As the PT 109 crewmen stared in horror, the 388-foot destroyer Amagiri rammed violently into the PT 109, splintering the helpless wooden boat in two. But with one active engine, there wasn’t enough time or horsepower to execute an evasive maneuver. Kennedy ordered the men to battle positions and attempted to position the PT 109 to fire a torpedo. And this one was just 200 yards away and closing fast. At first, they mistook it for another PT boat, but soon made out the towering black hull of a Japanese destroyer, the first enemy ship Kennedy had ever seen up close. Kennedy could see nothing but a large white wake cutting toward them. “Ship at two o’clock!” yelled a crewman in the forward gun turret. The memory of the bone-rattling explosion was still fresh. Days before, on JFK’s very first patrol, a Japanese fighter dropped two bombs close on either side of the PT 109, sending two of JFK’s crew home with serious injuries. Kennedy decided to throttle just one of the PT 109’s three engines to be extra cautious. Phosphorescent plankton in the tropical waters turned even the smallest wake into a glowing target. So the three remaining craft chugged silently through the inky black sea, careful not to create a wake that could be spotted by Japanese patrol aircraft above. To make things worse, only one PT boat in the four-unit squad had radar, and it took off chasing a Japanese target, leaving Kennedy’s PT 109 and the other two boats in the blind.

“It was that kind of night, no moon, no stars.” “It was as dark as if you were in a closet with the door shut,” recalled one of JFK’s crewmen, Barney Ross. If the mission itself wasn’t impossible, the conditions that night certainly made it so.

World war 2 navy medals and ribbons