Get Pt 173

By the last patrol on the night of April 28, 1945, American PT boats had been fighting in the coastal waters of North Africa, Italy, and France for two years. During that period, they fired 354 torpedoes, claiming 38 vessels totaling 23,700 tons sunk.

USS McCawley (APA-4). 9000 tons attack transport, sunk off Guadalcanal after being accidentally torpedoed by US torpedo boats.

On top of being the fastest—it reached a speed as high as 40 knots, or 46 miles/hour—it is also one of the most rare types of boats from WWII; today, there are only four other patrol boats like it that still exist. Now, the PT-305 is revisiting Lake Ponchertrain, but this time for leisure.

No capital ship was sunk in WW2 by a motor torpedo boat/PT boat but one Dreadnought Battleship was sunk by an Italian motor torpedo boat in WW1. SMS Svent Istavan of the Austro Hungarian Navy a Dreadnought of 21000 tons was torpedoed and sunk by the 30 ton torpedo boat MAS-15 the sinking was filmed.

Today there are just two fully restored and operational Patrol Torpedo boats, or PT boats, left in the world, and only one of them saw service in World War II.

PT-59 (more on her later) is credited with sinking Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) submarine I-3 on December 9, 1942 near Guadalcanal. PT-37 and PT-40 sank destroyer IJN Teruzuki on the night of 11–12 December, barely three months after the Japanese had put her into service.

Originally conceived as anti-ship weapons, PT boats were publicly credited with sinking several Japanese warships during the period between December 1941 and the fall of the Philippines in May 1942 – even though the Navy knew the claims were all false.

Operational PT Boats Remaining: Higgins-Built PT-658 and PT-305. PT-658 was built in 1945 by Higgins in New Orleans. The boat was originally slated to join Squadron 45 and assigned to the Pacific Fleet, but with the war coming to a close she never saw action.