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 Author  Topic: This PT 105 tale had me rolling...
newsnerd99

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message   Posted on: May 27, 2008 - 1:20am
I had read PT 105 - a copy was in with my grandfather's things and it is probably my favorite PT read. However, I don't remember this part of the book, which I found while going through PT links Gary Szot sent me (thanks again Gary!):

http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1998/4/1998_4_60.shtml

"I am convinced that her enthusiasm to depart saved me on one dreadful morning when a dawn raid on an enemy harbor turned catastrophic and she was fleeing for her life, and mine, under heavy shore-gun fire, so close that one shell kissed my helmet and another left a burn welt across my starboard turret gunner Willie Monk’s bare chest. I looked astern for a moment just as Miles, my chief motor mac, popped halfway out the engine-room hatch. Frankly, I thought he had decided to go over the side. Instead he waved at me and pointed his index finger down, meaning “look at the tachometers,” then pounded his chest like Tarzan and dropped back into his engine room. I looked at my tachs; they were wiggling between 2,900 and 3,000 rpm. Rated maximum was 2,400, which equaled 42 knots. She was doing 50 knots! For a moment I ignored the shell bursts and the answering chatter of our machine guns. I saw and heard only my 105 racing flat out, her engines screaming like demented tomcats, and she was beautiful."

Something about that image, of the MoMM popping out and pounding his chest in the middle of a getaway is absolutely hilarious to me! If it happened in a movie we'd roll our eyes and say "no way that'd happen!"

Grandson of James J Stanton
RON 15 PT 209 and RON 23 PT 243
Check out: www.pistolpackinmama.net

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Frank J Andruss Sr

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of Frank J Andruss Sr   Send Email To Frank J Andruss Sr Posted on: May 27, 2008 - 4:01am
Awesome read and a funny but scary story. As a side note here, its a wonder the Skipper even heard his Motor Mac over his topped out engines, let alone, looked behind him at night and saw him. Running for your life in the dark waters of the Pacific, while being chased by Japanese Destroyers certainly was no picnic. Sometimes what happened during those moments can be sketchy at best, and stories become larger then what they really were.........


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Frank J Andruss Sr

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of Frank J Andruss Sr   Send Email To Frank J Andruss Sr Posted on: May 27, 2008 - 4:04am
My mistake here, I should have read the post a little better before writing down my thoughts. The boat was traveling during the day, and the Skipper just happened to look behind him as the Motor Mac popped up. Sorry about that, although some stories do get a bit over zealous in their meaning..........


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Gary Szot

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of Gary Szot   Send Email To Gary Szot Posted on: May 27, 2008 - 9:53am
Dick Keresey really understood what the PT Boat was all about. In his book PT 105, he so eloquently describes the "Object of his Affection"

The object of my affection was eighty feet long and weighed fifty tons with a full warload. Her three 1,250-horsepower Packard V-12 engines plus tanks for three thousand gallons of aviation gasoline took up nearly half of her below decks. From a distance, traveling at full speed, she had a graceful, almost delicate profile, skimming along like a Gar Wood speedboat of the twenties—and little wonder, since she was a speedboat quadrupled in size, designed to plane across the top of the water rather than knife through it like other craft her size. Closer up, though, she looked squat and truculent. She looked like what she was: pound for pound the most heavily armed vessel in the United States Navy.




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  TED WALTHER

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of TED WALTHER   Send Email To TED WALTHER Posted on: May 27, 2008 - 2:56pm
Gary;
That is one of the most beautiful discriptions I have ever read, Just to read it makes the hair stand up on my neck.....I love it!!!!
Take care,
TED


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sparky51

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message   Posted on: May 27, 2008 - 3:31pm
Wow Gary, very well said. She is a racing hulled throughobred after all.

steve

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