My fascination with the boats began in my senior year of high school; around October or November of 1979 I saw my first article on the 1/32nd scale Lindberg Models' PT 109, and I decided I wanted one (apparently I was a good boy, 'cause guess what I found under the Christmas tree that year....) The model itself is a disappointment for PT purists, for it only superficially resembles an 80' Elco. But with a little work, it can look fairly decent. About that same time, I found in the school library (quite by accident) a book titled 'The Mosquito Fleet'. Written by Bern Keating and published by Scholastic Book Services in 1963, it was written in a punchy, rock'em-sock'em style calculated to arrest the attention of the pre-adolescents and adolescents that was the book's target audience. It certainly fueled my curiosity about these boats and their role in World War II. And the movie? One would assume that it would be 'PT 109'--I had viewed the movie twice in the early 1970's. But it is the film 'They Were Expendable', the 1945 John Ford epic, that really got me going. After seeing actual PT's--not mock-ups or replicas--in action, I was permanently hooked. I have been collecting PT memorabilia ever since, mostly books and photographs, and have done some of my own on-again, off-again research into the boats, some of the results which will be presented in this site. This research is ongoing, so the page will be updated on a very irregular basis as new information comes my way.
Mystery Elco PT's
Early PT Radar
The Tokyo Express
MTB Squadron Five--Summer 1942
Higgins Factory Photos
Personalities
Melville--April 1942
PT Armament
Miscellaneous Views
fought in this climactic battle.
Related Reading
My PT Boat Models
Links to Related Sites
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