March. With air cover provided by his four remaining Curtiss P-40 Warhawks, MacArthur and his wife Jean took a half-hour ride on PT-41. Although the sea was tranquil, Jean still felt queasy. Ostensibly, the purpose of MacArthur's visit was presenting Bulkeley with the Distinguished Service Cross for sinking an "unidentified 5,000-ton enemy ship with torpedoes without serious damage to his ship or casualty to his crew", but afterwards MacArthur took Bulkeley aside and asked him if it would be possible to make the journey through uncharted waters at night in PT boats. Bulkeley told him that it would be "a piece of cake." When some days passed without any further word on the matter, follow-up messages were sent on 6 and 9 March. By 10 March, MacArthur had decided that the Bataan front was not in danger of imminent collapse, and replied that he planned to depart on 15 March, when the submarine was scheduled to arrive at Corregidor. Radio broadcasts in the United States calling for MacArthur to be placed in charge in Australia had been picked up by MacArthur's headquarters in Corregidor, and it had to be assumed that the Japanese had heard them too. There were ominous signs: Japanese surface patrols had been stepped up in the Subic Bay area, and there were reports of Japanese destroyers heading north from the southern Philippines. MacArthur therefore elected not to wait for the Permit, but to leave as soon as possible, by PT boat on the night of 11 March. Major General Jonathan M. Wainwright was left in command on Bataan and Corregidor. "When I get back", MacArthur told him, "if you're still on Bataan, I'll make you a lieutenant general." Wainwright replied: "I'll be on Bataan if I'm still alive." Of the decision to depart by PT boat rather than wait for the submarine, Lieutenant Robert B. Kelly, executive officer of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron Three, and commander of PT-34, later recalled: Escape Preparations Bulkeley and his crews overhauled the PT boats for the voyage. All of the engines had performed hard war service, and had been operated for double the recommended mileage without overhaul. As a result, they were reduced to operating at half speed. Since there were no replacement parts, the gaskets, which normally would have been discarded, had to be carefully cleaned and replaced. Each PT boat would carry twenty 55-gallon drums of additional fuel