PT 105

Admittedly small and vulnerable, the PT boats were, nevertheless, fast - the fastest craft on the water during World War II - and Dick Keresey's account of these tough little fighters throws new light on their unique contributions to the war effort. As captain of PT 105, Keresey was in the same battle as John F. Kennedy when Kennedy's PT 109 was rammed and sunk. The famous incident, Keresey says, has often been described inaccurately, with the PT boat depicted as unreliable and ineffective. This book helps set the record straight by presenting an authentic picture of PT boats in the Pacific. Shot at more than twenty times, the author not only served as a PT officer in the Guadalcanal, New Georgia, and Bougainville campaigns and the Choiseul Island raid, but developed and taught torpedo boat tactics after his combat service. Keresey's experiences are still fresh in his memory, and he offers an action-filled account of life on a PT boat: evading deadly night bombers, rescuing coastwatchers and downed airmen, setting down Marine scouts behind Japanese lines, and engaging in vicious gun battles with Japanese barges and small freighters - all the while contending with heat, disease, and loneliness. Keresey recalls two occasions when Kennedy rescued him, and he describes PT 105's controversial rescue of Japanese sailors and his own poignant reunion with one of those sailors fifty years later.