Remains of JFK's WWII Boat Found

July 10 -- All through his meteoric political career, John F. Kennedy was often asked to tell the story of what happened to him in the South Pacific in World War II. With some embarrassment and a bit of modesty, he usually replied, "They sank my boat."

That moment and that boat — PT 109 — became an important part of his public persona, as famous as Teddy Roosevelt's charge up San Juan Hill nearly 50 years before, and solidified his own image as a genuine hero.

Now, Bob Ballard — the man who located the Titanic — has discovered the remains of PT 109, 1,200 feet down on the bottom of the Pacific. Leading an expedition funded by the National Geographic Society, Ballard, who grew up on Cape Cod where Kennedy often vacationed, found an old torpedo and its rusted launching tube. The Navy identified these as belong to the vessel the future president commanded for 99 days in the spring and summer of 1943.

A Difficult Expedition

Finding it wasn't easy.

"The strong underwater currents we encountered made this unlike any of my past expeditions," Ballard said. "It was like conducting a search in the Sahara Desert during a blinding sandstorm. We needed all our skills and technology plus a healthy dose of luck."

Luck of a different variety — bad — was also instrumental in the loss of the boat.

The PT class (the initials stand for Patrol Torpedo) had first appeared in 1940, before the United States went to war. About 80-feet long and 20 feet wide, they were of plywood construction and, with three powerful engines, lightning fast.

Kennedy Assigned Skipper

Once Kennedy had heard of them, he wanted to command one. After a period of training in Rhode Island, he was dispatched to the Solomon Islands as a 26-year-old lieutenant junior grade. He arrived in April, 1943, a couple of months after the United States captured Guadalcanal from the Japanese, and he was assigned as the new skipper of a boat with the number 109.

Like so many of his generation, he found himself thousands of miles from home, in the middle of a war, in the company of strangers — the 12-man crew he would lead on several missions of harassment against Japanese war-ships in the waters around the Solomon Islands.