A designer drug is a structural or functional analog of a controlled substance that has been designed to mimic the pharmacological effects of the original drug, while avoiding classification as illegal and/or detection in standard drug tests. Designer drugs include psychoactive substances that have been designated by the European Union as new psychoactive substances (NPS) as well as analogs of performance-enhancing drugs such as designer steroids. Some of these were originally synthesized by academic or industrial researchers in an effort to discover more potent derivatives with fewer side effects and shorter duration (and possibly also because it is easier to apply for patents for new molecules) and were later co-opted for recreational use. Other designer drugs were prepared for the first time in clandestine laboratories. Because the efficacy and safety of these substances have not been thoroughly evaluated in animal and human trials, the use of some of these drugs may result in unexpected side effects.

The development of designer drugs may be considered a subfield of drug design. The exploration of modifications to known active drugs—such as their structural analogues, stereoisomers and derivatives—yields drugs that may differ significantly in effects from their "parent" drug (e.g., showing increased potency, or decreased side effects). In some instances, designer drugs have similar effects to other known drugs, but have completely dissimilar chemical structures (e.g. JWH-018 vs THC). Despite being a very broad term, applicable to almost every synthetic drug, it is often used to connote synthetic recreational drugs, sometimes even those which have not been designed at all (e.g. LSD, the psychedelic side effects of which were discovered unintentionally).

In some jurisdictions, drugs that are highly similar in structure to a prohibited drug are illegal to trade regardless of that drug's legal status (or indeed whether or not the structurally similar analogue has similar pharmacological effects). In other jurisdictions, their trade is a legal grey area, making them grey market goods. Some jurisdictions may have analogue laws which ban drugs similar in chemical structure to other prohibited drugs, while some designer drugs may be prohibited irrespective of the legal status of structurally similar drugs; in both cases, their trade may take place on the black market.

History

United States

1920s–1930s
Following the passage of the second International Opium Convention in 1925, which specifically banned morphine and the diacetyl ester of morphine, heroin, a number of alternative esters of morphine quickly started to be manufactured and sold. The most notable of these were dibenzoylmorphine and acetylpropionylmorphine, which have virtually identical effects to heroin but were not covered by the Opium Convention. This then led the Health Committee of the League of Nations to pass several resolutions attempting to bring these new drugs under control, ultimately leading in 1930 to the first broad analogues provisions extending legal control to all esters of morphine, oxycodone and hydromorphone. Another early example of what could loosely be termed designer drug use, was during the Prohibition era in the 1930s, when diethyl ether was sold and used as an alternative to illegal alcoholic beverages in a number of countries.

1960s–1970s
During the 1960s and 1970s, a number of new synthetic hallucinogens were introduced, with a notable example being the sale of highly potent tablets of DOM in San Francisco in 1967. There was little scope to prosecute people over drug analogues at this time, with new compounds instead being added to the controlled drug schedules one by one as they became a problem. One significant court case from this period was in 1973, when Tim Scully and Nicholas Sand were prosecuted for making the acetyl amide of LSD, known as ALD-52. At this time ALD-52 was not a controlled drug, but they were convicted on the grounds that in order to make ALD-52, they would have had to be in possession of LSD, which was illegal. The late 1970s also saw the introduction of various analogues of phencyclidine (PCP) to the illicit market.

1980s–early 1990s
The modern use of the term designer drug was coined in the 1980s to refer to various synthetic opioid drugs, based mostly on the fentanyl molecule (such as α-methylfentanyl). The term gained widespread popularity when MDMA (ecstasy) experienced a popularity boom in the mid-1980s. When the term was coined in the 1980s, a wide range of narcotics were being sold as heroin on the black market. Many were based on fentanyl or meperidine. One, MPPP, was found in some cases to contain an impurity called MPTP, which caused brain damage that could result in a syndrome identical to late stage Parkinson's disease, from only a single dose. Other problems were highly potent fentanyl analogues that caused many accidental overdoses.

Because the government was powerless to prosecute people for these drugs until after they had been marketed successfully, laws were passed to give the DEA power to emergency schedule chemicals for a year, with an optional 6-month extension, while gathering evidence to justify permanent scheduling, as well as the analogue laws mentioned previously. Emergency-scheduling power was used for the first time for MDMA. In this case, the DEA scheduled MDMA as a Schedule I drug and retained this classification after review, even though their own judge ruled that MDMA should be classified Schedule III on the basis of its demonstrated uses in medicine. The emergency scheduling power has subsequently been used for a variety of other drugs including 2C-B, AMT, and BZP. In 2004, a piperazine drug, TFMPP, became the first drug that had been emergency-scheduled to be denied permanent scheduling and revert to legal status.

The late 1980s and early 1990s also saw the re-emergence of methamphetamine in the United States as a widespread public health issue, leading to increasing controls on precursor chemicals in an attempt to cut down on domestic manufacture of the drug. This led to several alternative stimulant drugs emerging, the most notable ones being methcathinone and 4-methylaminorex, but, despite attracting enough attention from authorities to provoke legal scheduling of these compounds, their distribution was relatively limited in extent and methamphetamine continued to dominate the illicit synthetic stimulant market overall.

Late 1990s–2004
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was a huge explosion in designer drugs being sold over the internet. The term and concept of "research chemicals" was coined by some marketers of designer drugs (in particular, of psychedelic drugs in the tryptamine and phenethylamine family). The idea was that, by selling the chemicals as for "scientific research" rather than human consumption, the intent clause of the U.S. analogue drug laws would be avoided. Nonetheless, the DEA raided multiple suppliers, first JLF Primary Materials, and then multiple vendors (such as RAC Research) several years later in Operation Web Tryp. This process was accelerated greatly when vendors began advertising via search engines like Google by linking their sites to searches on key words such as chemical names and terms like psychedelic or hallucinogen. Widespread discussion of consumptive use and the sources for the chemicals in public forums also drew the attention of the media and authorities.

In 2004, the US Drug Enforcement Administration raided and shut down several Internet-based research chemical vendors in an operation called Web Tryp. With help from the authorities in India and China, two chemical manufacturers were also closed. Many other internet-based vendors promptly stopped doing business, even though their products were still legal throughout much of the world.

Most substances that were sold as "research chemicals" in this period of time are hallucinogens and bear a chemical resemblance to drugs such as psilocybin and mescaline. As with other hallucinogens, these substances are often taken for the purposes of facilitating spiritual processes, mental reflection or recreation. Some research chemicals on the market were not psychoactive, but can be used as precursors in the synthesis of other potentially psychoactive substances, for example, 2C-H, which could be used to make 2C-B and 2C-I among others. Extensive surveys of structural variations have been conducted by pharmaceutical corporations, universities and independent researchers over the last century, from which some of the presently available research chemicals derive. One particularly notable researcher is Dr. Alexander Shulgin, who presented syntheses and pharmacological explorations of hundreds of substances in the books TiHKAL and PiHKAL (co-authored with Ann Shulgin), and has served as an expert witness for the defense in several court cases against manufacturers of psychoactive drugs.

The majority of chemical suppliers sold research chemicals in bulk form as powder, not as pills, as selling in pill form would invalidate the claims that they were being sold for non-consumptive research. Active dosages vary widely from substance to substance, ranging from micrograms to hundreds of milligrams, but while it is critical for the end user to weigh doses with a precision scale, instead of guessing ("eyeballing"), many users did not do this and this led to many emergency room visits and several deaths, which were a prominent factor leading to the emergency scheduling of several substances and eventually Operation Web Tryp. Some compounds such as 2C-B and 5-Meo-DiPT did eventually increase in popularity to the point that they were sold in pill form to reach a wider market, and acquired popular street names ("Nexus" and "Foxy," respectively). Once a chemical reaches this kind of popularity, it is usually just a matter of time before it is added to the list of scheduled (i.e., illegal) drugs.

The late 1990s and early 2000s also saw the first widespread use of novel anabolic steroids by athletes in competition. Steroids had been banned by the International Olympic Committee since 1976, but due to the large number of different anabolic agents available for human and veterinary use, the ability of laboratories to test for all available drugs had always lagged behind the ability of athletes to find new compounds to use. The introduction of increasingly formalised testing procedures, especially with the creation of the World Anti-Doping Agency in 1999, made it much more difficult for athletes to get away with using these drugs without detection, which then led to the synthesis of novel and potent anabolic steroid drugs such as tetrahydrogestrinone (THG), which were not detectable by the standard tests.

2005–2016
While through recent history most designer drugs had been either opioids, hallucinogens, or anabolic steroids, the range of possible compounds is limited only by the scientific and patent literature, and recent years have been characterised by a broadening of the range of compounds sold as designer drugs. These have included a wide variety of designer stimulants such as geranamine, mephedrone, MDPV and desoxypipradrol, several designer sedatives such as methylmethaqualone and premazepam, and designer analogues of sildenafil (Viagra), which have been reported as active compounds in "herbal" aphrodisiac products. Designer cannabinoids are another recent development, with two compounds JWH-018 and (C8)-CP 47,497 initially found in December 2008 as active components of "herbal smoking blends" sold as legal alternatives to marijuana. Subsequently, a growing range of synthetic cannabinoid agonists have continued to appear, including by 2010, novel compounds such as RCS-4, RCS-8, and AB-001, which had never been reported in the literature, and appear to have been invented by designer drug manufacturers themselves. Another novel development is the use of research ligands for cosmetic rather than strictly recreational purposes, such as grey-market internet sales of the non-approved alpha-melanocyte-stimulating hormone tanning drugs known as melanotan peptides.

Mephedrone and the cathinones marked somewhat of a turning point for designer drugs, turning them from little known, ineffective substances sold in head shops to powerful substances able to compete with classical drugs on the black market. Mephedrone especially experienced a somewhat meteoric rise in popularity in 2009 and the resulting media panic resulted in its prohibition in multiple countries. Following this there was a considerable emergence of other cathinones which attempted to mimic the effects of mephedrone, and with a newly attracted customer base, plenty of money to drive innovation.

Subsequently, the market rapidly expanded, with more and more substances being detected every year. In 2009, the EMCDDA's early warning system discovered 24 new drugs. In 2010, it found another 41; in 2011, another 49; and in 2012, there were 73 more. In 2013, a further 81 were identified: a total of 268 new drugs in just four years. These have not been limited to cathinones, with 35% being cannabinoids and the rest being composed of stimulants, benzodiazepines, psychedelics, dissociatives and to a lesser extent, every other class of drugs, even ibogoids and nootropics. The largest group of drugs being monitored by the EMCDDA is synthetic cannabinoids, with 209 different synthetic cannabinoids reported between 2008 and 2021 - including 11 new cannabinoids identified for the first time in 2020.

Present day
The perceived (though unsubstantiated) safety and legal difficulty of regulating peptides has spurred the growth of grey-market synthetic peptide hormone vendors. The peptide drugs sold on these website are largely non-recreational and sold for their purported anti-aging, performance enhancing, and cosmetic benefits. Some such vendors employ medical professionals and take clear precautions to ensure the legal ambiguity of their operations. While more legally controversial research chemicals continue to be developed and sold online, the recent growth of peptide 'research chemical' vendors has widened the accessibility and reach of the research chemical market substantially.

Safety
The safety of research chemicals is untested and little if any research has been done on the toxicology or pharmacology of most of these drugs. Few, if any, human or animal studies have been done. Many research compounds have produced unexpected side-effects and adverse incidents due to the lack of screening for off-target effects prior to marketing; both bromo-dragonfly and mephedrone seem to be capable of producing pronounced vasoconstriction under some circumstances, which has resulted in several deaths, although the mechanism remains unclear. Substituted phenethylamines such as the 2C family and substituted amphetamines such as the DOx family have also caused a limited number of deaths.

Law

Due to the recent development of many designer drugs, laws banning or regulating their use have not been developed yet, and in recent cases novel drugs have appeared directly in response to legislative action, to replace a similar compound that had recently been banned. Many of the chemicals fall under the various drug analogue legislations in certain countries, but most countries have no general analogue act or equivalent legislation and so novel compounds may fall outside of the law after only minor structural modifications.

In the United States, the Controlled Substances Act was amended by the Controlled Substance Analogue Enforcement of 1986, which attempted to ban designer drugs pre-emptively by making it illegal to manufacture, sell, or possess chemicals that were substantially similar in chemistry and pharmacology to Schedule I or Schedule II drugs.

Other countries have dealt with the issue differently. In some, the new drugs are banned as they become a concern, as in Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Sweden. In Sweden, the police and customs may also seize drugs that are not on the list of drugs covered by the anti-drug laws if the police suspect that the purpose of the holding is related to drug abuse. Following a decision by a prosecutor, the police may destroy the seized drugs.

In Ireland, the Criminal Justice (Psychoactive Substances) Act 2010 bans substances based on their psychoactive effect, and was introduced as a catch-all to address the time lag between new substances appearing and their being banned individually. In the United Kingdom, the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 adopts a similar approach.

Some countries, such as Australia, have enacted generic bans but based on chemical structure rather than psychoactive effect: if a chemical fits a set of rules regarding substitutions and alterations of an already-banned drug, then it too is banned. Brazil adopted the same model as Australia, in a recent ruling from ANVISA, which is responsible to define what constitute drugs.

Temporary class drug

A temporary class drug is a relatively new status for controlled drugs, which has been adopted in some jurisdictions, notably New Zealand and the United Kingdom, to attempt to bring newly synthesized designer drugs under legal control. The controlled drug legislation in these jurisdictions requires drug scheduling decisions to follow an evidence-based process, where the harms of the drug are assessed and reviewed so that an appropriate legal status can be assigned. Since many designer drugs sold in recent years have had little or no published research that could help inform such a decision, they have been widely sold as "legal highs", often for months, before sufficient evidence accumulates to justify placing them on the controlled drug schedules.

Common names
In the UK to avoid being controlled by the Medicines Act, designer drugs such as mephedrone have been described as "plant food," despite the compounds having no history of being used for these purposes.

In the US, similar descriptions ("bath salts" is the most common) have been used to describe mephedrone as well as methylone and methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV). Combined with labeling that they are "not for human consumption," these descriptions are an attempt to skirt the Federal Analog Act which forbids drugs that are "substantially similar" to already classified drugs from being sold for human use.

Synthetic cannabinoids are known under a variety of names including K2, Spice, Black Mamba, Bombay Blue, Genie, Zohai, Banana Cream Nuke, Krypton, and Lava Red. They are often called "synthetic marijuana," "herbal incense," or "herbal smoking blends" and often labeled "not for human consumption."

List

See also
 Controlled Substances Act
 Controlled Substance Analogue Enforcement of 1986
 Controlled Drugs and Substances Act
 New chemical entity
 Operation Web Tryp
 Federal Analogue Act
 Pharmaceutical company
 Psychoactive Substances Act 2013 – New Zealand
 Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 – UK ban on all drugs based on psychoactive effect
 Research chemical

References

External links

Substances and classifications table (31/10/2008) – European Legal Database on Drugs  Report on all substances controlled in at least one EU country in XLS format
Designer Drug Compound List  at Chemograph Plus, DigiLab Software GmbH

Drug culture
Ethically disputed business practices
Harm reduction

Designer drug


The Battle of Kirksville was a battle in the American Civil War, fought in the town of Kirksville, Missouri, on August 6, 1862. The Union victory helped consolidate Federal control over northeastern Missouri.

Battle

Confederate Col. Joseph C. Porter had been recruiting in the Macon area, to the south of Kirksville. He had assembled a brigade of between 1,500 and 2,500 ill-trained and poorly equipped troops, but his irregulars had harried and recruited as far north as Memphis, Missouri. Confederate sympathies in the Kirksville area were high (though Union sentiment was stronger than in surrounding counties), due to the Southern heritage of most of the residents. Porter had been urged to come to Kirksville by Confederate Captain Tice Cain, an Adair County farmer who claimed to be holding Kirksville with 500 fresh recruits. (In one of the battle's mysteries, Cain disappeared and was never heard from again, according to a descendant.)

Union Colonel John McNeil of the 2nd Missouri Cavalry Regiment and his troops, totalling about 1,000, had been pursuing Porter for more than a week. Before noon on August 6, McNeil attacked Porter in the town of Kirksville, where the Confederates had concealed themselves in homes and stores and among the crops in the nearby fields, especially in the county courthouse and the commercial buildings on the square. Their presence was discovered by a Union detachment that volunteered to ride around the square in order to draw fire and cause the Confederates to reveal themselves — an act of courage which cost two Union soldiers their lives. McNeil deployed his artillery before moving in a broad line towards the town square. The subsequent cannon fire demoralized the defenders, some of whom retreated behind a rail fence, west of the square.

The Union troops then advanced in two wings, with Lt. Col. William F. Shaffer of the 2nd Missouri in command of the Union right wing and Major Henry Clay Caldwell of the 3rd Iowa Cavalry Regiment in charge of the left. As the two wings met, they succeeded in driving the Confederates from the courthouse. Porter's remaining forces yielded ground and joined the others behind the rail fence. From this position, the Confederates poured heavy fire into McNeil's men, but were ultimately overwhelmed. The battle began at 11 a.m. and was over by 2 p.m.

The Federals then secured the town, capturing numerous prisoners, and driving away the remaining Confederates. Three days later, another Union force arrived and finished the work begun at Kirksville, virtually destroying Porter's command.

Aftermath
According to a letter by resident J. Martin, written a week after the battle, Confederate dead numbered about 200; Union 30. McNeill's official tally was 150 Confederates killed (300-400 wounded) against 6 Union deaths (32 wounded). Two civilian casualties were noted: James Dye, a sixty-year-old farmer with two sons in the Union army, was held overnight by Porter during his approach to the town, then told to be on his way, but shot as he left. The other was Mrs. Elizabeth Cutts (also given as "Kutz" and "Coots"). Most Kirksville residents had heeded Porter's warning to depart, but Cutts was shot when two Confederate soldiers attempted to enter the cellar where she was hiding, and she was hit by a Union bullet meant for them as she ran out.

John L. Porter, a prominent local citizen (no relation to the Confederate leader), asked for and was granted permission to treat the Confederate wounded. McNeil supplied a surgeon and instruments, the departed Porter having previously commandeered all medical equipment. The Confederate dead were deposited in several mass graves in Forest Llewellen Cemetery; a monument now marks the spot. Some were later recovered by their families. Fifteen Confederates were quickly court-martialed on McNeil's orders and executed for having violated previous parole agreements not to take up arms again until exchanged. Although the execution was permissible within military norms, it was seldom done and McNeil has been criticized for both the justice and necessity of the proceedings, by John L. Porter (see Kirksville Daily Express, 1912, below) and Joseph Mudd (see references to Palmyra massacre), among others.

A number of other questionable shootings followed, including those of Dr. John Davis (said by some to have been told to run and then shot when he did) and Lt. Col. Frisby McCullough — a subordinate of Porter who was tried and sentenced to death as a bushwhacker, even though he was captured wearing a regular Confederate uniform and carrying letters authorizing him to recruit troops. He was granted permission to give the order to fire, and his final words were, "May God forgive you for this cold-blooded murder. Aim at the heart. Fire!" A second volley was necessary.

McNeil's reputation would be darkened further by the "Palmyra Massacre" on October 18, but he would go on to serve two terms as Sheriff of St. Louis County, dying June 7, 1891. Porter died February 18, 1863, of wounds received in an engagement at Hartville.

The victory at Kirksville helped consolidate Union dominance in northeastern Missouri.

Memorial Park (the approximate location of the Union artillery) commemorates the battle.

Gallery

Notes

Sources, references and links
 National Park Service account
 A Book of Adair County History, Kirksville, The Kirksville-Adair County Bicentennial Committee, 1976.
 A History of Lewis, Clark, Knox and Scotland Counties, Missouri (detailed account from 1887)
 County history
 Contemporary news dispatches
 Eyewitness accounts, and E.M. Violette's detailed history, from the Kirksville Daily Express Fiftieth Anniversary coverage
 List of casualties
 CWSAC Report Update

Operations North of Boston Mountains
Union victories of the American Civil War
Battles of the Trans-Mississippi Theater of the American Civil War
Battles of the American Civil War in Missouri
Adair County, Missouri
1862 in the American Civil War
1862 in Missouri
August 1862 events

Battle of Kirksville


A virtual particle is a short-lived particle, similar to an ordinary particle, but it cannot be directly detected. Virtual particles can suddenly appear in the vacuum and then quickly disappear. They can also be emitted by real particles and interact with other particles. In both cases their lifetime is limited by the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. They interact also with macroscopic objects and, for example, cause the attraction of two metal plates in a vacuum. This phenomenon is called the Casimir effect (predicted by Hendrik Casimir in 1948)

References

Quantum mechanics

Virtual particle


Farida Karoney is a Kenyan who was nominated by President Uhuru Kenyatta as Cabinet Secretary for Lands, on 26 January 2018. Immediately prior to her present position, she served as the chief operating officer (COO) of the Royal Media Services (RMS), a media conglomerate that includes radio and television stations. Before that, she served as the Group Editorial Director at RMS.

Background and education
Farida Karoney attended the Kenyatta University, from 1989 until 1992, graduating with a Bachelor of Science Education degree in Botany and Zoology. She then went on to the University of Nairobi (UoN), where she obtained a Postgraduate Diploma in Mass Communication, in 1996, after one year of study. She enrolled in the MBA degree course at UoN in 2005, graduating in 2008 with a Master of Business Administration, specializing in Strategy. Later, she obtained a Doctor of Philosophy degree, also from UoN, specializing in strategic management.

Career
For a period of less than one year, in 1993, Farida taught Biology at Khamis High School in Mombasa. In June 1994, she joined Kenya Television Network (KTN), first as a freelance correspondent, then as a reporter, rising to the position of Features Editor, at the time she left KTN in December 2000.

In January 2001, she joined the Nation Media Group (NMG), as an editor and rising to the rank of Associate Editor by July 2004, when she left NMG. She then worked as the Managing Editor at The Standard Group, for a period of two years, from September 2004 until August 2006.

From there, Farida worked as a freelance contributor to
Radio France Internationale, working in that capacity for about one year, between 2006 and 2007. For the last six months of that period, she also freelanced for the Al Jazeera English language network, as a producer.

In 2007  she went back to Standard Media Group and worked as the Head of Editorial at their flagship TV station, KTN, for about one year. During that period, she concurrently served as the Assistant Director for broadcasting at Standard Group Limited, until December 2008. For five consecutive years, beginning in February 2009, Farida Karoney served as the Group Editorial Director at Royal Media Services, until 2014. In August 2014, she was promoted to the position of chief operating officer, at RMS, a position she occupied at the time of her nomination to become the Cabinet Secretary for Lands.

See also
 Amina Mohamed
 Raychelle Omamo
 Margaret Kobia

References

External links
Website of the Kenya Ministry of Lands and Physical Planning

Living people
Kenyatta University alumni
University of Nairobi alumni
Kenyan radio journalists
Kenyan women radio journalists
Kenyan television journalists
Kenyan women television journalists
Kenyan politicians
21st-century Kenyan women politicians
21st-century Kenyan politicians
1969 births

Farida Karoney


In the Chokwe people of Central Africa, the chikunga is a sacred ceremonial mask. Of the many ceremonial masks, the chikunga is considered to be the most powerful, and it is only worn by the tribal chief. The chikunga mask is made by stretching barkcloth over an array of wicker bits. It then is painted black with red and white designs. It is typically used during the coronation of a chief, or during sacrifices to the ancestors.

Chokwe

Chikunga


A PT boat (short for patrol torpedo boat) was a motor torpedo boat used by the United States Navy in World War II.  It was small, fast, and inexpensive to build, valued for its maneuverability and speed but hampered at the beginning of the war by ineffective torpedoes, limited armament, and comparatively fragile construction that limited some of the variants to coastal waters. In the US Navy they were organized in Motor Torpedo Boat Squadrons (MTBRONs).<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://www.history.navy.mil/research/archives/digitized-collections/action-reports/wwii-pearl-harbor-attack/motor-torpedo-squadron-one-action-report.html |title=Motor Torpedo Squadron ONE, Report for Pearl Harbor Attack, Naval History and Heritage Command |access-date=29 February 2020 |archive-date=11 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200811063151/https://www.history.navy.mil/research/archives/digitized-collections/action-reports/wwii-pearl-harbor-attack/motor-torpedo-squadron-one-action-report.html |url-status=dead }}</ref>

The PT boat was very different from the first generation of torpedo boat, which had been developed at the end of the 19th century and featured a displacement hull form. These first generation torpedo boats rode low in the water, displaced up to 300 tons, and had a top speed of . During World War I Italy, the US, and UK developed the first high-performance, gasoline-powered motor torpedo boats (often with top speeds over ) and corresponding torpedo tactics, but these projects were all quickly disbanded after the Armistice. Design of World War II PT boats continued to exploit some of the advances in planing hull design borrowed from offshore powerboat racing and used multiple lightweight but more powerful marinized aircraft-derived V-12 engines, and thus were able to advance in both size and speed.

During World War II, PT boats engaged enemy warships, transports, tankers, barges, and sampans. Some were converted into gunboats which could be effective against enemy small craft, especially armored barges used by the Japanese for inter-island transport. Several saw service with the Philippine Navy, where they were named "Q-boats". Primary anti-ship armament on the standard PT boat was four 21-inch Mark 8 torpedoes, each had a  TNT warhead and had a range of  at . Two twin .50-inch (12.7 mm) M2 Browning heavy machine guns were mounted for anti-aircraft defense and general fire support. Some boats carried a  Oerlikon cannon. Propulsion was via a trio of Packard 4M-2500 and later 5M-2500 supercharged gasoline-fueled, liquid-cooled V-12 marine engines.

Nicknamed "the mosquito fleet" and "devil boats" by the Japanese, the PT boat squadrons were hailed for their daring and earned a durable place in the public imagination that remains strong into the 21st century. Their role was replaced in the U.S. Navy by fast attack craft.

Development
At the outbreak of war in August 1914, W. Albert Hickman devised the first procedures and tactics for employing fast maneuverable seaworthy torpedo motorboats against capital ships, and he presented his proposal to Rear Admiral David W. Taylor, the chief of the US Navy's Bureau of Construction and Repair. In September 1914, Hickman completed plans for a  "Sea Sled" torpedo boat and submitted these to the Navy in hopes of obtaining a contract. While favorably received, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels rejected the proposal since the US was not at war, but Hickman was advised to submit his plans and proposal to the British Admiralty, which was done the following month. The Admiralty found it interesting but thought that "no fast boat of 50' to 60'
length would be sufficiently seaworthy", so Hickman built and launched his own privately financed  sea sled capable of carrying a single 18-inch Whitehead Mark 5 torpedo. In February 1915, this Hickman sea sled demonstrated  speeds in rough winter seas off Boston to both US and foreign representatives, but again he received no contracts. The Admiralty representative for this sea sled demonstration was Lieutenant G.C.E. Hampden. In the summer of 1915, Lieutenants Hampden, Bremner, and Anson approached John I. Thornycroft & Company about developing a small high speed torpedo boat, and this effort eventually led to the Coastal Motor Boat which first went into service in April 1916.

Meanwhile, in August 1915, the General Board of the United States Navy approved the purchase of a single experimental small torpedo boat that could be transportable. This contract for C-250 ended up going to Greenport Basin and Construction Company. When it was delivered and tested in the summer of 1917, it was not deemed a success, so a second boat (C-378) of the sea sled design was ordered from Hickman in either late 1917 or early 1918 (conflicting dates). Using his previous design from September 1914 and the previous unsuccessful bid for C-250, the C-378 was completed and fully tested just in time to be cancelled as a result of the Armistice. With a full loaded weight of , C-378 made a top speed of  with , and maintained an average speed of  in a winter northeaster storm with  seas, which would still be considered exceptional even 100 years later.

The sea sled did not surface again as a torpedo boat topic until 1939 but continued to be used by both the Army and Navy as rescue boats and seaplane tenders during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1922, the US Navy reconsidered using small internal combustion engine powered torpedo boats. As a result, two types— and —of British Royal Navy Coastal Motor Boats were obtained for testing. The larger boat was used for experiments until 1930. In 1938, the US Navy renewed their investigation into the concept by requesting competitive bids for several different types of motor torpedo boats but excluded Hickman's sea sled. This competition led to eight prototype boats built to compete in two different classes. The first class was for  boats, and the second class was for  boats. The resulting PT boat designs were the product of a small cadre of respected naval architects and the Navy.

Design competition
On 11 July 1938 the Navy issued multiple 'notice of competitions' for proposals of  design of four separate types of boat: a 165-foot subchaser, a 110-foot subchaser, a 70-foot motor torpedo boat, and a 54-foot motor torpedo boat.
The winning design proposals would each receive a prize of $15,000 with $1,500 for designs that reached the final part of the competition each to be given out on 30 March 1939.

The larger boat proposal was not to exceed 80 feet and was to carry at least two 21-inch torpedoes, four depth charges, and two .50-cal machine guns. The performance specification was to achieve 40 knots with an operating radius of 275 miles at top speed (550 miles at cruising speed). The smaller boat proposal was to weigh no more than 20 tons so that it could be easily transported by larger cargo ships. Its maximum top speed was also to be 40 knots, but specified operating radius was to be 120 miles at top speed and 240 miles at cruising speed. Equipped armament for the smaller proposal was to be either two torpedoes and two depth charges, or .50-cal machine guns and a smokescreen generator.

By September 1938 the U.S. Navy had received 24 design proposals for the small boat and 13 design proposals for the larger 70-footer. Of those proposals submitted, three 54-ft designs and five 70-ft designs were of interest, and the designers were asked to submit more detailed plans for both the 54 and 70 foot boats by no later than 7 November. On 21 March 1939 Sparkman & Stephens won the prize in the 70-foot class, and George Crouch (for Henry B. Nevins, Inc.) had won the design proposal for the 54-foot class. After winning the design competition for the smaller PT boat, Crouch wrote that Hickman's sea sled design would be far superior "in either rough or smooth water to that of the best possible V-bottom or hard chine design". Earlier when sea sleds were specifically excluded, Crouch had informed the Bureau of Ships that the sea sled was the best type of vessel for the job.

Following the competition, contracts were placed for construction of boats: 25 May 1939 to Higgins Industries for two boats (PT5 and PT6) of the Sparkman & Stephens design, scaled up to an overall length of 81 feet; 8 June 1939 to Fogal Boat Yard (PT-1 and PT-2) and Fisher Boat Works (PT-3 and PT-4) for the Crouch design; to the Philadelphia Navy Yard (PT-7, PT-8) for 81-foot boats designed by the Bureau of Ships. These last two boats were constructed mainly out of aluminum and had 4 engines. Higgins built an additional PT-6 "Prime" redesigned by Andrew Higgins personally using his own methods. Later that same year, Higgins built PT-70 (at their own expense) that incorporated slight improvements over PT-6 Prime.

Later, rigorous testing performed on each design as well as changes in armament revealed limitations or problems that had to be fixed before they could meet required performance specifications. As a result, the Navy ordered further investigation and refinement of the existing designs until a satisfactory working design could be obtained. At the same time, Henry R. Sutphen of Electric Launch Company (Elco) and his designers (Irwin Chase, Bill Fleming, and Glenville Tremaine) visited the United Kingdom in February 1939 at the Navy's request to see British motor torpedo boat designs with a view to obtaining one that could be used as a check on the Navy's efforts. While visiting the British Power Boat Company, they purchased a  private venture motor torpedo boat (MTB) design—PV70, later renamed PT-9—designed by the power boat racer Hubert Scott-Paine. PT-9 was to serve as the prototype for all the early Elco PT boats. After the initial competition, in late 1939 the Navy contracted Elco to build 11 copies of PT-9.

On 11 October 1940 an agreement between the Navy and Huckins Yacht Corporation was finalized. The Navy would provide engines and Huckins would build a PT boat at their own expense, with the caveat that the boat (upon completion) would be offered to the Navy for a later sum. This  boat (designated MT-72) later became PT-69. Huckins reported a profit of $28.60 on this transaction.

Plywood Derby
Background
In March 1941, during a heavy weather run from Key West to New York by Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 2 (MTBRON 2), Elco 70-footers pounded heavily in  waves even at moderate speeds, and seas continuously broke high over the bows. Operating personnel reported extreme discomfort and fatigue. All boats suffered from some sort of structural failure: forward chine guards ripped away, bottom framing under bows broken, side planking cracked [indicating lack of longitudinal strength], and other weaknesses were reported. In April MTBRON 1 reported enthusiasm over the 81-foot Higgins (PT-6), and with the PT-6 showing such good seakeeping, further purchase of Scott-Paine boats was unnecessary. In early 1941 the U.S. Navy Bureau of Ships lent Packard engines to both Huckins and Higgins, which wanted to build competitive boats at their own expense.

A Chief of Naval Operations PT Boat Conference convened in May 1941 to discuss future PT characteristics. All PTs prior to the  Elcos had been found defective, and it was probable the extended  Elco would not be an improvement. The conference recommended a series of comparative tests to evaluate what turned out to be five new designs of motor torpedo boats. The conference strongly recommended that no more Elco 77-footers be ordered until the tests had shown that they were indeed satisfactory.

Board of Inspection and Survey
The Board of Inspection and Survey, headed by Rear Admiral John W. Wilcox, Jr., conducted comparative service tests off New London, Connecticut, from 21 to 24 July 1941, using the following boats:

 PT-6:  Higgins; 3 Packard  engines.
 PT-8:  Philadelphia Navy Yard; aluminum hull; 2 Allison  engines, 1 Hall-Scott  engine.
 PT-20:  Elco; 3 Packard  engines; equipped with special propellers; special strengthening added to hull framing and deck.
 PT-26, -30, -31, -33: Same as PT-20, except with standard propellers and without special strengthening.
 PT-69:  Huckins; 4 Packard  engines.
 PT-70:  Higgins; 3 Packard  engines.
 One  MRB-8 (Motor Rescue Boat), built for the Royal Navy by Higgins; 3 Hall-Scott  engines.

Each member of the board conducted an independent inspection of every boat class, evaluating them for structural sufficiency, habitability, access, arrangement for attack control, and communication facilities. Boats were also evaluated under two conditions of armament loading: loaded and fully equipped with four  torpedoes and sufficient fuel to operate 500 NM at 20 knots; and fully loaded with two  torpedoes and ten  depth charges with sufficient fuel to operate  at . Boats would have their tactical parameters of each design determined by photographs from an airship.

First open-ocean trial
Lastly, there was a demonstration of seakeeping qualities and hull strength by making a run at maximum sustained speed in the open ocean. An accelerometer was installed in the pilot house of each boat to record "pounding". Conducted on 24 July 1941, this open-water trial,  at full throttle, was referred to by PT personnel as the "Plywood Derby". The course started from the mouth of New London Harbor, to Sarah Ledge, then led around the eastern end of Block Island, then around Fire Island Lightship, finishing at Montauk Point Whistling Buoy.

At the time, only the Elco 77-footers were loaded with armament. The other competitors had copper ingots added topside (mostly in the turrets) to make up the difference. This resulted in severe conditions for several of the boats during the trial and accounted for the transverse failure in PT-70s deck and subsequent hull failure as the copper fell into the hull. Nine boats participated in the trial. Six boats completed the trial, while three withdrew: PT-33 suffered structural damage off Block Island; PT-70 was damaged by loose copper ingots; and MRB developed engine trouble at the start of the run.

By class, PT-20, an Elco 77-footer, came in first with an average speed of ; followed by PT-31, with an average speed of ; PT-69, the Huckins  boat, was third with an average speed of ; PT-6, the Higgins 81-footer, with an average speed of  was fifth; and PT-8, the Philadelphia Navy Yard boat, was last, at . The other two Elco boats, PT-30 and PT 23 (standby boat), followed PT-31, placing before PT-69.

The accelerometers ranked the boats as follows: first was the Philadelphia Navy Yard PT-8 with the least pounding, second was the Huckins PT-69, third was the Higgins PT-6, and last were the Elco 77-footers.

Second open-ocean trial
Because of the problem with ingot loading, a  trial with the PTs fully fitted out was conducted on 12 August 1941. Four boats—PT-8, PT-69, PT-70, and MRB—returned and Elco sent two new boats, PT-21 and PT-29. During this trial, boats faced heavier seas, as high as . All except the Huckins (PT-69) completed the run. The Huckins withdrew because of a bilge stringer failure. The Higgins 76-footer (PT-70) completed the entire run but also suffered structural failures: attachments between planking and web frames pulled loose and deck fastenings near engine hatches showed extensive failures. PT-21 suffered minor cracks in the deck in the same location, but not to the same extent, as previously observed in PT-26, PT-30, and PT-33. PT-29 was assigned as a pace boat with PT-8 in order to generate a pounding comparison.

The average speed results from the  course were: Elco 77-footer (PT-21), ; Higgins 76-footer (PT-70), ; Higgins MRB and Philadelphia Navy Yard boat (PT-8), . Accelerometers were again installed in the pilot house of each boat, but the readings were incomplete because the violent motion of the boats made observations difficult and in some cases necessitated abandonment of the observing stations. Further, many of those taken were beyond the normal range of the instruments and were considered inaccurate. Elco boats were found to pound heavily and confirmed previous reports of crew discomfort.

Findings
The Elco 77-Footer Design Demonstrates:
 Ability to make a maximum sustained speed of 39.7 knots; maximum speed 44.1 knots with heavy ordnance load.
 Maneuverability satisfactory except for a large turning circle of .
 Space available for four 21" torpedo tubes.
 Structural weaknesses resulting in transverse fractures of deck planking.
 Tendency to pound heavily in a seaway.
 Fittings and finish unnecessarily refined.
 Cost to the Government fully equipped $302,100.

The Huckins 72-Foot Design Demonstrates:
 Ability to make a maximum sustained speed of 33.8 knots; maximum speed 43.8 knots with light ordnance load.
 Maneuverability satisfactory with a turning circle of .
 Space available for two 21" torpedo tubes and ten  depth charges.
 Structural weaknesses resulting in fracture of bilge stringers.
 Very little tendency to pound in a seaway.
 Fittings and finish appropriate for a motor torpedo boat.
 Cost to the Government fully equipped $263,500.

The Navy Yard Philadelphia 81-Foot Design Demonstrates:
 Ability to make a maximum sustained speed of 30.7 knots; maximum speed 33.9 knots with light ordnance load.
 Maneuverability unsatisfactory due to inability to reverse outboard engines with a large turning circle of
 Space available for two 21" torpedo tubes and ten  depth charges.
 Structural strength is adequate.
 Tendency to pound severely in a seaway.
 Fittings (Navy standard for combatant ships) entirely too heavy and cumbersome for this type of craft. Finish adequate.
 Cost to the Government fully equipped $756,400.

The Higgins 81-Foot Design Demonstrates:
 Ability to make a maximum sustained speed of 31.4 knots; maximum speed 34.3 knots with heavy ordnance load.
 Maneuverability satisfactory with a turning circle of 368 yards.
 Space available for four 21" torpedo tubes.
 Structural strength adequate.
 Moderate tendency to pound in a seaway.
 Fittings and finish satisfactory.
 Cost to the Government fully equipped $206,600.

The Higgins 76-Foot Design Demonstrates:
 Maximum sustained speed of 27.2 knots in rough seas; maximum speed 40.9 knots.
 Maneuverability satisfactory, turning circle not determined photographically, estimated 300 yards.
 Space available for four 21" torpedo tubes.
 Structural weaknesses caused failures in transverse bottom framing, separation of side planking from framing and extensive failures of deck fastenings.
 Moderate tendency to pound in a seaway.
 Fittings and finish satisfactory.
 Cost to the Government fully equipped $265,500.

The board arrived at the following recommendations:
 That the Packard power plant having been found highly satisfactory be adopted as standard for future construction.
 That the ordnance installation of future motor torpedo boats consist of two torpedo tubes, machine guns and depth charges.
 That the Huckins 78-foot (PT-69) design be considered acceptable for immediate construction.
 That the Higgins 80-foot (PT-6) design suitably reduced in size to carry such ordnance loads as are required by our Navy be considered acceptable for immediate construction.
 That the Elco 77-foot design be considered acceptable for future construction provided changes in the lines are made to reduce the tendency to pound in a seaway, and the structure be strengthened in a manner acceptable to the Bureau of Ships.
 That the Philadelphia 81-foot boat (PT-8') be stripped of excess weight and be re-engined with three Packard engines.

The board also had the following opinion on structural sufficiency: "During the first series of tests (21–24 July) the Huckins design (PT-69), the Philadelphia design (PT-8) and the Higgins design (PT-6) completed the open sea endurance run without structural damage. The Higgins 70' (British) boat did not complete this run because of engine trouble. The Higgins 76' (PT-70) and boats of the Elco 77' (PT-20 Class) developed structural failures even under moderate weather conditions prevailing. In the interval between the first and second test periods the PT-70 was repaired and an effort made to eliminate the causes of the structural failures. However, during the second endurance run, which was made in a very rough sea for this size boat, structural failures again occurred in PT-70. PT-69 and PT-21 experienced structural failures during the second run though these were much more localized as compared with those found on PT-70. The Board is of the opinion that certain changes in design are required to enable PT-69 and boats of the PT-20 Class to carry safely their military loads in rough weather."

The board results provided very important benchmarks in the infancy of PT boat development. This type of craft presented design challenges that were still issues decades after, but there are some significant conclusions from the above recommendations and their order of merit. Those are:

 The Packard were the engines of choice.
 The Huckins 72-foot (PT-69) and a reduced Higgins 81-foot (PT-6) design were to be placed into production. Following an October 1941 BuShips conference and its new set of navy design requirements which included room to support four  torpedoes and an upper length restriction of 82', the next two orders for pre-war PT boats (PT-71 through PT-102) were awarded to Higgins and Huckins.
 Even though the Elco 77-footers posted the fastest speeds, all seven Elcos suffered from structural damage and severe pounding causing the Board to recommend a redesign to correct these deficiencies. Elco competed for the PT-71 to PT-102 contract but did not win due to their higher unit price. After the start of the war and significantly revising their unit cost, Elco received the next PT boat order after Higgins and Huckins. This was to be their new Elco 80-foot design.

Elco
The newly designed  Elco Naval Division boats were the longest of the three types of PT boats built for the Navy used during World War II. By war's end, more of the Elco boats were built (326 in all) than any other type of motor torpedo boat. While comparable in size to many wooden sailing ships in history, these  beam wooden-hulled craft were classified as boats in comparison with much larger steel-hulled destroyers, destroyer escorts, and corvettes. Five Elco boats were manufactured in knock-down kit form and sent to Long Beach Boatworks for assembly on the West Coast as part of an experiment and as a proof of concept.

Higgins
Higgins Industries produced 199  boats of the PT-71/PT-235, PT-265 and PT-625 classes. The Higgins boats had the same beam, full load displacement, engines, generators, shaft horsepower, trial speed, armament, and crew accommodation as the  Elco boats. Many Higgins boats were sent to the Soviet Union and Great Britain at the beginning of the war, so many of the lower-numbered squadrons in the U.S. Navy were made up exclusively of Elcos. U.S. Navy PT boats were organized into MTBRONs. The first Higgins boats for the U.S. Navy were used in the battle for the Aleutian Islands (Attu and Kiska) as part of Squadrons 13 and 16, and others (MTBRON15 and MTBRON22) in the Mediterranean against the Germans. They were also used during the D-Day landings on 6 June 1944.

Even though only half as many Higgins boats were produced, far more survive (seven hulls, three of which have been restored to their World War II configuration) than the more numerous Elco boats. Of the Elco boats, only three hulls (one restored) were known to exist as of 2016.

Huckins Yacht Corporation

Huckins and his innovative Quadraconic planing hull design were latecomers to PT boat design. Not invited to participate in the original design competition, by late 1940, Huckins had a meeting with Captain James M. Irish, Chief of Design, and offered to build a "planing seagoing hull" PT boat, on the condition the Navy loan Huckins engines and agree to look at the Huckins boat. In early July 1941, the Navy accepted PT-69.

After obtaining excellent testing results at the Plywood Derby, the Navy awarded Huckins Yacht Corporation a contract in 1941 for 8 boats, and later added 10 more. The design was enlarged and modified to meet the new requirements. The first three of the new design (PT-95 through PT-97) were initially kept in the Jacksonville, Florida, area for testing, resulting in several important modifications to the overall design (these boats were later assigned to Squadron 4 in 1942).

Huckins ended up building just two squadrons of PT boats during World War II. Five  boats were assigned to Squadron 14 (PT-98 through PT-102) which was commissioned in early 1943; and ten boats assigned to Squadron 26 (PT-255 thru PT-264) which was commissioned in mid 1943.  They were assigned to specific outposts in the Panama Canal Zone, Miami, Florida, the Hawaiian Sea Frontier at Pearl Harbor and Midway, and a training center in Melville, Rhode Island.

Although not used in any other PT boat design, Huckins licensed the use of his patented Quadraconic hull in his PT boat construction. He also granted permission for Elco, Higgins, and the Philadelphia Navy Yard to use his patented laminated keel, which increased hull strength, although neither Elco nor Higgins chose to use it on their boats. Most probably due to the lateness in joining the PT boat program and unlike Elco and Higgins, the Huckins yard was not provided government support to construct a larger facility prior to the war. The handcrafted Huckins PT was produced at their civilian facility at a speed of one per month. The success and ruggedness of the Huckins' 78-foot seagoing design is demonstrated by Squadron 26's constant ready-boat operations and fleet torpedo boat training in the oceans around Midway and Hawaii during the last two years of the war.

Vosper and other types of PT boats
Vospers of Great Britain arranged for several boatyards in the United States to build British-designed  motor torpedo boats under license to help the war effort. The boatyards were located in Annapolis, Bristol, City Island, Miami, and Los Angeles. 146 boats, armed with  torpedoes, were built for Lend Lease, and exported to Allied powers such as Canada, Britain, Norway, and the Soviet Union. These boats were never used by the U.S. Navy, and only about 50 were used by the Royal Navy; most were passed to other countries. The Canadian Power Boat Company produced four Scott-Paine designed PTs for the U.S. These were to be provided to the Dutch forces under Lend Lease but were re-requisitioned to the USN as PT 368–371 after the fall of the Netherlands to German forces.

Construction
PT boats offered accommodation for three officers and 14 enlisted men.  Crews varied from 12 to 17, depending upon the number and type of weapons installed. Full-load displacement late in the war was 56 tons.

The hull shapes of the Elco and Higgins PT boats were similar to the contoured "planing hull" found in pleasure boats of the time (and still in use today): a sharp V at the bow softening to a flat bottom at the stern. A common characteristic of this type of contoured hull is the "rooster tail" in the wake. Unlike the actual "planing hull" Huckins, which planed at 10-11 knots, the Elco and Higgins PT boats were intended to plane at higher speeds (PT 71 and PT-103 classes at around 27 knots, and the PT-265 and 625 classes at around 23 knots).

The Elco, Higgins and Huckins companies used varying lightweight techniques of hull construction. Though often said to be made of plywood, the hulls were actually made of two diagonal layered  thick mahogany planks, with a glue-impregnated or lead-painted layer of canvas in between. Holding all this together were thousands of bronze screws and copper rivets. This type of construction made it possible for damage to the wooden hulls of these boats to be easily repaired at forward operating bases by base force personnel.  According to Robert McFarlane, the US Navy built the hulls of some PT boats partially from 3,000-year-old white cedar logs recovered from sphagnum bog in New Jersey.

As a testament to the strength of this type of construction and watertight bulkheads, several PT boats withstood catastrophic battle damage and still remained afloat. For example, the forward half of future President John F. Kennedy's PT-109 (Elco) stayed afloat for 12 hours after she was cut in half by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri. PT-323 (Elco) was cut in half by a kamikaze aircraft on 10 December 1944 off Leyte, yet remained floating for several hours. PT-308 (Higgins) had her stern sheared off by a collision with PT-304 during a night mission in the Mediterranean on 9 March 1945 and yet returned to base for repairs. PT-167 (Elco) was holed through the bow off Bougainville Island on 5 November 1943 by a torpedo which failed to detonate; the boat remained in action and was repaired the next day.

In 1943, an inquiry was held by the Navy to discuss planing, hull design, and fuel consumption issues. This resulted in the November 1943 Miami test trial between two Higgins and two Elco boats, but no major additional modifications were made before the end of the war. During the war, Elco came up with stepped hull designs ("ElcoPlane") which achieved significant increase in top speed. Higgins developed the small and fast  Higgins Hellcat, which was a slight variation on their original hull form, but the Navy rejected them for full production because of increased fuel consumption and other considerations.

After the war, Lindsay Lord, who was stationed in Hawaii during the war, recorded the Navy's planing hull research and findings in Naval Architecture of Planing Hulls. It covers PT boat hull design and construction and provides hull test data as well as detailed analysis of the various PT boat designs.

Armament
The primary anti-ship armament was two to four Mark 8 torpedoes, which weighed  and contained a  TNT warhead. These torpedoes were launched by Mark 18  steel torpedo tubes. Mark 8 torpedoes had a range of  at . These torpedoes and tubes were replaced in mid-1943 by four lightweight  Mark 13 torpedoes, which weighed  and contained a  Torpex-filled warhead. These torpedoes were carried on lightweight Mark 1 roll-off style torpedo launching racks. The Mark 13 torpedo had a range of  and a speed of .

PT boats were also armed with numerous automatic weapons. Common to all US PT boats were the two twin M2 .50 cal (12.7 mm) machine guns. Early PT boats (Elco PT20 through PT44) mounted Dewandre plexiglas-enclosed hydraulically-operated rotating turrets. Almost immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Dewandre turrets were replaced on the entire PT boat fleet with open-ring twin mounts. The ring mount was designed by both Elco and Bell and designated Mark 17 Twin 50 caliber aircraft mount. Part of the Mark 17 Mod 1 and Mod 2 ring mount consisted of the Bell Mark 9 twin cradle. Another automatic weapon commonly mounted on PT boats was the 20 mm Oerlikon cannon. On early series of boats, the cannon was mounted on the stern. Later in the war, several more of these 20 mm cannons were added amidships and on the forward deck.

Forward of the chart house of some early Elco  boats (PT20 through PT44) were twin .30 cal (7.62 mm) Lewis machine guns on pedestal mounts. Beginning in mid-1943, some boats were fitted with one or two .30 cal Browning machine guns on the forward torpedo racks on pedestal mounts.

Occasionally, some front line PT boats received ad hoc up-fits, where they mounted such weapons as 37mm aircraft cannons, rocket launchers, or mortars. When these weapons were found to be successful, they were incorporated onto the PT boats as original armament. One such field modification was made to Kennedy's PT-109, which was equipped with a single-shot Army M3 37mm anti-tank gun that her crew had commandeered; they removed the wheels and lashed it to 2x8 timbers placed on the bow only one night before she was lost. The larger punch of the 37mm round was desirable, but the crews looked for something that could fire faster than the single-shot Army anti-tank weapon. Their answer was found in the 37mm Oldsmobile M4 aircraft automatic cannon cannibalized from crashed P-39 Airacobra fighter planes on Henderson Field on Guadalcanal. After having demonstrated its value on board PT boats, the M4 (and later M9) cannon was installed at the factory. The M4/M9 37mm auto cannon had a relatively high rate of fire (125 rounds per minute) and large magazine (30 rounds). These features made it highly desirable because of the PT boat's ever-increasing requirement for increased firepower to deal effectively with the Japanese Daihatsu-class barges, which were largely immune to torpedoes because of their shallow draft. By the war's end, most PTs had these weapons.

The installation of larger-bore cannons culminated in the fitting of the 40mm Bofors gun on the aft deck. Starting in mid-1943, the installation of this gun had an immediate positive effect on the firepower available from a PT boat. The Bofors cannon had a firing rate of 120 rounds/min (using 4-round clips) and had a range of . This gun was served by a crew of 4 men and was used against aircraft as well as shore bombardment or enemy surface craft.

Gunboats
In the Solomon Islands in 1943, three  PT boats, PT-59, PT-60, and PT-61, were converted into "PT gunboats" by stripping them of all original armament except the two twin .50 cal (12.7 mm) gun mounts, then adding two 40mm and four twin .50 cal (12.7 mm) mounts. Lieutenant Kennedy was the first commanding officer of PT-59 after its conversion. On 2 November 1943, PT-59 participated in the rescue of 40 to 50 Marines during the raid on Choiseul and a foundering landing craft (LCP(R)) which was under fire from Japanese soldiers on the beach.

Other armament
Towards the end of the war, beginning in 1945, PTs received two eight-cell Mark 50 rocket launchers, launching  spin-stabilized flat trajectory Mark 7 and/or Mark 10 rockets with a range of . These 16 rockets plus 16 reloads gave them as much firepower as a destroyer's  guns broadside (albeit without their accuracy). By war's end, the PT boat had more "firepower per ton" than any other vessel in the U.S. Navy fleet. PT boats also commonly carried between two and eight Mark 6 depth charges in roll-off racks. A few PT boats were equipped to carry naval mines launched from mine racks, but these were not commonly used.

Engines
With the exception of the experimental PT boats, all US PT boats were powered by three marine-modified derivations of the Packard 3A-2500 V-12 liquid-cooled, gasoline-fueled aircraft engine. Improvements upon Packard's World War I Liberty L-12 2A engine, the successive "M" for "marine" designated 3M-2500, 4M-2500, and 5M-2500 generations all featured slight changes and more power. Their superchargers, intercoolers, dual magnetos, and two spark plugs per cylinder reflected their aircraft origins.

Packard's licensed manufacture of the famed Rolls-Royce Merlin aircraft engine alongside the marine 4M-2500 has long been a source of confusion. Only the British-built PT-9 prototype boat brought from England for Elco to examine and copy featured a Merlin. The 4M-2500 initially generated . It was subsequently upgraded in stages to , allowing a designed speed of . The 5M-2500 introduced in late 1945 had a larger supercharger, aftercooler, and increased power output of . It could push fully loaded boats at . However, subsequent additions of weaponry offset this potential increase in top speed.

Fuel consumption of any version of these engines was exceptionally heavy. A PT boat carried  of 100 octane aviation fuel, enough for a 4M-2500 equipped boat to conduct a maximum 12-hour patrol. Some  per hour were consumed at a cruising speed of , increasing to  per hour at top speed. Hull fouling and engine wear could both decrease top speed and increase fuel consumption materially.

Service
PT boats operated in the southern, western, and northern Pacific, as well as in the Mediterranean Sea and the English Channel.

Early use

Originally conceived as anti-ship weapons, PT boats were publicly credited with sinking several Japanese warships during the period between December 1941 and the fall of the Philippines in May 1942—even though the Navy knew the claims were all false. The exaggerated claims by Lieutenant John D. Bulkeley, commanding officer of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron Three (MTBRON 3), about the effectiveness of the PTs in combat against larger craft allowed him to recruit top talent, raise war bonds, and caused overconfidence among squadron commanders who continued to pit PTs against larger craft. The reality was his claims that PTs had sunk a Japanese cruiser, a troopship, and a plane tender in the Philippines were untrue.Bulkeley was involved in

Compounding the difficulty with the early torpedoes, PT boat crews attacking at night may have sometimes failed to note a possible torpedo failure. Although the American Mark 8 torpedo did have problems with porpoising and circular runs, it could and did have success against common classes of targets. The Mark 3 and Mark 4 exploders were not subject to the same problems as the Mark 6 exploders on U.S. submarines' Mark 14 torpedoes. Difficulties remained in spite of Bulkeley's claim that introduction of the Mark 13 torpedo to PT boats in mid-1943 all but eliminated the early problems that PT boats had with their obsolete Mark 8s. In the August 1943 engagement in which PT-109 was lost, fifteen boats shipping 60 torpedoes fired over half with no hits on an enemy vessel .

Night attacks

PTs would usually attack at night. The cockpits of PT boats were protected by armor plate against small arms fire and splinters. Direct hits from Japanese guns could and did result in catastrophic gasoline explosions with near-total crew loss. Crews feared attack by Japanese seaplanes, which were difficult to detect even with radar but which could easily spot the phosphorescent wake left by PT propellers. Bombing attacks killed and wounded crews even with near misses. There are several recorded instances of PT boats trading fire with friendly aircraft, a situation also familiar to U.S. submariners. Several PT boats, such as PT-346, were lost by friendly fire from both Allied aircraft and destroyers. Enemy forces would use searchlights or seaplane-dropped flares to illuminate fleeing PT boats.

Initially, only a few boats were issued primitive radar sets. U.S. Navy PTs were eventually fitted with Raytheon SO radar, which had about a  range. Having radar gave Navy PTs a distinct advantage in intercepting enemy supply barges and ships at night. As more PTs were fitted with dependable radar, they developed superior night-fighting tactics and used them to locate and destroy many enemy targets.

During some of these nighttime attacks, PT boat positions may have been given away by a flash of light caused by grease inside the black powder-actuated Mark 8 torpedo tubes catching fire during the launching sequence. In order to evade return fire from the enemy ships, the PT boat could deploy a smoke screen using stern-mounted generators. Starting in mid-1943, the old Mark 18 torpedo tubes and Mark 8 torpedoes began to be replaced. The new Mark 1 "roll-off" torpedo launcher rack (loaded with an improved Mark 13 aerial torpedo) effectively eliminated the telltale flash of light from burning grease, did not use any form of explosive to launch the torpedo, and weighed about  less than the tubes.

Solomon Islands campaign
The effectiveness of PT boats in the Solomon Islands campaign, where there were numerous engagements between PTs and capital ships, as well as against Japanese shipborne resupply efforts dubbed "The Tokyo Express" operating in New Georgia Sound (called "The Slot" by the Americans), was substantially undermined by defective Mark 8 torpedoes. The Japanese were initially cautious when operating their capital ships in areas known to have PT boats, knowing how dangerous their own Type 93 torpedoes were and assuming the Americans had equally lethal weapons.

The PT boats off Guadalcanal were given credit for several sinkings and successes against the vaunted Tokyo Express. In several engagements, the mere presence of PTs was sufficient to disrupt heavily escorted Japanese resupply activities at Guadalcanal.  Squadrons (MTBRON) 2, 3, 5 and 6 would lie in wait to ambush targets from torpedo range, generally about . Afterwards, the PT mission in the Solomon Islands was deemed a success.

D-Day invasion
Some PT boats served during the Battle of Normandy. During the D-Day invasion, PTs patrolled the "Mason Line", forming a barrier against the German S-boats attacking the Allied landing forces. They also performed lifesaving and anti-shipping mine destruction missions during the invasion.

Barge attacks
Perhaps the most effective use of PTs was as "barge busters." Since both the Japanese in the New Guinea area and the Germans in the Mediterranean had lost numerous resupply vessels to Allied air power during daylight hours, each attempted to resupply their troop concentrations by using shallow draft barges at night in very shallow waters. The shallow depth meant Allied destroyers were unable to follow them, and the barges could be protected by an umbrella of shore batteries.

The efficiency of the PT boats at sinking the Japanese supply barges was considered a key reason that the Japanese had severe food, ammunition, and replacement problems during the New Guinea and Solomon Island campaigns, and made the PT boats prime targets for enemy aircraft. The use of PT boat torpedoes was ineffective against these sometimes heavily armed barges, since the minimum depth setting of the torpedo was about 10 feet (3 m) and the barges drew only 5 feet (1.5 m). To accomplish the task, PTs in the Mediterranean and the Pacific (and Royal Navy and Royal Canadian Navy motor torpedo boats in the Mediterranean) installed more and heavier guns which were able to sink the barges. One captured Japanese soldier's diary described their fear of PT boats by describing them as "the monster that roars, flaps its wings, and shoots torpedoes in all directions."

Although their primary mission continued to be attack on surface ships and craft, PT boats were also used effectively to lay mines and smoke screens, coordinate in air-sea rescue operations, rescue shipwreck survivors, destroy Japanese suicide boats, destroy floating mines, and carry out intelligence or raider operations.

Repair training
In 1944, several Higgins  boats (PT222, PT-283, PT-284, PT-285, and PT-282) were converted, releasing PT-59, PT-60, and PT-61 for transfer back home to the Motor Torpedo Boat Squadrons Training Center in Melville, Rhode Island, for use in training in hull repair techniques.

Boats

Many PT boats became famous during and after World War II:PT-41, commanded by Ensign George E. Cox, Jr. USNR, carried General Douglas MacArthur in his escape from Corregidor Island, Philippines. Lieutenant John D. Bulkeley, commanding officer of MTBRON 3, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his operations in the Philippines before rescuing MacArthur. Bulkeley's story inspired a book and the movie They Were Expendable, which was based on it. PT-41 was the flagship of MTBRON 3, based in the Philippines in 1941–1942.
Life magazine published an article about the PT boat captains in the battles off Guadalcanal, featuring the exploits of Lieutenants "Stilly" Taylor, Leonard A. Nikoloric, Lester Gamble, and Robert and John Searles; the article mentioned many boats in MTB Squadrons Two and Five (in particular, PT-36, PT-37, PT-39, PT-44, PT-46, PT-48, PT-59, PT-109, PT-115, and PT-123).
Other PT boats gaining fame during the war were PT-363 and PT-489, the boats used by Lieutenant Commander Murray Preston to rescue a downed aviator in Wasile Bay off Halmahera Island, for which Preston was awarded the Medal of Honor.PT-109, commanded by Lieutenant, junior grade, John F. Kennedy, was made famous through Robert J. Donovan's 1961 book  PT-109: John F. Kennedy in World War II and the 1963 film based on it, PT 109.PT-59 was commanded by Kennedy after the loss of PT-109. Its remains have (possibly) been discovered in the Harlem River in the Inwood, Manhattan section in New York City.

 Losses
According to the book "At Close Quarters: PT Boats in the United States Navy," 99 of the 531 PT boats that served during World War II were lost to various causes.
 Accidents, friendly fire, sea conditions – 32
 Scuttled to prevent capture – 27
 Rammed by the enemy – 8
 Kamikaze – 2
 Hit naval mine – 9
 Enemy coastal artillery – 6
 Strafed – 8
 Enemy naval gunfire – 7

 Surviving boats
At the end of the war, almost all surviving U.S. PT boats were disposed of shortly after V-J Day. Hundreds of boats were stripped of all useful equipment and then dragged up on the beach and burned. This was done to minimize the amount of upkeep the Navy would have to do, since wooden boats require much continuous maintenance, and they were not considered worth the effort. The boats also used a lot of high octane fuel for their size, making them too expensive to operate for a peacetime Navy. Much of this destruction (121 boats) occurred at PT Base 17 on Samar, Philippines, near Bobon Point.

Production boats
A few (one 80' Elco, one 72' Vosper, and three 78' Higgins) were cut up and destroyed between 1998 and 2008, leaving (a known) total of 12 PT boats, and 2 experimental PT boat hulls in various states of repair, surviving today in the U.S.:PT-48PT-48 is possibly the last surviving  Elco PT boat. In July 1942, PT-48 (nicknamed "Prep Tom" and "Deuce") was assigned to MTBRON 3(2). This second Squadron 3 was the first to arrive in the Solomons and saw heavy engagement with the "Tokyo Express". PT-48 was one of the first 4 boats to arrive at Tulagi on 12 October 1942. On the night of 13/14 October 1942, PT-48 engaged a Japanese destroyer at . PT-48 is today in need of major restoration, after having been cut down to  and used as a dinner cruise boat. Because of this boat's extensive combat history, having survived 22 months in the combat zone at Guadalcanal (more time in combat than any other surviving PT boat), a preservation group, "Fleet Obsolete" of Kingston, New York, acquired and transported it to Rondout Creek in 2009 for eventual repair.PT-305One of two fully restored and operational PT boats and the only combat veteran of the two, PT-305 ("Half Hitch", "Barfly", "USS Sudden Jerk") is a Higgins  boat, assigned during the war to MTBRON-22, and saw action against the Germans in the Mediterranean Sea. Squadron 22 was operating with the British Royal Navy Coastal Forces, and saw action along the northwest coast of Italy and southern coast of France. In June 1945 the squadron was shipped to the U.S. for refitting and transfer to the Pacific, but the war ended while still in New York. PT-305 was cut down to  for use as an oyster seed boat in Crisfield, Maryland. PT-305 was acquired by the Defenders of America Naval Museum (DOANM), and then sold in May 2007 to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.  After a lengthy restoration PT-305 has been restored to a seaworthy, operational vessel. It was relaunched in March 2017.PT-309A  Higgins, PT-309 ("Oh Frankie!") was assigned during the war to MTBRON 22 and saw action against the Germans in the Mediterranean Sea. The squadron was operating under the British Coastal Forces and saw action along the northwest coast of Italy and southern coast of France. In April 1945 the squadron was shipped to the U.S. for refitting and transfer to the Pacific, but the war ended while still in New York. PT-309 was named in honor of Frank Sinatra, who the boat's commanding officer met at a nightclub shortly before MTBRON 22 left New York for the Mediterranean Theatre. PT-309 is located at the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas, and was restored by the Defenders of America Naval Museum. PT-309 is restored (but non-operational) in a static diorama display without engines installed. Her external restoration was completed in 2002.PT-459PT-459 ("Mahogany Menace") a Higgins  boat, was assigned to MTBRON 30 on 15 February 1944. MTBRON 30 saw action in the English Channel as part of the Invasion of Normandy. In late June 1945 the squadron was shipped to the U.S. for refitting and transfer to the Pacific, but the war ended while still in New York. After the war, she was cut down to  and highly modified into a sightseeing boat and fishing trawler. She was acquired by Fleet Obsolete in June 2008 and moved to Kingston, New York, for possible restoration.PT-486PT-486, an  Elco boat, was placed in service on 2 December 1943. It was used in the training squadron MTBRON 4 in Melville, Rhode Island, during World War II until it was placed out of service 16 January 1946.  In 1952 it was used as an excursion vessel from Otten's Harbor in Wildwood, New Jersey. The boat was renamed "Big Blue" and used until 2002. It is currently owned by Fleet Obsolete, with plans for possible restoration.PT-615PT-615, an  Elco originally assigned to MTBRON 42, was commissioned after the war ended. PT-615 was returned to Elco after being sold and was heavily modified into a yacht, which was leased to actor Clark Gable. He named the boat Tarbaby VI and used her through the 1950s. The boat was serviced and stored by Elco. She was sold several times, and moved to Kingston, New York for possible restoration.PT-617PT-617 is an  Elco boat located at the Battleship Cove Naval Museum in Fall River, Massachusetts. She was obtained from the backwaters of Florida and moved to its current location by PT Boats Inc. Full restoration was completed in 1989. She is available for public viewing and has portions of her hull cut away to display the cramped interior of the crew's quarters.PT-657PT-657, a Higgins  boat, has been converted into a charter fishing boat. She is located in San Diego and is now named Malihini.PT-658PT-658 is a  Higgins boat, and along with PT-305, is one of two authentically restored and operational U.S. Navy PT boats afloat today. Relaunched after hull restoration in 2005, it is located at Pier 308, Vigor Shipyard in Portland, Oregon's Swan Island Lagoon. Maintained by an all volunteer group, it is powered by the three Packard V12 5M-2500 gas engines and includes all weapons, electronics, equipment and accessories restored to appear as they did when she went into service. PT-658 was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.PT-724PT-724, a surviving Vosper built at the Annapolis Boat yard in Maryland, has been used as a yacht and has since been acquired by the Liberty Aviation Museum to be restored back to its original Vosper configuration.PT-728PT-728, a surviving Vosper boat built under license at the Annapolis Boat Yard in Maryland, was restored in Key West, Florida. Her deck house was reconfigured to partially resemble an  Elco instead of its original Vosper 70 ft configuration. PT-728 was acquired by Fleet Obsolete and moved to Kingston. There PT-728 allows up to 49 tourists the chance to ride on a "PT boat". This boat is the only U.S. Coast Guard regulation-approved PT boat licensed to take passengers for hire, and the only surviving U.S.-built Vosper design. In spring of 2012, PT-728 was acquired by the Liberty Aircraft Museum of Port Clinton, Ohio, for further restoration.PT-766PT-766 is an  Elco boat that is a private yacht ("Finished Business") located in Washington D.C. She represents the final class of Elco's with significant updates to the superstructure and radar and was intended for MTBRON 44 but was cancelled due to the end of the war.PT-796PT-796 ("Tail Ender") is a  Higgins. After the war ended PT-796 was used in the Key West/Miami area for experimental purposes. She was retired from service in the late 1950s. Shortly after her retirement from service, the PT-796 was used as a float during President John F. Kennedy's inaugural parade to represent PT-109, with the PT-109 hull number painted on the bow, and several of PT-109's surviving crew members manning the boat. Today, PT-796 is located at the Battleship Cove Naval Museum in Fall River, Massachusetts, in a Quonset hut-style building, protected from the weather and up on blocks. The boat is owned by PT Boats, Inc., a World War II PT veterans organization headquartered in Germantown, Tennessee.

Experimental boatsPT-3Two experimental PT boats survive, PT-3 (built by Fisher Boat Works) in New Jersey and PT-8. PT-3 was designed by George Crouch and employed lightweight planing hull construction methods. A  barrel-back (which provided increased strength to the sides and deck), a unique double longitudinal planked (mahogany outer planking and Port Orford cedar inner planking) lightweight hull on bent laminated oak framing, she was the "featherweight" of transportable PT boat design, but was later rejected by the Navy during trials in 1941 after being deemed too short to carry 4 torpedoes, as well as being able to only launch torpedoes stern first, which was a procedure considered too dangerous by BuOrd. PT-3 and PT-8 were both part of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 1 (MTBRON 1) during the testing period. After testing was completed, PT-3 was transferred to Canada in April 1941 under lend-lease. PT-3 served with the RCAF Fleet as the RCAF Bras d'Or M413 (B119) based at Eastern Air Command in Halifax. She was transferred back to the United States in April 1945.PT-8PT-8 (built at Philadelphia Naval Shipyard) in Louisiana was built entirely from aluminum but did not pass the speed acceptance criteria for use as a PT boat for the U.S. Navy because of its weight. She was reclassified as a harbor patrol boat (YP 110) for the duration of the war. PT-8 was stored in a yard for several decades in Baytown, Texas, but has since moved.

UK Vosper
The two Vosper boats in England were built by Vosper, and the first is in fairly good condition at Portsmouth. The second UK built boat is in private hands, floating on a canal north of London and being used as a private residence, though it is remarkably intact in its World War II configuration.

Exported PT boats

Ten Higgins boats were delivered in 1948 for use by the Argentine Navy during the late 1940s up until the late 1970s. All of these boats are now retired from naval use, with two still in civil use today as sightseeing boats on Mar del Plata: the Leonardo da Vinci and the Mar de la Plata. The other six boats are in various states of disrepair, sunk or scrapped.

 Movie stand-ins
The original 1962–66 McHale's Navy TV series used a Vosper design PT-694 Prior to starring in the television series this boat was purchased as war surplus by Howard Hughes and was used as the camera chase boat when the Spruce Goose made its only flight. The stern of the Vosper boat is visible in the footage of that event.

In John Ford's 1945 war film, They Were Expendable, two  Elcos were used during filming along with four former MTBRON 14 78-foot Huckins.

For the 1962 movie PT 109, several  USAF crash rescue boats were converted to resemble 80-foot Elcos when the few surviving boats were found to need too much work to make them seaworthy for use during the film.

See also
 British Power Boat Company, producer of the PT boat prototype
 Fairmile D motor torpedo boat (British "Dog Boats")
 E-Boats (German equivalent)
 MAS (motorboat) (Italian equivalent)
 Wooden boats of World War 2

Notes

References

 Robert J. Bulkley, At Close Quarters: PT Boats in the United States Navy (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1962)
 Victor Chun, American PT Boats in World War II: A Pictorial History (Schiffer Publishing, 1997)
 T. Garth Connelly, Don Greer, Tom Tullis, Joe Sewell, Pt Boats in Action (Warships, No 7) (Squadron/Signal Publications, Inc., 1994)
 David Doyle "Elco 80' PT Boat on Deck" (Squadron/Signal Publications, Inc., 2010)

 Michael Green, PT Boats (Land and Sea) (Capstone Press, 1999)

 Angus Konstam, PT-Boat Squadrons – US Navy Torpedo Boats (Ian Allan Publishing, June 2005)
 An excellent compendium of information about the Elco PT boats can be found in "Allied Coastal Forces of World War II" Volume II by John Lambert and Al Ross. . This book has a detailed history of the development of the various Elco boats, with numerous drawings and photos. It also has sections on PT boat construction, as well as chapters on the Packard engines and typical weaponry used aboard PT boats.
 Board of Inspection and Survey, Report of Comparative Services Tests of Motor Torpedo Boats Held July 21–24, 1941 and August 11–12, 1941 at New London, Connecticut (Navy Department, August 14, 1941)
 Lindsay Lord, Naval Architecture of Planing Hulls (Cornell Maritime Press, 1946)
 David Seidman, Damned by Faint Praise, The Life and Hard Times of Albert Hickman WoodenBoat 100th Issue, May/June 1991, Published by Woodenboat Publications, Inc., Brooklin, ME
 Andrée Conrad, Huckins, The Living Legacy (Ortega River Books. 1998)
 Robert J. Donovan, PT 109: John F. Kennedy in WWII, 40th Anniversary Edition, McGraw Hill (reprint), 2001,
 Richard Tregaskis, John F. Kennedy and PT-109 (Random House, 1962)
 Robert D. Ballard, Collision With History: The Search for John F. Kennedy's PT 109 (National Geographic, 2002)
 Haruyoshi Kimmatsu, "The night We sank John Kennedy's PT 109" appeared in Argosy Magazine December 1970, Vol. 371 No. 6
 Tameichi Hara, Japanese Destroyer Captain (Ballantine Books, 1978)
 Duane T. Hove, American Warriors: Five Presidents in the Pacific Theater of World War II, Burd Street Press, (2003)
 James Michener, Tales of the South Pacific, Fawcett Crest Books, (1947)
 Official Report on Loss of PT 109

External links

 Navy History
 Hyperwar: Close Quarters, by Captain Robert J. Bulkley, Jr.
 Original Elco movie Giant Killers
 www.pt728.com Home of PT 728, a fully restored  Vospor
 An example of daily life aboard a PT boat, recorded in the deck logs
 PT Boat Museum website
 Save the PT Boat USS PT-658 website
 Project video
 PT-617  Photos of the Elco PT boat PT-617 in Fall River, MA
 PT-796 Photos of the Higgins PT boat PT-796 in Fall River, MA
 PT-235  Photos of life on board a PT boat in the Pacific in World War II by PT boat Veteran Milt Donadt of PT-235''
 Electric Launch Corp records
 Website dedicated to PT Boats
 HNSA Ship Page: PT Boats to visit as museums and memorials
 With The Mosquito Fleet, April 1941 one of the earliest large articles on PT boats in the US
 Elco 103 class PT boat resource site
 PT-728 Touring the East Coast
 Fleet Obsolete Historic PT Boats
 Higgins Industries Motor Torpedo Boat Diagram Collection in the Louisiana Digital Library
 Higgins Industries Collection , University of New Orleans Earl K. Long Library Department of Louisiana and Special Collections
https://www.pdfdrive.com/american-pt-boats-in-world-war-ii-e157218440.html , Book on PT Boats

Boat types
Patrol vessels of the United States Navy

PT boat


Danny Epps (May 14, 1941 in Lufkin, Texas – October 29, 2007 in Houston, Texas) was a Columbia Records, Crazy Cajun Records and StarPlay Records artist.

His last album, Rumors Of The Truth, was recorded in 2006 for the indie label StarPlay Records. Mickey Newbury, writing in the liner notes for Epps' first Columbia album described him as "another Texas songwriter from the mold of Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Townes Van Zandt, Dennis Linde, and Gene Thomas" Danny toured with legendary performers Billy Joe Shaver and Bobby Bare. He wrote  hundreds of songs recorded by many notable performers, including Freddy Fender, Don Gibson, Brenda Lee, Dickey Lee, Johnny Lee, Roger Miller and many others. His style of music has been described as Blues, Folk and Country; at times all three.

Danny Epps served as a Marine in Vietnam and after discharge worked for several years with Delta Air Lines at Houston, Texas. He left that company in 1970 for his number one love, music. He worked as a studio musician, producer, and songwriter for Crazy Cajun Music and recorded one album, Laid Back Country Picker for that company. After fronting several country bands in the late 60s in the Houston area, Danny moved to Nashville where he wrote for several publishing houses and worked as a studio musician,  playing  guitar and harmonica on several major albums. He recorded his first Columbia album, Danny Epps  in 1972. After several years of songwriting and recording in Nashville and touring with his own band Danny gave up music for fifteen years and worked in construction around the country. He returned to Houston (and to music) in 1999. Danny recorded his last album, Rumors of the Truth, for StarPlay Records in 2005.

In a 2008 Epps retrospective for the magazine No Depression, columnist Lloyd Sachs wrote of Epps, "His plainspoken, marginally inflected vocals, reminiscent of Billy Joe Shaver's, have an appealing directness. ...Epps comes across as a nowhere man looking for somewhere to ease his hurts."

References

1941 births
2007 deaths
People from Lufkin, Texas
Musicians from Houston
Songwriters from Texas
20th-century American musicians

Danny Epps


Nicolai Vollquartz (born 7 February 1965) is a Danish football referee. He was born in Viborg. He was promoted to the FIFA referees list in 1999 and took charge of his first UEFA Cup match – a first round tie between Rapid București and Liverpool – on 14 September 2000. His UEFA Champions League debut came a year later, with a second qualifying round match between Wisła Kraków and Skonto. It was another five years before he officiated a Champions League group stage match – the Group B match between Sporting CP and Spartak Moscow on 5 December 2006 – but it was to be his only experience in the group stage.

External links
Profile at WorldReferee.com

1965 births
Living people
People from Viborg Municipality
Danish football referees
Sportspeople from the Central Denmark Region

Nicolai Vollquartz


The Jardins du Nouveau Monde (Gardens of the New World, 1 hectare) are gardens and a small arboretum containing plants from the Western Hemisphere located on the grounds of the Château de Blérancourt, now the Musée national de la Coopération Franco-américaine, in Blérancourt, Aisne, France.

The gardens were established on the site of the castle's previous kitchen garden by the American Friends of Blérancourt, with the arboretum funded by donations of the Colonial Dames of America – Chapter IV (Paris). Michel Boulcourt, Madison Cox, and Mark Rudkin served as garden designers. The gardens comprise four major areas:

 Le jardin de printemps (Spring Garden) - columbine, iris, jasmine, peony, poppy, and wisteria; designed by Mark Rudkin in 1997.
 Le jardin d'été (Summer Garden) - Virginia tulip trees with flowers of the new world including ornamental tobacco and American lily in parterres; designed by Madison Cox in 1989.
 Le jardin d'automne (Autumn Garden) - asters, cosmos, dahlias, heliotropes, and sunflowers; designed by Mark Rudkin and Michel Boulcourt in 1989.
 Arboretum - liquidambar, maple, oak, sequoia, etc.; designed by Mark Rudkin and Michel Boulcourt in 1986.

See also
 List of botanical gardens in France

External links
 Jardins du Nouveau Monde
  Parcs et Jardins de France entry (French)
 Gralon.net entry (French)
 Picardia Tourisme entry (French)
 Where to find North America in Paris and the suburbs...

Gardens in Aisne
Botanical gardens in France

Jardins du Nouveau Monde