Don’t bear that in mind; it’s not true. A court-martial is a criminal proceeding by definition, at least in the US. You may be thinking of a court of inquiry (or board of inquiry in less serious circumstances).
In civilian writing you often see phrases like “He was court-martialed” in places where the author meant “He was found guilty by a court martial”. Which is wrong. That confuses “Was a defendant at a trial” with “Was found guilty at a trial”. To “be court-martialed” is to be a defendant. It says nothing of the outcome.
Folks need to be real careful when reading and quoting to maintain the correct sense. IMO a lot of what looks like source material on the 'net has already embedded this confusion.
None of my comments here are directly tied into the actual factuals of the JFK/PT-109 history. But I see signs of this confusion in several posts above.
i don’t think the son of the US Ambassador to Great Britain and a heavy hitter in the Democratic Party would be court martialed.
Even today a court martial is not convene to determine why a ship is lossed. A board of inquiry is convened. That board will make recommendations. It can be a justified loss, they can recommend action be taken against the CO including a court martial. Even in peace time CO’s have not court martial. Many times they are relieved of command and a letter is put into their file. Meaning they will never be promoted in rank so the career is finished.
This is not the case.
For the loss of an aircraft, there is a mandatory mishap report. And for various ship losses, such as minor collusions and accidents there are mishap reports. But there is not always a court martial.
It’s standard practice to convene a court martial when a ship is lost, and I think the USN did during WW2, but PT-109 was a boat, not a ship (it would be designated USS-109 if it was a United States Ship). While there isn’t a strong distinction between “boat” and “ship” in casual language, they are very distinct things in the Navy. Boats are smaller, less important craft and command of a boat doesn’t count for command experience the way command of a ship does.
As to aircraft …
Depending on the level of buffoonery by the crew, there may well be a board of inquiry after the mishap report process is done. But that’s a separate process and called by many different terms. And is only convened if there’s pretty good *prima facie *evidence of buffoonery at the point where derring do, or at least basic competence, was a reasonable expectation.
I read a biography about William Penn when I was a kid. His father was an Admiral, and basically he would either receive a hero’s welcome or be thrown in prison whenever he returned home from battle, depending on the outcome.
As others also pointed out, not an absolute rule. Many are pointing out how it wouldn’t be in a peacetime situation now, but more relevantly that was not a uniform USN practice, for ‘ships’, ‘boats’ or a/c in WWII. It was an older Royal Navy custom for ships with seemed to be kept longer in that service. There were no courts martial for surviving commanders of the great majority of USN ships lost in combat in WWII. There had to be some prima facie evidence of incompetence or wrongdoing.
This reflected not only differing tradition but change in practicalities. In the age of sail most ships ‘lost’ in combat ‘struck their colors’ ie surrendered, to their enemies. They sometimes sank afterward, but a ship being sunk without surrendering first was fairly uncommon. So there was a lot more reason to examine the conduct of losing CO’s in deciding when further resistance to the enemy had become impossible or a useless sacrifice.
In the age of steam/steel antiship weapons became more lethal to ships, especially the myriad threats by WWII (a/c, subs, mines, besides other surface ships). And by the same token the convention changed to basically prohibit CO’s from surrendering their ships rather than fighting them till they were sunk, or scuttling them, or having other accompanying friendly ships sink them to prevent capture. Also, surface ships operated more often in more genuine coordination with one another than in the sail era: in the sail era even ‘fleet’ actions devolved to one on ones with opposing pairs of ships as close or closer to one another than to their squadron mates which happened only rarely in WWII. So the question of CO behavior in a ship loss in 20th century became a more technical and less ‘moral’ issue. A surviving CO who surrendered a ship might still face a court martial…but it very rarely happened (one small US gunboat in China was surrendered more or less intact by its crew to the Japanese in December 1941, the Japanese repaired and used a few other USN ships whose crews had abandoned them previously). Otherwise there had to be some specific evidence of incompetence or cowardice, in the USN anyway.
One might argue JFK screwed up, but not more than some other USN vessels falling victim especially on the issue of Japanese lookouts sighting US ships first at night even in some cases where the US ships had radar (which PT-109 did not have, an operational set, on that night per most accounts), and no courts martial in those cases either.
In a bow-on aspect, that means very little. Destroyers have very a narrow beam (10.4 meters - roughly 35 feet). Further, being low on the water (PT boats are squat) is a distinct disadvantage to seeing pretty much the only likely giveaway of the destroyer: Its bow wake - which also was being presented in its least-visible aspect. Meanwhile, the superstructure and masts on the destroyer - invisible, because, hey it was dark!* - would provide the destroyer much more advantageous lookout positions.
Should his crew have seen the destroyer sooner? Maybe. I wasn’t present on deck, so I don’t know - and neither was anyone else, save the crew. After-the-fact analysis is going to do anything but reveal one’s preconceptions.
*I mean it gets DAMNED dark out to sea, far from civilization. Not quite midnight in a mineshaft - but not so far off, either. I’ve been out there, and yes, even large vessels vanish from view quite easily.
Technically, a ship has a fixed mast, and a boat does not. Which is why submarines are called ‘boats.’ But basically, the distinction is that a PT is a minor, almost auxilliary, vessel, as opposed to a major combatant.
If it were plausible that there’d been gross negligence, a formal board of inquiry might have been called. Absent that evidence, an informal finding by the squadron is suffiecient.
Yeah; if it was true, every PCF skipper who lost a Swift Boat in Vietnam would have been court martialed.
By same token it seems accounts from the Japanese side in later years might have been influenced by the fame of their target. It’s still not really clear AFAIK if the destroyer saw the PT boat a long time if at all before the PT saw it, or if it rammed on purpose. Early postwar accounts in English said the DD was unaware, later ones such as linked in the earlier ancient part of thread said not, but the account on Japanese wiki page for Amagiri (linked though it doesn’t machine translate very well unfortunately) says two senior officers on board gave conflicting rudder orders intending to avoid hitting the PT in case it might detonate a torpedo warhead, but in the confusion hit it.
The PT was moving slowly to avoid noise and phosphorescent wake, which was really the only practical way for them to attack larger ships, so it’s not necessarily strange if it couldn’t get out of the way despite seeing the DD around the same time it was spotted. It’s only clear it didn’t spot the DD longer enough before being spotted itself to get out of the way.
US PT’s had limited success hunting larger Japanese warships, succeeding in only a handful of cases, although they were considered a significant nuisance to Japanese destroyer and larger warships’ operations in the Guadalcanal campaign and later became a more serious threat to Japanese slow coastal resupply craft hunting of which, with guns, was becoming the primary mission for PT’s in the Pacific by the time of PT-109’s loss. After that action PT’s only encountered Japanese DD’s a handful more times in the Philippines campaign in 1944 (though that included two of three cases where US PT’s sank IJN DD’s; up to the sinking of PT-109 Terutsuki was the only IJN DD which had been sunk by PT’s, 11-12 Dec 1942 off Guadalcanal; Makigumo was lost near the island to a US mine on Feb 1 1943 with PT’s around). IOW failure was the norm for US PT’s offensive operations against Japanese destroyers, and PT losses to DD’s hadn’t been uncommon though not in the same circumstances.
Well lets see. I’ve been on a number of sailBOATS with fixed masts. so that’s probably not right. I know there are some threads, or a thread, on the subject. I tried to search, but, you know. And a submarine does, in fact, have a mast. But I might go with your other explanation if it didn’t sound like a WAG. Do you have a, um, cite?
It was more due to his politics than his success or failure as a naval officer. He sailed on behalf of the Commonwealth under Cromwell, but was often suspected of having Royalist sympathies, and possibly even providing covert support to the Royalists.
An adept sailor, he eventually saw which way the wind was blowing and was one of the naval officers who brought Charles Stuart back to England to succeed to the Restoration throne, while personally becoming a strong supporter of James, Duke of York, whom Charles put in charge of the Royal Navy.
He died before James succeeded Charles, so we don’t know if he would have changed with the prevailing winds a third time.
See the wiki article: William Penn (Royal Navy officer) - Wikipedia
Qualified in Submarines do it for ya?
You note that Submarines have a mast (several, actually). What else do you know about submarine masts? How about - they retract… i.e. NOT fixed.
Sailboat? Not a naval vessel, not subject to naval conventions. Also: I’m willing to bet you could step that mast down.
Tranq
Qualified in Submarines.
SUBDEVGRU ONE, Det Mare Island
SUBDEVGRU ONE; USS Richard B Russell (SSN 687)
SUBRON3; USS Dixon (AS-37)
Sorry - Misremembered - It’s been a while. SUBRON 11
Traditionally, the definition of a ship was that it had three or more square rigged masts and a full bowsprit, not just a mast.
In the modern Navy a boat is an “uncommissioned waterborne unit of the Fleet, not designated as a service craft, and capable of limited independent operation” and a ship is “a large, seagoing surface vessel having a crew quartered on board and capable of extended independent operation.”
Submarines are called boats out of tradition. They started out as small submersible boats that were launched from a ship and the informal term “boat” stuck although they are officially ships.
The Navy has had at least one submarine with a fixed mast.