PT 109 (2, August 1943)

 PT 109
By: Robert J. Donovan

Hagikaze on March 31, 1941.

    When the “Express” reached Vila around 12:30 A.M. the Hagikaze, Arashi and Shigure lay to in lower Blackett Strait a thousand yards from shore to unload.  The Amagiri, which in Japanese means “Heavenly Mist,” dropped off behind them to guard against any attack through the narrow neck of the strait between Kolombangara and Arundel Island.

    From Kolombangara dozens of barges and landing craft swarmed out around the three drifting destroyers like junks around freighters in Hong Kong harbor.  Sailors heaved cases of food and ammunition overboard onto their decks.  Soldiers swung down landing nets. 

Arashi underway in December 1940.

    The whole operation took place under the most intense pressure for haste.  With their engines dead the destroyers would be easy targets for enemy ships, planes or submarines.  Also, the sailors, looking ahead, wanted to get away as quickly as possible so as to be out of range of American fighter planes when daylight came.

    “Hurry, hurry!”  They kept exhorting the debarking troops.  The soldiers, stumbling about on dark stairs and decks, resented the abrupt treatment they were getting.  Why should they be in a vast hurry?  They weren’t going back to Rabaul.

Shigure in 1939

    In spite of the grumbling and confusion the unloading was carried off with dispatch in darkness broken only here and there by downward-pointed masked flashlights in the hands of petty officers.  On each of the three destroyers four parties of twenty-five sailors went to work on the stores of cargo.  These crews were stationed fore and aft on each side of the ships.  Barges lined up at these stations.  The sailors would toss along boxes and crates until a barge was full.  Then the loaded barge would pull out and another would move up in its place.

Amagiri in November 1930

    On the bridges of the destroyers were hooded signal lamps, with each ship’s lamp masked in a different, identifying color.  Less than an hour after their arrival the dim red lamp on the Hagikaze signaled: “Let’s go home.”  Nine hundred soldiers and more than seventy tons of supplies were already ashore or on their way to the shore in barges.

Kaju Sugiura, Captain, IJN

    The destroyers’ engines were started.  After allowing five minutes for warming them up, Captain Kaju Sugiure [Sugiura] in the flagship Hagikaze gave the signal to get under way.  Although there was every reason to suppose that PT boats would still be lurking up in Blackett Strait, the Japanese nevertheless preferred this route around the southern shore of Kolombangara to the risk of going out through Kula Gulf and meeting destroyers or cruisers.  They did not know that Captain Burke was waiting north of Kolombangara with six destroyers, but experience suggested as much.  To whatever extent Japanese sailors were harassed by PT boats, they preferred to deal with them than with the heavy guns of cruisers and destroyers.

Arleigh Burke in 1958

    The forty-five minutes or so that the other destroyers had spent at Vila were anxious ones for Commander Hanami on the covered bridge of the Amagiri.  Cruising back and forth across lower Blackett Strait, he was constantly worried that a PT boat, a destroyer or even a PBY would discover him.

    While the islands around him were held by his own troops, these narrow waters were treacherous for Japanese ships.  Anywhere he turned Commander Hanami knew that an American man-of-mar might be waiting.  Navigating in the dark was dangerous because of the reefs.  There was no adequate charts for this area of the Solomons.  Furthermore the Amigiri carried no radar.  To a degree this disadvantage was offset by a group of trained lookouts who searched the darkness through ten affixed, wide-angle night binoculars.

    It was with great relief that Commander Hanami finally received a signal from Captain Sugiure that the Hagikaze, Arashi and Shigure were starting back up the Kolombangara coast.  He immediately ordered the coxswain to head northwestward at increasing speed to rejoin them.

PT-109 in Panama, circa 1940

    Approximately in his path several miles distant was PT 109, with [Lt. (j.g.) John F.] Kennedy steering away from Kolombangara in a westerly direction toward Gizo, following PT 162 and PT 169.  Kennedy had no orders other than to patrol off Vanga Vanga and to look for whatever he could find.  His mission boiled down to a matter of guessing where in the impenetrable blackness he might find a target.

PT-162, Date/Location unknown

    Encountering no sign of enemy ships in the middle of Blackett Strait, Kennedy made a fateful decision.  He overtook Potter and Lowrey and suggested that the three boats reverse their direction.  He believed they would have a better chance of rejoining the missing boats if they returned to the vicinity in which they had all been scattered in the first place.  The other two skippers agreed.  The three boats turned around and with Kennedy now in the lead headed toward the southeast, the direction from which the Heavenly Mist was blowing at a speed of thirty knots.

Captain Yamashiro

    Commander Hanami strained forward from the starboard side of the Amagiri’s bridge, impatient for the broader passage of Vella Gulf.  Captain Yamashiro paced the port side.  Between them stood Lt. (jg) Hiroshi Hosaka, the torpedo officer, constantly checking the readiness of his own crews.  The wheel was in the hands of Coxswain Kazuto Doi.

    The ship was still on general quarters.  Lookouts hunched against the binoculars.  Lt. Nakajima, the medical officer, waited in his quarters behind the bridge.  Petty Officer 2/c Mitsuaki Sawada gazed out an open window in the forward gun turret, wondering whether they would make it back to Rabaul without trouble.  Lt. (jg) Shigeo Kanazawa, a gunnery officer, was poised on the cover of the bridge.

    Aboard PT 109 Ensign Ross was standing on the foredeck by the 37-millimeter gun.  Behind him was Kennedy at the wheel.  At the skipper’s right was Maguire and just beyond and above Maguire was Marney in the forward gun turret.  On the skipper’s left, outside the cockpit, was Ensign Thom, lying on the deck.  Standing behind the cockpit was Mauer.  Aware that Kennedy still hoped to meet some of the other dispersed PT boats that must be wandering about the strait, Mauer was peering through the night for a familiar form.

Crew of PT-109, Date unknown

    Albert was on watch amidships.  Harris, off duty, was sleeping on the deck between the day-room canopy and a starboard torpedo tube.  He had removed his kapok jacket and was using it as a pillow.  McMahon was on watch in the engine room.  Johnston was dozing on the starboard side of the deck near the engine-room hatch.  Zinser was standing close by.  Starkey was the lookout in the after gun turret.  Kirksey, off duty, was lying aft on the starboard side.

    The boat was moving so quietly that Ross, scanning the dark, could barely hear the idling engine above the soft sound of the breeze and the splash of water against the bow.  He had the sensation of gliding in a sailboat, and was gratified that we were in deep enough water that we would not have to worry about reefs for a while.

    “Ship ahead!”  a lookout shouted to Commander Hanami.

    “Look again,”  Hanami ordered.

    “Ship at two o’clock!”  Marney shouted to Kennedy from the gun turret.

    Kennedy glanced obliquely off his starboard bow.  Ross was already pointing to a shape suddenly sculptured out of the darkness behind a phosphorescent bow wave.  For a few unregainable moments Kennedy thought it was one of the scattered PT boats.  So did Mauer.  So also did some of the crews of PT 162 and PT 169, who sighted the Amagiri at about the same time or perhaps seconds earlier.  As the shape grew, Kennedy and Mauer quickly recognized that it was not a PT boat.  On PT 169 Potter called a warning on the radio, but it either was not received aboard 109 or else arrived too late.

    “Lenny,” Kennedy said in a matter-of-fact voice, “look at this.

    Ensign Thom stood up.

    What followed took place within the span of perhaps forty seconds or less.

    In the Amagiri’s forward gun turret Petty Officer Sawada received an order: “Fire!”  The destroyer was already so close to the smaller boat, however, that he could not depress the guns in time to aim.

    On the foredeck of PT 109 Ross frantically grabbed a shell and rammed it at the 37-millimeter.  It slammed against a closed breech.  He knew he would never have time to load.

    Commander Hanami, now recognizing the American vessel as a PT boat, decided that his best protection would be to ram.

    “Hard a-starboard,” he called.

    Coxswain Doi, informed that the object ahead was a PT, expected just such an order on the strength of what he had heard discussed about the best tactics in such a situation.  He turned the wheel about 10 degrees to starboard.

    To Ross the destroyer originally appeared to be traveling on a parallel course.  Now he distinctly saw the slender mast heel toward PT 109, indicating that the destroyer was turning in his direction.

    “Sound general quarters,” Kennedy told Maguire.

    Maguire turned around, took a couple of steps out of the cockpit and yelled, “General quarters!”

    “We’re on general quarters,” Albert said to Starkey.  Starkey’s battle station was the after starboard torpedo, so he climbed down from the port gun turret and started across the deck.

    Back in the cockpit, Maguire fingered a Miraculous Medal suspended from a chain around his neck.  Ross crouched under the bow gun.

    On the bridge of the Amagiri Lt. Hosaka considered ordering his torpedo crews to fire, then decided it would be useless.  PT 109 was too close.  Torpedoes would pass under her.

    Kennedy spun his wheel in an instinctive attempt to make a torpedo attack on the Amagiri.  The torpedoes, however, would not have exploded even if they had struck the destroyer, because they were not set to fire at such a short distance.  Moreover, PT 109, idling on a single engine, was moving so sluggishly that there was no chance to maneuver against the swiftness of the destroyer.

    Seeing what was coming, Maguire grasped his Miraculous Medal and had begun to say, “Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us . . .” when the steel prow of the Amagiri crashed at a sharp angle into the starboard side of PT 109 beside the cockpit.

    Harold Marney, the newcomer, the youth who was taking the wounded Kowal’s place in the forward turret, was crushed to death, probably at the moment of impact, and his body never found.

    The wheel was torn out of Kennedy’s grasp as he was hurled against the rear wall of the cockpit, his once-sprained back slamming against a steel reinforcing brace.  It was the angle of the collision alone that saved him from being crushed to death with Marney.  The destroyer, smashing through the gun turret, sliced diagonally behind the cockpit only several feet from the prostrate skipper.  Helplessly looking up, Kennedy could see the monstrous hull sweeping past him through his boat, splintering her and cleaving the fore part away from the starboard side of the stern.

    In the engine room McMahon had had no warning of danger.  He was standing among the engines, casually touching the manifolds to make sure they were not getting too hot and regulating the scoop controls, which fed sea water through the cooling system.  From time to time, as a means of getting optimum functioning, he would alternate the engine on which the boat was running.

    Something on one of the gauges caught his attention, and he was climbing over machinery to look at it when a tremendous jolt flung him sideways against the starboard bulkhead and toppled him into a sitting position alongside an auxiliary generator.  In disbelief he saw a river of red fire cascading into the engine room from the day room.  His reason told him that this was impossible because a hatch separated the two rooms, and he himself had dogged it down before leaving Rendova.  It did not occur to him that the hatch and most of the bulkhead had been sheared away and the gasoline tanks over the day room had been ignited by friction sparks or a broken electrical cable.

    The river of fire rose about him.  It seared his hands and face and scorched his shins, exposed by his rolled-up dungarees.  He held his breath to keep the flames from his lungs.  He was fairly engulfed in a world of blinding light and roasting heat and then without any transition he was immersed in a watery darkness, his lungs almost bursting.  Sheared away by the destroyer, the flaming stern was pulled down by the weight of the engines.  Without the sensation of descent, McMahon found himself under water fighting to get to the surface, which appeared from below as a wavering orange glare.  Bobbing to the top at last in his kapok, he emerged in a sea of fire.  The burning gasoline was spreading across the water in a garish patch of light that could be seen by Lt. Evans on his hilltop a few miles away.  He knew that a ship must be on fire, and he supposed he might hear more about it in time.

    Johnston’s plight was scarcely less desperate than McMahon’s.  In his sleep he was knocked into the sea in his heavy Army shoes, steel helmet, blue shirt, socks, dungarees and kapok.  He opened his eyes to see the sliding hull of the destroyer.  Looking up in shock he saw Japanese sailors running on the deck.  As the Amagiri’s stern swept by him the suction of the screws yanked him under the surface.  The downward churn of the water spun him head over heels into the depth like a piece of clothing in a washing machine.

    Johnston wondered if he was doomed.  He did not pray, but he thought of his wife, Nathalie.  As the descending currents released him, he pulled his way upward.  The struggle seemed hopeless.  He did not know how far under he was.  He decided to give up and die.  Then he thought that his wife would consider him a coward, and he resumed his toil.  The pain in his lungs was excruciating.  Seeing no light, he feared he was still near the bottom.  Giving up would be easy now, even desirable.  Again, however, the thought crossed his mind, “Nat will think I’m yellow.”  He resumed the climb on his watery ladder.  Faintly the orange glow flickered above his straining face.  Now determined to survive, he thrashed his way to the top, gasping for breath and beating the flames away with his hands.

    As the Amagiri ripped through PT 109 Captain Yamashiro smelled something that reminded him of smoldering cotton.  Lt. Hosaka could feel heat on the bridge.  Petty Officer Yoshitaka Yamazaki, a medical corpsman, had been crossing the deck to the sick bay when he heard someone shout that a PT boat lay ahead.  He felt a thud, saw a burst of flame and was stabbed with the thought that the Americans had fired a torpedo into the Amagiri.

    “What happened?” Petty Officer Masayoshi Takashima called from his torpedo station.

    “The port side’s afire,” Shigeo Takemura shouted up to the bridge.  Takemura, a communications man with a torpedo crew, thought that the enemy’s torpedomen had succeeded in doing what the Amagiri’s had failed to try.  He supposed the flames were pouring out of the destroyer.

    In the starboard engine room Petty Officer Shigeo Yoshikawa felt a shock.  Lt. Shivery Nishinosome noticed that the ship’s engines were starting to shake.  In the port engine room Petty Officer Yoshiji Hiramatsu heard a scraping noise against the hull and feared the Amagiri had hit a reef.  He observed that the starboard propeller shaft was vibrating.  In the auxiliary engine room Petty Officer Takeo Tan heard a thud and hastened up to the deck, thinking they had been hit by a torpedo.

    As the Amagiri swept on she fired two shots back at PT 109, but both missed.  By now the vibration was so severe that Hanami had to reduce his speed to investigate the trouble.  Part of a blade of the starboard propeller had been sheared off, causing the shaft to shake.  Also, the bow was dented.  This was the extent of the damage, however, and no one was hurt.

    Hanami found that by lowering his speed to twenty-eight knots he could sail without excessive vibration.  In answer to an inquiry from the Hagikaze about the fire he radioed to the other three ships that he had sunk a PT boat.  Wild cheers swept through the Shigure.  Their mission a complete success, the four destroyers returned to Rabaul.

    Though hurled about by the crash, Kennedy, Ross, Mauer and Maguire were still on the bow, which was kept afloat by its watertight compartments.  Mauer was thrown to the deck, bruising his right shoulder.  Maguire was flung out of the cockpit back against the day-room canopy.  His helmet was pushed down on his brow, but he pried it off in time to see the Amigiri passing through behind him.

    As the impact of the destroyer tilted the deck sharply to port, Ross let go of the loose bow gun for fear it would topple overboard and carry him to the bottom.  He mistook the first flare of flames for a bright search light.  Thinking the enemy was about to fire down on them, he slipped off the starboard side into the water and hid in the shade of the hull.  Gasoline fumes choked him, and he fainted.

    Pulling himself up from the corner of the cockpit, Kennedy’s first thought was that a gasoline tank might explode from the heat.  “Everybody into the water,” he yelled.

    “Wait for me,” Maguire pleaded.  His rubber lifebelt had failed to inflate.  An extra kapok was in the chart house, but he was afraid of being left alone aboard.  Kennedy waited until he had fetched it, then, putting his hand on some debris, vaulted overboard.  Maguire and Mauer went in with him.  Kennedy did not feel any pain, and at the point where he entered the water the flames had been washed aside by the Amagiri’s wake.

    As the three swam out a safe distance, the fore part of PT 109 was left a battered, deserted hulk, drifting in two hundred fathoms through the glare and hiss of flames.  The stern had already disappeared.

    Andrew Jackson Kirksey, the quiet Georgian with the strong premonition of death, had perished with Marney.  Kirksey had been lying on the starboard side from which the destroyer came and toward the stern.  He might have been killed on impact and hurled yards into the water or he might have been crushed and gone down with the stern.  No one knew.  Ensign Thom, McMahon, Johnston, Albert, Harris, Starkey and Zinser were, like Ensign Ross, floating about in fire or fumes, some of them unconscious.

    Harris, his head pillowed on his kapok on deck, had been awakened by a shout to worse than a nightmare.  He saw what looked to be an enormous prow knifing straight at him only feet away.  He sprang up and dived sideways over the torpedo tube, and while he was still in the air the Amagiri crunched into PT 109.  Some part of the boat, perhaps the tube, snapped up and struck him in the left thigh, painfully knocking him several yards beyond where a dive would have carried him.  Somersaulting through the dark, he could see fire break out.  Then he landed in the water in a sitting position, astonished and thankful to find that he had his kapok on, untied.

    A moment before it had been his pillow.  Now it was wrapped around his chest, keeping him afloat.  In the instant between jumping up and diving he must have pulled it on, but he had no recollection of doing so.  Shaking the salt water out of his eyes he saw the stern of the destroyer vanishing into the dark and heard two shots.

    Neither Zinser nor Starkey ever saw the Amagiri.  On deck Zinser heard the cry of “General Quarters” and the next thing he knew he was flying through space.  For a moment he could see flames.  Then he fainted.  While walking toward his battle station at the after starboard torpedo tube, Starkey was sent reeling.  He thought they had been hit by a shell.  His helmet knocked off, he toppled into one of the smashed quarters, which was lighted up by flames.  He thought that this was what hell must be like and then he lapsed into unconsciousness. 

    As the fire on the water around the boat subsided, Kennedy concluded that there would be no explosion.  He and Maguire and Mauer swam back to the bow of the boat and climbed up on the deck.  At Kennedy’s direction Mauer got out the blinker, a two-foot-long tube with a light inside, and started walking around the hulk, flashing the light periodically as a beacon to any members of the crew who might still be alive in the water.

    Apart from Maguire and Mauer, Kennedy did not know what had become of his crew.  He was impatient for the other boats to come to his aid, but they never appeared.  Just before the collision PT 162 had attempted an attack on the Amagiri, but Lowrey’s torpedoes did not fire, and he turned away to the southwest.  Just after the collision PT 169 fired two torpedoes to no effect, whereupon Potter moved out of the vicinity.  Presumably skippers of other boats thought that the crew of PT 109 had perished in the flames and that Blackett Estrait was no place for loitering with Japanese destroyers steaming through. As the hours––and years for that matter––passed, the men on PT 109 were bitter that they were not rescued, yet their bitterness never focused on any one man or any one boat.

    As soon as Mauer was ready with the blinker, Kennedy removed his shoes, shirt and sidearms and dived overboard in a rubber lifebelt to search for the others.  He was to be in the water approximately thirty of the next thirty-six hours.  Fortunately, it was warm and calm.

    On the hulk Maguire and Mauer received the first inkling that others were alive when they heard Zinser’s voice in the darkness calling, “Mr. Thom is drowning.  Bring the boat!”  Dreading to swim back into the fumes, Maguire nevertheless got a line from the rope locker on the bow.  He tied one end to a broken torpedo tube and the other end around his waist.  With a prayer he stepped into the water and swam toward the sound of Zinser’s voice, leaving Mauer, shipwrecked for the second time in three months, a solitary figure afloat on what was left of PT 109.

    Ross, having fainted in the bright light of the flames, awoke in darkness, wondering where he was and what he was doing.  As his head cleared, he saw two men not far from him.  Swimming over to them, he found that one was Zinser, whom he did not know by name, and the other was Thom.  Zinser was moaning.  Thom was gibbering.  When Ross shook him, Thom reached out his huge arm and tried to climb up on him as if he were a log.  Fending him off, Ross cried, “Lenny, Lenny, it’s me!”  After some sparring in the water Thom came to and appeared to be in good condition.  Zinser was alright too, and they started to shout for the others.

    Maguire was swimming toward them.  The gasoline fumes nearly suffocated him, and he prayed that he would not faint.  He had no difficulty finding the men because of their voices.

    “Are you all right, Mr. Thom?” He asked.

    “I’m all right,” Thom said.

    “Can you keep going?”

    “I can make it.”

    Maguire could see that Zinser did not need any help beyond an occasional tug he was getting from Ross.  Guided by the blinking of Mauer’s light, Maguire, Ross, Zinser and Thom swam slowly back to the boat, where Albert presently splashed out of the night to join them.

    After leaping into the water just in time to escape being crushed by the Amagiri, Harris drifted off alone.  At first he felt severe pain in his left leg from the blow he had received while diving, but in time his leg grew numb and he could not use it.  Bobbing about in his kapok, Harris supposed that he was the sole survivor.  This thought haunted him until he saw someone drifting out of the flames sixty feet away.  With is own left leg dragging, Harris swam laboriously toward the man, whom he could not recognize because he was floating with his helmet partially covering his face.  The man evidently was in such a state of shock that Harris could not even recognize his voice, although he could make out that the man was saying that he could not use his hands and was appealing for help to get his helmet off.  It was only when Harris pried the helmet loose that he recognized Pat McMahon.  The night was too dark for Harris to see well, but he could tell that McMahon was in serious condition.

    Not knowing what to do or where to go, Harris treaded water by McMahon’s side.  Once the fire had burned out, the night was blacker than ever.  Harris believed that he and McMahon were the only two alive, and he could not imagine what would become of them.  The thought that the others were dead had taken such a hold on him that he was startled when he heard voices somewhere.

    “Mr. Kennedy!” he yelled.  “Mr. Kennedy!”

    “Over here,” he heard Kennedy call back.

    “McMahon is badly hurt,” Harris told him.

    “I’m over here,” Kennedy shouted.  “Where are you?”

    “This way,” Harris called.  He could hear the splashing of Kennedy’s arms and legs.  It sounded far off.  Periodically, Kennedy would pause and call “Where are you?” And Harris would answer “Over here,” Harris heard the splashing grow louder, and then he saw Kennedy’s head coming out of the dark.  McMahon lay helpless in his kapok.  Despite the cooling effect of the water his whole body felt warm.

    “McMahon is too hurt to swim,” Harris told Kennedy.

    “All right, I’ll take him back,” Kennedy said.  “Part of the boat is still floating.”

    Kennedy did not mention any other names, but the sound of voices in the distance lifted Harris’s spirits.  McMahon, however, was without hope.  He could not use his arms at all.

    “Go on, skipper,” the crew’s “old man” mumbled to Kennedy.  “You go on.  I’ve had it.”

    Kennedy clutched McMahon’s kapok and began towing him toward the boat, which by this time had drifted a considerable distance from the swimmers.  The men aboard kept calling to give their position, and Kennedy followed the sound.  At first Harris stayed abreast of Kennedy and McMahon despite his numb leg.  Then, his strength on the wane, he dropped behind.  “Come on,” Kennedy urged him.  Harris resumed swimming, but the burden seemed unendurable.  His left leg dragged.  He was drowsy.  It felt luxurious just to slump back in his kapok and drift.  Drawing farther and farther away, Kennedy would call back to him, and he would respond by lifting his heavy arms to swim awhile.  Then, tiring, he would drift again.  It had been cool on deck and before taking a nap he had pulled a sweater on above his jacket and his shirt.  The weight of his clothes and his shoes anchored him.  “The hell with it,” he would say to himself.  He no longer could hear Kennedy, but this did not seem to make any difference to him any more.  When he had the strength he would swim; when he did not, he would go limp and say, “The hell with it.”

    It seemed as though he was alone for a half-hour or longer before he again heard Kennedy splashing toward him, calling, “Where are you, Harris?”  As Kennedy reappeared, Harris wearily told him, “I can’t go any further.”

    “For a guy from Boston, you’re certainly putting up a great exhibition out here, Harris,” Kennedy snapped.

    Harris cursed and swore at Kennedy.  He was aggrieved that Kennedy did not realize how much his leg troubled him.  “Well, come on,” Kennedy persisted.  Harris asked the skipper to hold him up while he took off his kapok to shed his sweater and jacket.  Kennedy gripped his arm and held him precariously on the surface.  Had the exhausted and dispirited Harris slipped from Kennedy’s grasp he might have gone down like a stone.  But with his heavy clothes and his shoes off and his kapok back on, Harris found he could move through the water, and he and Kennedy swam slowly back to the boat.

    Thom, meanwhile, was having even greater difficulty rescuing Johnston.  When Johnston had come gasping to the surface after escaping from the churning propellers, he swallowed gasoline and inhaled fumes.  Retching forced more fumes into his lungs.  His brain became clouded.  He was confused, violently sick and semiconscious.  His neck was burned.  He saw the floating bow and men on it.  When he called out, Thom heard him and swam to his side.  By this time, however, Johnston was almost helpless.  At Thom’s urging he would kick a few times to try the dog-paddle, but it was so much easier to sleep.

    “Come on, Bill, let’s go,” Thom would say, shaking him.  Johnston would kick for a while and then fall back to sleep, not caring whether he ever reached the boat.

    “Let’s keep paddling,” Thom pleaded.  He himself was only a fair swimmer and it took him a long time to drag Johnston to the floating bow.

    Starkey was among the last to make it.  The part of the boat into which he had been flung by the crash quickly filled with water and he floated free.  The thought that he was all alone surrounded by Japanese frightened him.  So did the danger of sharks.  “Oh my God.  Oh my God,” he kept saying.  He floated without being able to make up his mind what he should do until he saw some debris near him.  He climbed up on a mattress.  His face and hands were burned, though not severely.  As he lay on the mattress, he thought of his wife Camille, and four-year-old daughter, Shirley, and he remembered the day he had enlisted after Pearl Harbor.  Then he saw the dark outlines of the boat.  It looked a couple of hundred yards away at least, but the sight gave him courage.  He took off his shoes and swam to rejoin the others, who were either lying on deck or drifting in the water, hanging on to the hull.

    Kennedy called the names of the crew.  Everyone answered but Marney and Kirksey.  He inquired whether anyone had seen them or had any idea what had happened to them.  No one had.  Kennedy called, “Kirksey . . . Marney . . .”  From time to time during the night others kept repeating the call, but there was never any answer.

    All the survivors seemed to be in fair condition except McMahon and Johnston.  Both of McMahon’s hands were covered with third degree burns, and his face, arms, legs, and feet were burned.  In the water the burns had glowed warmly, but when the men lifted him up on deck he felt as if his whole body were on fire.  He took off some of his clothes to relieve the friction on his burned skin.  Despite the terrible surface heat, however, he became so cold that he had to put the wet clothing back on.

    Johnston was alternately unconscious and wracked by spells of vomiting.  He did not speak, and the others were at a loss to know what was the matter with him.  Maguire thought Johnston was dying.  It was a problem to keep him from rolling down the slanting deck into the water.  Someone suggested lashing him to the boat, which provoked a long discussion in the dark, because others felt that there would be no way to prevent Johnston from being carried to the bottom if the boat should suddenly sink.  In the end some of the men held lines around him for a time, but did not tie them down.

    During the long hours of darkness most of the men had climbed up on the hulk and reclined with their feet braced against some fixture to keep them from sliding off the deck.  They spoke in low voices about the prospects of rescue after daylight.  Some thought PT’s would return for them; others guessed that a PBY would pick them up.

    When dawn broke over Wana Wana they could see Rendova Peak thirty-eight miles to the south.  They knew almost exactly where they were.  They knew that the other boats would be back at the base now, that Lumberi [Lumbari] would be stirring with the morning’s activity and that their absence would set in motion a search that should lead speedily to their rescue.  There was already some cause for this optimism.