PT 109 is a 1963 American Technicolor Panavision biographical war film depicting the actions of John F. Kennedy as an officer of the United States Navy in command of Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109 in the Pacific theater of World War II. The film was adapted by Vincent Flaherty and Howard Sheehan from the book PT 109: John F. Kennedy in World War II by Robert J. Donovan, and the screenplay was written by Richard L. Breen. Cliff Robertson stars as Kennedy, and the film features performances by Ty Hardin, James Gregory, Robert Culp and Grant Williams. PT 109 was the first commercial theatrical film about a sitting U.S. president released while he was still in office (although FDR was often depicted in small roles during his administration, most notably in Yankee Doodle Dandy). It was released domestically on June 19, 1963, five months before Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Plot In August 1942 the American forces are fighting the Japanese in the South Pacific during World War II. Fresh out of PT boat training school in Melville, Rhode Island, U.S. Navy Lieutenant, junior grade John F. Kennedy used his wealthy and powerful family's influence to get himself assigned to the fighting in the Solomon Islands, a hotbed in the Pacific Theater. Once there he lobbies for command and is given the well worn PT 109. Initially, Tulagi's irascible boat maintenance officer Commander C. R. Ritchie is unimpressed with the young, untested Kennedy, but the lieutenant is undaunted. With a hodge-podge crew anchored by Ensign Leonard J. Thom as executive officer and initially skeptical sailors "Bucky" Harris and Edmund Drewitch he gets the 109 seaworthy again. Without enough fuel for the return trip, the PT 109 is dispatched on an emergency mission to evacuate paramarines pinned down on a distant beach after disrupting the Japanese in the Raid on Choiseul. Under heavy fire Kennedy rescues the survivors, but barely gets out of range before his engines die. Drawn shoreward by an incoming tide, the boat and its passengers are saved from disaster when a tow arrives just in time. The 109 is then relocated to a base on Rendova. While on patrol one dark, moonless night in August 1943, the radar-less boat is throttled down and searching for a Japanese convoy returning from a supply mission via "The Slot". Out of nowhere an Imperial Navy destroyer appears, and before Kennedy