Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "The Drydock - Episode 038" video.

  1. The only really effective role of US PT boats in the Pacific was preventing Japanese resupply of isolated island garrisons. It was all gun battles between the PTs and Japanese barges to starve out these garrisons. The torpedos had no aiming system except point the boat in the right direction, fire, and hope for the best. Even with the improved Mark 8 torpedoes, the firing mechanisms weren't built for the exposed position of the torpedoes on a PT in the tropics. The electric firing black powder charge often leaked water and the firing mechanism shorted out. Most boats actually engaged in a torpedo attacks had men standing by with a large sledgehammer to hit the exposed trigger and fire the torpedo. The boat had to slow down to an even keel before firing or the gyro wouldn't be able to get a good position and the torpedo would run off in surprising directions, including circling back on your boat. The tubes were packed with grease and oil to ensure the torpedo didn't get stuck in the tube. The black powder charge would sometimes ignite all this grease, causing a huge cloud black smoke that immediately gave away the position of the boat. My dad was on PT boats from late 1942 until May, 1945. By mid 1943, the tube were landed and the torpedoes were carried in simple shackle mounts. To fire the torpedo, one man popped the shackles while another yanked a lanyard to start the torpedo motor. Both guys then pushed to torpedo overboard to start the attack. As you might imagine, this was even more inaccurate then firing them from tubes, but at least the torpedoes would run once they got in the water. My dad's boat made eight torpedo attacks. Seven missed, and the one that hit was a dud. The boat went from carrying four torpedoes to two and, by early 1944, none, with the weight and space saved devoted to more 20mm and 40mm guns. Most boats after 1943 functioned as motor gunboats. They were successful in that role, but some of the romantic stories about the PTs charging in on torpedo attacks and sinking a major surface vessel were more propaganda than reality.
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  2.  @paulmanson253  I've got about 90 hours of tapes where I interviewed my father and the five surviving members of his crew at the last PT boat convention we went to in the year before my dad passed away in 2005. Not one of them ever thought of anything they did as heroic. They just had a job to do. It might have been a rotten job, an uncomfortable job, or even a dangerous job, but the main things was to do whatever it took to defeat the Japanese and go home. They were a bunch of civilians trained to be fighters. They didn't want the job, but they did it to the best of their ability.
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  3. Dang! Just about to hit the power switch and head off for bed at 0316 CDT and a notification for the Drydock pops up. So much for the sleep plan!
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  4.  @tomhumphries912  No, I haven't . I had a small stroke in September that I'm still recovering from. Maybe 2021 will be my year for that.
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  5.  @johanlundstrom1561  I doubt the people writing those scripts really understood PT boats. Very few PTs carried radar through late 1942. After that, most radars were some variant of the SCR-517A airborne search set. The range of the SCR-517A when scanning from the usual 5,000 foot height of a searching aircraft but considerably less when used on the sea surface and relatively short mast of a PT. The PPI was really only large enough for use by one operator, and there was no way to communicate findings up the kline for the fleet. The SCR-517A and variants did a good job in terms of acting as a self defense system for a squadron, but that's about as far as it went in terms of being radar pickets.
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