crescendo of three wheels spinning at 2500 rpm soon destroyed that concept of battleship officers. My only “action” at Tulagi was an air raid while my 103 was in drydock drying out her bottom to get it scraped and a new coat of Copperoid paint. I had joined the crew without a turn-over log as THE torpedoman; my predecessor having already left for Stateside. He remained an unknown, the original crew never told me about him, nor was he ever mentioned. Enigmatic for a barely 18-year-old kid responsible for 4 fish, 2 depth charges, an Elco smoke bottle and perpetually turned-to cleaning guns! Then, after we moved up Blanche Channel to Rendova, the Base Force removed my accursed tubes and old Mark 8s, replacing them with side-launching racks and Mark 13s that I’d never seen even though I had been promoted to Torpedoman Third Class before my 18th birthday! You may now turn off the old 78 rpm record of “Memories.” You young whipper-snapper aficionados know more about obtuse details of the boats than we who crewed ‘em ever did. I had never seen these photos of the “3-boat” as we called her. Naming the boats came much later in the war as we added guns and crew, while wandering into new waters and I became a 19-year-old TM2/c! Changed my rating to Gunner’s Mate after graduation from UDT School in Florida and stayed second class until after the Korean War opened up promotions – 9 years an “E-5,” as it finally became designated long after the war ended." This is the end of the excerpt from Jack. Jerry Gilmartin PT658 Crewman Portland OR[EndQuote]
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