
In writing about World War II, it's inevitable to stumble down rabbit holes that you just have to pursue out of sheer curiosity. When I was researching the Liberty ships of WW2, I came across a tiny nugget that fascinated me and that ties into world news today, as President Trump tries to wrest control of the Panama Canal.
In August 1942, with the war intensifying between the US and Germany, at Norfolk Navy Yard in Virginia, the Liberty ship SS Joseph Stanton was loaded up with its typical cargo—and some atypical cargo. Three charcoal gray, 80-foot patrol boats, each one weighing about 40 tons, were hoisted up to its deck and strapped down tight. Their destination? To patrol the Panama Canal Zone. A standard PT boat had a range of five hundred miles, not enough to reach a faraway destination without making frequent stops to refuel, so they needed to catch a lift to reach the canal zone.
Two of the boats, PT-107 and PT-108, sat side-by-side, on the ship's deck. The third boat sat on the forward deck alone. The Stanton sailed south of Virginia, around the Florida tip and through the Panama Canal, where it unloaded its patrol boats. The assigned crews of the PT boats received several more months of training at the Navy’s Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron training center in Newport, Rhode Island. One of trainees assigned to the waiting PT boats impressed his superior officers so much that he was asked to stay a little longer to help with training others. And when he finally reached the Panama Canal Zone, he was assigned to lead the crew on the third PT boat, PT-109.
In early August 1943, the PT-109 had a fateful encounter: As the JFK Museum writes: At about 2:30 in the morning, a shape loomed out of the darkness three hundred yards off PT-109's starboard bow. The young lieutenant and his crew first believed it to be another PT boat. When it became apparent that it was one of the Japanese destroyers, Kennedy attempted to turn to starboard to bring his torpedoes to bear. But there was not enough time.
The rest of the story, from the deadly clash with the Japanese ships to the destruction of the PT-109, to Kennedy's lifesaving actions, can be read here: But that was a rabbit hole I did not expect to encounter—President John F. Kennedy's heroic and tragic World War II PT-109 story began with a Liberty ship.
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