209: The Pacific War 1943: Operation Cartwheel, Tarawa, & Eleanor Roosevelt's Pacific Tour
episodePreviously titled “209: Pacific War 1943: Operation Cartwheel, Tarawa, & Eleanor Roosevelt's Pacific Tour” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 7, 2026
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What happened during the PT-109 sinking and rescue led by Lieutenant John 'Jack' Kennedy?
It's 11 p.m. on a moonless night, August 1st, 1943. We're among the South Pacific's Solomon Islands, where 15 of the U.S. Navy's patrol torpedo boats are monitoring blackened strait. This four-group combined task force is here to intercept and disrupt the Japanese destroyers reinforcing the Rising Sun Empire's troops on Kolumbangara Island. And yes, though not the same island, this is the same midnight supply chain we learned about in the last episode, the Tokyo Express. At this moment, the 13-man crew of Patrol Torpedo 109, or just PT-109, as these torpedo-carrying, swift yet vulnerable boats are often abbreviated, is doing its part along Kolumbangara's southern coast. They're monitoring as quietly as they can by using one engine for the very same reason the whole task force is maintaining radio silence, to avoid detection by their foe.
Suddenly, a searchlight flashes on. It falls directly on PT-109. The small vessel's commander, Lieutenant John Kennedy, or just Jack as his friends know him, doesn't waste a second. He pushes the PT to flank speed, zigging and zagging until the light loses them. Then, I think, it snaps off. The handsome, 26-year-old Bostonian commander and his crew breathe a sigh of relief. but only for a moment. This mission's horrors are just beginning. An hour later, around midnight, four Japanese destroyers come into contact with various elements of the PT task force. Japanese heavy guns crack as U.S. torpedo tubes flash in the pitch black. It's useless. The eight PTs that fire a collective 30 torpedoes do no damage at all.
but the communication errors are arguably worse. Having discharged all their torpedoes, some PTs, including the task force's few radar-equipped leaders, head back to base without informing the others. This is how Jack Kennedy and the crew of PT-109 find themselves still patrolling in the dark after their group leader has left. It's now 2.30 a.m., Moving in a picket line with PTs 162 and 169, Jax 109 is motoring through the straights in darkness when, all at once, a mere 200 or 300 yards out, he and his men see a mass of some sort directly ahead. Is it another PT? No, it's a Japanese destroyer, and it's heading straight toward them. Just starting to turn starboard to fire a torpedo, PT-109 is no match for the destroyer, Hamagiri.
The ship barrels forward at 40 knots and tears through the little boat, cutting it in two like a knife through butter. Gasoline-fueled flames dance across the water as Jack and five of his men cling to their bifurcated boats still floating whole. Shouts in the distance tell them others are still alive. Jack swims 100 yards out to save three of his men, including burned Patrick Pappy McMahon. He can barely move. Jack won't leave him, though. Using a life jacket strap, the former Harvard swimmer-turned-Navy officer toes Pappy back. The strait's current makes Jack's encumbered swim miserable. But after an hour, they reach the floating wreckage. By 5.30 that morning, August 2nd, 11 of PT-109's 13 sailors are gathered on the remnants of their boat.
But not Andrew Kirksey or Harold Marnie. They'll never be seen nor heard from again. Morning gives way to afternoon. Jack knows that no one is coming. Or still, they're on borrowed time. This wreckage won't float forever. So he comes up with a plan. Around two o'clock that afternoon, Jack jumps in the water. He organizes his sailors into a support team. The two who can't swim are on a floating rig, which the better swimmers push and pull. The weaker ones swim alongside. As for Jack, he's once again towing burned and barely breathing paddle. In this condition, they swim for hours, traversing three and a half miles of choppy waters to reach a small speck of land known as Plum Pudding Island. Though they give it another name, Bird Eye.
Jack Kennedy returns to the sea. Fighting the currents of Ferguson Passage, he swims from one islet to another, hoping to flag down a PT. Amid Jack's exhaustion, Ensign George Ross takes a crack too. But no dice, and by August 4th, the Coconut's subsisting survivors are forced to swim to yet another small island, to Olisana Island, in search of more substance.
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Chapters
2 chaptersSpeakers
1 identifiedMore from History That Doesn't Suck
15 (Second Edition): “We the People:” Constitution Making in Philly
211: Pacific Theater Epilogue with Capt. Mac Caldwell
210: The Pacific War 1944: From the Cairo Conference to the Marianas Turkey Shoot
208: The Pacific War, 1942–43: Guadalcanal, the Aleutians, and Operation Vengeance
Introducing: Government That Doesn't Suck! with Professors Greg Jackson and Lindsey Cormack
The Declaration of Independence at 250