I was reading the Wilkapedia account of the loss of PT-109.
The article did not mention if Lt. Kennedy was subjected to a court martial, regarding the loss of his command.
From what I understand, PT-109 was sliced in half by a japanese destroyer (the IJNS Amigiri), which was (probably ) doing in excess of 35 knots. Whether the crew of the PT-109 saw anything is uncertain-the only thing clear was that PT-109 was in an area of activity, and should have been in a state of high alert.
At any rate, the loss of one’s ship is the worst disaster that can befall a naval officer, so I would expect that there would be a formal court of inquiry/court martial. Was Kennedy ever found negligent, or was his behaviour found to be acceptable that night?
Do you think military brass in wartime were that stupid?
Quite the contrary - he was decorated. As the wikipedia article points out, Kennedy received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for saving the lives of his crew after the collison.
The after action report reports that PT-109 was looking for other US boats in the area. On a moonless night, the report states that the crew thought the approaching vessel was in fact other PT boats, when it was a Japanese destroyer going 40 knots. The report concludes that ten seconds elapsed between identification of the Japanese destroyer and the PT boat being sliced in half.
I’m no expert on naval law, but this doesn’t seem to be an obvious case of negligence. The PT boat did not have radar, and there are other accounts (which are disputed by others) which indicate that the destroyer maneuvered in order to crush the PT boat.
Well, my understanding is that – at least in say Napoleonic times – whenever a British ship went down, the captain was automatically subject to a court martial to determine if he was at fault. Which is not to say that the court-martial would necessarily find that the captain *was *at fault, but they’d always look into it. And of course if the captain was found to be not at fault, there was no stigma for having been subject to the court martial inquiry.
I don’t know if the US Navy in WWII had a similar policy, or if that policy might not apply to something as small as a PT boat.
But I don’t think having such a policy of automatic inquiry is necessarily stupid.
And thankfully the brass screw up on that one didn’t have any bad outcomes. I mean it isn’t like a certain person killed themselves over the guilt or anything. Stupid Navy.
Thank you. I agree and consider that particular question answered.
For the record, I have never been convinced by these assertions that Kennedy should have been able to get out of the way of the destroyer. Both vessels would have been operating without navigation lights, and the PT boat had no radar. A destroyer moving at high speed can close distance awfully fast in these circumstances, and if they maneuver to ram you you can easily be toast.
I neither said nor implied that JFK’s actions were improper.
I merely asked if he was subjected to a formal board of inquiry.It seems that he wasn’t.
You may find interesting the following lengthy account of the PT-109 incident.
It is interesting that the crew of the 1700 ton Fubuki-Class destroyer *Amaguri* was able to detect the PT boat before the PT-boat was able to see the destroyer. A Fubuki is roughly 4.5 times as long, 1.5 times as wide, and, ballpark estimate, over 5 times as tall as a PT-Boat. Did PT-109 have surface search radar? The account I’ve linked to, mentions radar operators detecting contacts during the night of the collision, but I can’t tell whether all boats had radar, or only some of them. If they did have SS radar, then not detecting the Amaguri until 200-300 yds is even more inexcusable, overcast moonless night or not. Moreover, PT-109 had warning of ships coming towards their area, if not them specifically. Still, shit happens. And if the Amagiri did detect a PT-boat that much ahead of time, you’d think they’d have shot at it, rather than run it down. Naval officers after, I dunno, Lepanto, tend to dislike running into other ships, if they have any other way at hand to sink the enemy…
Then again, night fighting and training was heavily emphasized in the IJN. I tend to agree with the subsequent commander of the PT-Boat flotilla, LCDR Jack Gibson, who is quoted in the article as saying:
He was certainly fantastically brave after the collision though, and, IMHO, well earned his accolades for his subsequent conduct. It was eye-opening that Kennedy’s acquaintance, Byron “Whizzer” White (yes, that Byron White) was one of the two investigating officers. Small world.
This feeds the conspiracy theorists, some of whom see a Supreme Court appointment as the ultimate payback for a whitewash.
Just goes to show what lengths people will go to believe things.
Why do you think he wasn’t? Certainly there had to be some kind of review, otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten the medal he did. But in the middle of a huge war, one very small vessel being sunk by enemy action isn’t going to make front page headlines and cause multiple Congressional panels to be convened. The inquiry could easily have been 3 officers in a small conference room over the course of an afternoon.
Most navies automatically convene a court martial whenever a ship is lost. Is this not the case with the US navy? (Or more to the point, was this not the case with the US navy in 1942?)
Spring 2011 article in MHQ magazine. A lot of attention of the PT-109 dealt with saving eleven crewmen, not how it happened. From the Navy investigation which had Kennedy friend Whizzer White to magazine article by John Hersey (married to one of JFK’s old girlfriends). Some people did, including his older brother Joe who asked “where were you when the destroyer came into sight and what were you moves?”. JFK never really said but it has been speculated that he felt bad and later in the war he got reckless, once proposing a mission in daylight that others argued would getting shelled by Japanese on both sides. The plan was scrubbed.
PT boats were very overblown by a War Department anxious to find good news in a war that started badly. Wooden hulls could not withstand a single bullet. Hot metal could ignite 3,000 gallon tanks. The 28 knot torpedoes were slower than many Japanese ships. JFK joked that the author of “They were Expendable” should write a sequel entitled “They are Useless”.
The Navy brass may not have thought too much of Ambassador Joe Kennedy’s son. They turned down Kennedy’s superior recommendation of a Silver Star for a lesser Navy and Marine Corp medal. Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox let the paperwaork sit on his desk for several months. JFK got his medal when Knox died and Je Kennedy’s close friend James Forrestal replaced him.
It has been suggested that the PT 109 could have been listening to radios to hear two other ships warning that the Tokyo Express was out that night. But the PT 109 was under radio silence and assumed that others did. Also the Navy did a poor job of training its men to use “night vision” to see at night. The author Thomas Fleming says that when he was in the Navy in 1945 and 1946, he and others were. Japanese were using it in 1942 at the Battle of Savo Island. Apparently the PT 109 wasn’t trained in this.
Do you have any sources for that besides the Wikipedia article that uses the exact phase?
Did Bush Senior have to answer for bailing out of his navy bomber & letting 2 crew members go down with it?
According to uncited material in Wikipedia, out of 700 ships lost in World War II, there was only one court martial of a US captain. So it seems that it is not practice to automatically court martial the captain of a lost ship.
I’m not sure how the US military justice system has changed since then but a courts martial is not the venue for deciding something like this. An Article 32 hearing or some other inquiry would be a first step in today’s military.
It was something I remembered reading about long before Wikipedia existed. It does seem to have been true for the US navy at at least some point in its history:
This phrase turns up in the text of a lot of old US statutes which have been digitized and put online on Google Books, Archive.org, etc.
[QUOTE]
When the crew of any vessel of the United States are separated from their vessel by means of her wreck, loss, or destruction, all the command and authority given to the officers of such vessel shall remain in full force until such ship’s company shall be regularly discharged from or ordered again into service, or until a court-martial or court of inquiry shall be held to inquire into the loss of said vessel.QUOTE]
My interpretation of that is that the officers are still in charge until they are not in charge due to one of several things including court martial or just a normal reassignment. The crew can’t say “The ship sank, I don’t have to listen to you anymore”.
In cases in which a naval ship, aircraft is lost or there is a significant loss of life, there is always a court martial. Bear in mind that a court martial need not be a criminal proceeding. Usually a serious incident begins with an inquiry and based upon the severity of the situation described in the inquiry, the case can be forwarded for possible legal action.
In the PT-109 case, J.F. Kennedy’s case is similar to George Bush’s drunken driving arrest. J.F. Kennedy did not receive punitive action and his case has been expunged. Instead, because of the Kennedy family wealth and its popularity, the PT-109 incident has been turned into an act of heroism, and if the proceedings of both the inquiry and the court martial are uncovered, they will indubitably show that ex-Pres. Kennedy being exonerated from any wrong doing.