PT-305 is on the water once again

PT-305 is out of the workshop and on the water, ready for action once again.

After a decade of restoration, the world’s only operational World War II combat PT boat afloat made an hour-long journey through the streets of New Orleans Saturday morning and was hoisted onto a barge on the Mississippi River where she will ultimately be moved through the locks toward a special boathouse on Lake Pontchartrain, near her 1943 birthplace. As she slowly rolled along seven city blocks atop a computer-controlled heavy-load transporter Saturday, dozens of volunteers and onlookers followed, snapping photos with their smartphones, while a drone buzzed overhead, digitally documenting her voyage from the National WWII Museum to a crane on the waterfront.

“This is another one of those special moments for the National World War II Museum,” said Dr. Gordon H. “Nick” Mueller, the museum’s president, chief executive officer and co-founder. “It’s been going on for 16 years here, starting with the opening of the D-Day Museum. Every milestone is special.”

The PT-305 restoration project began over a decade ago when the museum obtained what was left of her from the Defenders of America Naval Museum. At the time, PT-305 was missing 15 feet from the original stern and was far from seaworthy, having been used for fishing and oyster boat at various times after wartime service in the Mediterranean Sea. “I remember when that hulk came onto the parking lot nine or 10 years ago,” Mueller said. “It was all rotted out. When we walked through the insides of it, we had to worry if we might put a foot through the hull.”

First, she was covered with a tarp and parked on a lot at the museum. She was later moved inside and in 2010 was placed in the glass-walled, 14,000-square-foot John E. Kushner Restoration Pavilion where museum visitors could watch the process of rebuilding her. About 40 percent of the vessel is original, the remainder pieced together from parts of other PT boats and some machined on site. Museum staff and volunteers carefully followed and respected the designs that came from Andrew Higgins himself, the famed New Orleans engineer of World War II landing crafts and other naval vessels.

Today, PT-305 is fully restored to original wartime readiness, with everything operational other than the guns and torpedoes. Hundreds of volunteers and donors contributed to the effort. “It’s just been one of those great, great collective efforts that are reflective of the American spirit,” Mueller said. “It shows what we can do when get a bunch of people together.”

George Benedetto is one of the volunteers who has been with the project since its beginning, and even before, having worked on other Higgins crafts for the museum in previous years. “It’s exciting,” he said as the PT-305 – also named the USS Sudden Jerk – pulled away from the restoration pavilion on the breezy November morning. “It’s a great day for it to come out of the shop and get on the road.”

He and another volunteer, Dale Casey, will pilot the PT boat once she is open for display and rides, perhaps as early as spring 2017. “We have piloted a lot of boats that are similar to these boats,” said Casey, an experienced ship captain. “We have a lot of background in these types of vessels.”

Casey and Benedetto, also a licensed captain, were among many of the volunteers who came to walk alongside PT-305 on her trip to the river. “The attraction to this project is the passion among the volunteers,” Benedetto said. “It’s incredible. We have the best guys in the industry who have shown up to do this. And, the good thing is, they have shown up consistently for over 10 years.”

“Every Saturday morning, 60 to 80 guys would show up,” Mueller said. “Everybody had a different job. When they got here on Saturday, they just went to work on what they had to do.”

Jerry Strahan, author of the acclaimed biography “Andrew Jackson Higgins and the Boats that Won World War II,” has been working on the project since the beginning, searching the planet for PT boat parts and studying the records for historical details that could be applied to the effort.

“It’s just been an amazing project,” said Strahan, who was profiled in the September 2013 issue of The American Legion Magazine. “The best part of the project, to me, has been the camaraderie and fellowship amongst all the volunteers. It’s hard to keep volunteers together for a couple of weeks. Eight of us have been together for over 20 years, a good portion have been together for 10 years on this project. It’s grown into something like a family. No one’s job was more important than anyone else’s. It took all of that – that attitude – to get the boat in the water.”

PT-305 and others like her were vital in both theaters of World War II, Mueller said. “They were used everywhere. These were the sexy boats of World War II because of their speed and hit-and-run capability. They had a certain esprit de corps – PT boat guys. This was our version of the Stealth fighter. It could sneak up on convoys at night because of how quiet they could be until they got close in. Then they would rev up those engines and hit and run. They could go right into the teeth of the battle, put those torpedoes over the side and then haul.”

Mueller said the PT-305 will spend at least a year on Lake Pontchartrain before eventually making excursions to communities along the Gulf Coast. “It will be kind of a living museum, a piece of history that’s actually operational. School kids can come out and see this and get a little piece of understanding of World War II. I think it’s going to be an amazing thing. It will be an ambassador for the museum.”

Casey and Benedetto would like to take her even further. “These guys want to take it to the Mediterranean,” Mueller said. “I think that’s a bridge too far.”

Strahan said that in addition to sharing the boat’s World War II combat story, the PT-305 will keep alive the important part New Orleans played in the war effort. Higgins Industries built some 20,000 wartime vessels in about five years, occupying city blocks and a plant along the Industrial Canal and employing thousands in the home-front war effort.

“It’s a major milestone,” Strahan said. “This boat is a living tribute to all the men who served on PT boats in World War II. But it’s also a tribute to the 20,000 men and women who worked at the Higgins plants in the city, and what the city did during World War II.”

To learn more about PT-305, the restoration project and future display, click here.