Where Is the REAL PT-109 Now?

PT-109 was split in two in Blackett Strait, and when Robert Ballard found part of it 59 years later, the other half was still missing. On August 2, 1943, the Elco 80-foot patrol torpedo boat commanded by John F. Kennedy was struck by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri. The wooden boat broke apart, sending its stern down at the collision site while the forward section drifted roughly five miles before sinking. That separation would define the search for decades. In 2002, Ballard's expedition searched thousands of sonar targets in the Solomon Islands before shifting its focus from the missing stern to the drifting bow. Remote vehicles eventually found a Mark 18 torpedo tube, a Mark 8 torpedo, and the training gear associated with PT-109. The evidence was strong enough for the Navy to conditionally identify the wreck, but the site was left undisturbed. Today, the story is more complicated than simply asking where PT-109 is. The discovered section remains deep beneath Blackett Strait, while the stern, where two crewmen died during the collision, has never been found. Meanwhile, surviving artifacts and another Elco PT boat can be seen thousands of miles away, creating an easy confusion between PT-109 itself and the boats and objects that survived it. This is the story of what happened to the real PT-109, how Robert Ballard found its lost bow, and why part of Kennedy's famous boat remains missing. Subscribe for more stories about the final resting places and afterlives of famous warships. #PT109 #RobertBallard #WorldWarII