PT boat

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
PT-105 at high speed.

PT Boats were motor torpedo boats ("PT", for "Patrol Torpedo"). They were small, fast ships used by the United States Navy in World War II to attack larger surface ships. The PT boat squadrons were nicknamed "the mosquito fleet". They were exceedingly nimble, relatively expendable to the larger fleet, and carried torpedoes that featured a remarkable destruction-to weight ratio. John F. Kennedy famously served on one of these. His boat was run over and sliced in two by an enemy destroyer. Navies often used destroyers to combat these cheap but dangerous surface craft.