Friday, July 30, 1943

July 30, 1943 (Friday)

JFK was at the Lumbari PT base the night after a group of PT boats apparently sink a Japanese barge using gunfire instead of torpedoes. Motivated by this information, Kennedy made the decision to arm PT 109 with a bigger and more powerful gun.

To accomplish this he traveled over to the United States Army base on Rendova and found and received permission to take a thiry-seven-millimeter antitank gun. After lugging it back to his boat, he informed his crew that they were to find a way to fasten this heavy gun to the plywood-built PT 109.

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