The main attraction at Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts, is the 684-foot USS Massachusetts (BB-59), a gray leviathan that dominates the Taunton River waterfront beneath towering Braga Bridge.
Sitting almost literally in the shadow of “Big Mamie,” as the battleship is nicknamed, is the National PT Boat Museum, which commemorates the World War II contributions of the “Mosquito Fleet,” the fast PT (patrol torpedo) boats that occupied the opposite end of the naval scale from the battleships.
Two PT boats are the museum’s centerpieces. PT 617 is an Elco Boat, built by the Electric Boat Company in Bayonne, New Jersey. She is 80 feet long, with a sleek, camouflaged wooden hull. Above decks she bristles with weapons, from the 37-mm and 20-mm guns in the bow to the 40-mrn gun in the stern. She has dual 50-caliber gun mounts port and starboard, as well as depth charges, a torpedo tube, and torpedo rack on each side of her deck.
The PT 796 is a 78-foot Higgins boat from New Orleans. Her hull bears a painted shark’s mouth and beady eyes. Unlike the Elco boat, PT 796, in the process of virtually being rebuilt, is somewhat bare above deck. Only her bow 20-mm and stem 40-mm guns along with two Mk XIII torpedos have been mounted. A bow 37-mm and midships 20-mm guns will soon be placed, but the museum needs help with finding parts for reconstructing her two twin 50-caliber gun mounts.
Neither of the museum’s boats saw action during World War II. PT 617 served as a training boat and a dive platform after the war. She arrived at Battleship Cove in 1986 after five years of restoration by PT Boats, Inc., founded by James M. Newberry in 1967. The company acquired PT 796 after she was decommissioned in 1970 following service at a Navy ordnance testing station in Panama City, Florida, where she was used to develop specialized equipment for Vietnam river patrols. She reached Battleship Cove in 1975.
These craft were tiny compared to battlewagons like the Massachusetts, but from inside the museum’s tight quarters they appear fairly large. “I get that reaction a lot,” says Donald R. Shannon, Battleship Cove’s PT Boat Coordinator. He points out that the vessels would have appeared much smaller on the open ocean. “The amazing thing is these boats sank destroyers,” he says.
The cramped engine room contained three Packard engines, each capable of generating from 1,200 to 1,500 horsepower. They weren’t airplane engines, as wartime propaganda sometimes claimed, but they did bum 100-octane aviation fuel and could propel the boats up to 45 knots.
To avoid wear and tear on the museum’s boats, visitors can’t climb aboard, but they can peer inside through small windows cut into the hulls to see where the crews lived and worked. The quarters may look cramped, but the PT boat crews actually had more room than their counterparts in larger navy vessels.
A typical crew “was more like a family, it was a lot more relaxed than being on a battleship,” Shannon says. “You needed a knowledge of every job on the boat, so it wasn’t as specialized as a larger ship.”
PT boats fought in every theater of operations, but the most famous one served in the Pacific. In August 1943, PT 109 was under the command of Lieutenant (junior grade) John F. Kennedy when a Japanese destroyer sliced through her. Four years ago an expedition led by deep-sea explorer Robert Ballard found wreckage and a torpedo tube 1,200 feet below the surface near the Solomon Islands. A Navy commission determined they were “likely” from Kennedy’s boat.
PT 796 has its own Kennedy connection. Although the sharkmouthed vessel is a Higgins boat, not an Elco as was PT 109, she was painted to portray Kennedy’s command in the 1960 presidential inaugural parade.
They may have been small, but the PT boats of the Mosquito Fleet could deliver a lethal sting. Additional PT boat material is on board the Massachusetts, including exhibit cases devoted to individual squadrons. Many are filled with personal items crew members brought back from the war.
Battleship Cove includes not only the National PT Boat Museum and the USS Massachusetts, but also the destroyer USS Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. (DD-850), the World War II submarine USS Lionfish (SS-298), and other ships, aircraft, and exhibits.
It is open to the public year round except for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day. It opens each day at 9:00 a.m. and closes at 4:30 p.m. in the winter, 5:00 p.m. in the spring and fall, and 5:30 p.m. in the summer. Admission is $14 for adults, $12 for seniors and veterans (with proof of honorable discharge), $6 for active military, and $8 for children ages 6 to 14. Uniformed military personal and children under 6 are free. For more information go to www.battleshipcove.com or call (508) 678-1100.