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On Tue, 7/21/15, Kurt Feltenberger <kurt@thepaw.org> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [TML]Bettersituationalawareness
 To: tml@simplelists.com
 Date: Tuesday, July 21, 2015, 3:17 PM

 On 7/21/2015 3:10 PM,
 Richard Aiken wrote:
 > Never mind that
 the actual wartime missions mostly involved motoring
 > quietly to a spot where previous
 experience showed Japanese supply
 >
 boats were liable to be encountered, waiting with lights off
 and
 > motors idling for these
 heavily-laden slow-moving targets to put in an
 > appearance, drifting quietly into torpedo
 range THEN launching and
 > immediately
 hitting the gas, leaving at flank speed under heavy smoke

 > while earnestly praying that no
 searchlights found them . . .
 >

 Not exactly.  Many missions
 were patrol missions around disputed islands
 and hunting Japanese landing craft and lighters
 which were then shot
 up...or, landing shore
 parties to collect intelligence and then backing
 off for a couple hours before moving in to
 recover the shore parties. 
 My father had
 a lot of stories about his years commanding a PT boat in
 the South Pacific and one thing he impressed on
 me was that each time
 they went out it was
 rarely boring or a "sit and drift" mission. 
 Torpedoes became so rarely used that they
 removed two of the four for
 better
 performance and replaced them with more machine guns.

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Hey Kurt,

One thing I've always wondered about was exactly how the 'boats were transferred from one base to another.
For example, when thing finally wound down in the Solomons & the decision was made to transfer PT Boats elsewhere, how was it done?

p.s. I imagine PT ops evolved quite a bit from the early Philippines to the Solomons & then to the later Phillipines.

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