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 Author  Topic: PT-171: William Gill
Mike Montana

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of Mike Montana  Posted on: Dec 10, 2006 - 12:08pm
I found this write up at:
http://www.state.nj.us/military/museum/gill.html

Oral History Interview - William A. Gill

World War II oral history interview
Date: March 20, 2002
Veteran: William A. Gill
Chief Quartermaster, US Navy 1942 - 1945
Interviewer: Michelle Carrara
Summarizer: Ed Bimberg

William Gill was not yet out of high school when he joined the United States Navy in 1942. His first assignment was at the navy’s Quartermaster School, where for three months he studied his duties-to-be. These were mainly the keeping of shipboard charts and records and technicalities of radio communications, including learning the Morse code.

After Quartermaster school, Gill began training on Patrol Torpedo (PT) boats at the navy’s eastern PT base in Rhode Island. This training suited Gill just fine. He had recently married, and the Rhode Island base was closer to his home in New Jersey than was the navy’s only other PT base on the west coast. From there he went by way of the Brooklyn Navy Yard to Bayonne, New Jersey, where he was assigned for further training to an actual PT boat that patrolled the waters around New York, PT-166.

Eventually Gill and his fellow trainees were sent to a tiny island off the coast of Panama, where they awaited orders for transfer to the Pacific. When the orders arrived, the PT boats themselves, complete with crews, were loaded onto a tanker. After a thirty day cruise, made longer than it should have been in an effort to avoid submarines, the tanker was unloaded at Noumea, New Caledonia. The new arrivals began patrols shortly afterward in the waters around Guadalcanal, which by this time had been cleared of most of the enemy. Each PT boat had a crew of ten men and two officers. Gill was assigned as Quartermaster of PT-171, a duty he knew quite well by this time. Things were fairly quiet and the patrols were routine, but that was all to change soon enough.

The action had moved to the northern Solomon Islands, and the PT boats moved with it. PT-171 participated in the invasion of New Georgia, which still had a dangerous garrison of Japanese. While patrolling off the nearby island of Rendova, Gill saw his first action when his boat was bombed by enemy planes. From then on, the war for William Gill was a kaleidoscope of long, exhausting nocturnal patrols, interspersed with nerve-wracking hide-and-seek engagements with enemy planes and ships. In one of these encounters, Gill’s boat fired its torpedoes, but they both missed the target, a Japanese destroyer. It seems the torpedoes were defective and ancient relics, left over from World War I. In this and other fights during the same period, quite a bit of damage was done to PT-171, and some of her crew were wounded, but she managed to sail on. This was also the time and area of the disappearance of John F. Kennedy’s PT-109, and some of the boats of Gill’s squadron were involved in the ensuing search for its crew.

After New Georgia was conquered, the next target for the Americans was the much larger and more important island in the Solomon chain, Bougainville. In this battle, Gill’s PT-171, along with many other PT boats, was used as a landing craft to put ashore U. S. Marine Raiders who captured part of the island to establish American airfields.

During this period, there were some unfortunate occurrences, including a number of mistaken “friendly fire” incidents among U. S. vessels. Gill attributes these accidents to a lack of up-to-date communications and fire control equipment, suggesting that the Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) device of the modern era would have alleviated the situation. Gill’s boat actually shot down an American B-25 bomber, although further experience allowed valuable cooperation between the PT boats and the Navy’s PBY “flying boats.” On a more personal level, at about this time Gill suffered an illness, suspected to be malaria, and was sent to a naval dispensary on nearby Friendly Island. This hospital was under canvas and apparently manned only by medical corpsmen, not physicians or nurses, but Gill survived, recuperated and eventually returned to his boat.

In all, Gill spent sixteen months at sea in the Pacific before he was granted a thirty-day leave back to the US. Following his leave he was shipped out again, this time to the Mediterranean. Following brief stopovers in North Africa, he ended up on the island of Maddelena, located between Sardinia and Corsica, where there was a small naval establishment as well as an airfield. Here his principal duty was teaching young sailors what he had learned in the Pacific. Since he was stationed on an airfield with friendly pilots, Gill took the opportunity to visit interesting places like Marseilles, Rome and Pisa. The only thing he didn’t like about his new assignment was the relatively cold weather. He arrived on Maddelena in December, and after the gentle breezes and tropical weather of the South Pacific, he was annoyed to have to sleep under a blanket.

Gill returned to the US in June, 1945. He was on duty at the Brooklyn Navy yard when the war ended in the Pacific and was out of the service by the end of September. Looking back, he remembered that his unit had started out with twelve PT boats and ended with seven, and that some of his companions had not survived the war. He also recalled being afraid during combat, but realized that everyone else was as well. The long close friendship and interdependence between shipmates lessened the fear. The war changed everyone, he remembered, and people grew up in a hurry. After his discharge Gill completed high school and went on to Rutgers University on the GI Bill. Since that time he has kept in touch with a number of his wartime companions and has attended some PT boat reunions.

"Self doubt clips the wings of Hope"

http://www.PT171.org

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Marty Johnson

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message   Posted on: Dec 10, 2006 - 12:26pm
Thanks for posting Gill's story and the link. Could there be more such stories in there?

Marty

Marty Johnson
2nd Generation
PT 168 RON 10
In Memory of LT(JG) Martin A. Johnson

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earl

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of earl  Posted on: Dec 10, 2006 - 1:55pm
THANK YOU MIKE FOR POSTING THIS ARTICLE.ALSO THANKS TO WM GILL AND HIS FAMILY FOR KEEPING SUCH AN ACCURATE RECORD.I AM SURE THERE ARE MANY MORE STORIES OUT THERE.THESE ARE JUST A BEGINNING.THERE ARE NOT MANY OF US LEFT NOW AND MAYBE THIS MIGHT BE A WAY TO RECORD EVENTS BEFORE OUR MEMORIES OF THEM ARE LOST FOREVER. THIS MAY BE ONE WAY TO KEEP THE INTEREST GOING FOR THOSE THAT ARE FAMILY AND FRIENDS.THIS SITE MAY JUST BE THE RIGHT THING TO DO IT. THANKS.ALSO SOME OF US "OLD" PT BOATERS LIKE TO KEEP THE MEMORIES IN OUR HEADS AND HEARTS AS LONG AS WE CAN. EARL PT 108 RON 5

earl richmond

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