The Giant Killers : The Story of WW2 ELCO US Navy PT Boats 

The only 80' Elco PT Boat on display in the world is at Battleship Cove, Fall River, MA, USA as part of the National PT Boat Memorial and Museum.

My father, Bruce Houck, served in the South Pacific in WWII on PT 147. Dad was a combat vet and he loved his PT's the rest of his life. RIP Dad, we miss you and your incredible PTs.

I’m very proud to be an American, my family has been here since 1639 and fought in every war in her defense, I fought in two wars myself as an Infantryman. I pray our nation stays strong in the future but it’s not looking good. God be with all of us, we’ll need it.

Just imagine the skills all those people learned in schools and shops before the war, something we miss out on today. thanks for posting. I worked at Rybovich yachts back in the 92 era and some of the same techniques are still used. If you ever see one you will be amazed at how fair the hulls are.

2 things stick out for me. #1) Wars are won in the factories; something today's politicians have long forgotten or never known about. #2) The design was so good, boat builders, the likes of Roger Fountain, continue to build hulls modeled after these boats (Fountain Ocean Racing Boats)...even today's engines sound like the Merlins back in the day.

PT 728 still survives. In 2000 Bill Baumfaulk (rip, Bill) restored her with the help of Key West Captain Kelly. They assembled a motley crew of good-natured hooligans and put on a wonderful tour of Key West and the history of PT Boats for the public. I am proud to have been a member of that crew for a time. PT 728 had the honor of hosting many WW2 PT crew members for a ride around KW harbor for memories sake. I had the honor of meeting one of JFK's fellow PT Boat officers and drinking buddy. Heady days, for sure. PT 728 is now in Ohio? in a museum, I believe.

That was great. Really so cool to see how people can work together so proudly. To be so big and so fast was quite the engineering accomplishment.

The PTs didn't make many ship kills and they would not be expected to - mainly they were up against Japanese destroyers and most people don't realize that the destroyer class of ships was originally intended to be an anti-torpedo boat weapon. Only later did destroyers take on other roles. Killing a destroyer, was an extremely difficult challenge for any PT boat of any nation or design. It took great courage for the PT crews to challenge destroyers and the probability of coming back alive, much less sinking one was very low indeed. Impossible during daylight and still very hard at night.

Circa 1970, I owned a fifty-foot trawler that I kept at New Elco Marina (the last commercial venture occupying the old Elco factory buildings in Bayonne). By that time, only one original Elco building was still standing (the three story tall final assembly building just behind the quay-side crane). Just before I left the New Elco Marina, I had them pull my boat for an annual hull inspection, using that huge crane. The crane was declared an historic site, but was disassembled and relocated (in non-functional condition) to a waterside site about two miles north of the Elco site on Newark Bay. The Elco factory site has now been completely re-built as Marina Condos.

My uncle, Carl Richardson served on PT 43 (built in Bayonne) as a machinist mate. The crew took Gen Mcarther and family away from the Philippian Islands and transferred the general to a submarine. Three PTs were involved, one disappeared. The 43 and crew then hid out on the island of Mindanow for a year until being sighted by a PBY and rescued. They burned their PT. He spent over 20 years in the Navy retiring as a LT Commander.

Thank you for posting this informative video. The ELCO company employed thousands of workers at their facility in Bayonne, NJ. My mother commuted from Staten Island by ferry across the Kill Van Kull to Bayonne where she worked as a secretary for the company. (Incidentally, for her war time wages of $10 a week !) On display in this video are the tremendous skills and craftsmanship of a hard working generation of men and women from all walks of life who gave their all during WW II in critical industries to support the war effort. Inspring stuff.

Such a beautiful water craft to watch at high speed. “They were Expendable” is a treasure to watch and get a glimpse of what it must’ve been like to command/serve such an effective and versatile design. It had to be a real dream to be at the helm.

I grew up in Bayonne which was always a Navy town. We used to go to the ELCO boatyard where there was a bar that was a great place to hang out by the water. ELCO became a marina after the boatyard closed and then after that they built condominiums there. They moved the boat crane to a park uptown and it is a monument there. We Bayonne natives are very proud of the naval history of Bayonne. On the other side of town we had at one time the world largest drydock at a bustling naval base that became a military ocean terminal that supplied troops all the way until it's closure in the 1980s.

My Uncle, George Fowler, served on a PT Boat in WW II. A while back my dad found a PT Boat website and the guy who ran it served with my uncle. He even sent my dad a picture of uncle George helping to invent or improve a type of gyroscope for the PT Boats. I am still looking for that picture. It was around 2011 if I remember right

Portland, OR is the home to the only fully operational PT Boat still in it's original configuration. It has guns and torpedo tubes (non workable of course) It has been resurrected by an all volunteer group. I've toured it myself during our Rose Festival when the US Navy ships visit for Fleet Week. The crew actually sleeps between the interior bulkheads and the outer hull. They even found and installed 2 original Packard engines. After the war people would buy the surplus ones and turn them into their own mini-yachts. Some tried using GM diesels in them with poor results. It's based on Swan Island.

have been to the pt museum a couple time years ago, a great place to visit along with the other ships there, one sad point was that so many of the PT boats were just burned after the war, not many survived

A man I worked with in the 1970"s was a shipright on the PT's. He rode with some of the boats and crew being shipped out to Hawaii. The captian who wrote the book "They Were Expendable" gave him a signed copy in thanks for his work. (he was on the ship wih him) He loaned it to me to read, it made the history of it feel more real to me.

What they don't dwell on is that PT boat duty was hazardous to the extreme. When they needed to get Mac off of the Philippines, they used PT boats.(They were the masters of sneak) Yes, PT109 was just another boat, but it's story is an example of what all of them went through.

I'm so proud and grateful for these men and women who built, fought, died and sacrificed so much for our freedom, dam they were the best. My parents were both in the Navy out of north Island naval base San diego, I miss them and pray we'll be together again.

What a tremendous amount of work went into making these boats.

I loved seeing the designers using slide rules for calculations. If you wonder how well you can design something without computers and just draftsmen using slide rules, look at the incredible service life and projected future service life of the B-52’s.

PT-73 will always be my favorite. My favorite TV show when I was a kid. Who would have guessed that some day "Happy" Hanes would become the captain of "The Love Boat"? PT-73 was so good a Monkey could sink a Japanese sub running it all by himself. LOL. Kidding aside These boats and crew were amazing. They put a hurting on the enemy and packed a punch. They filmed the movie "PT-109" on and around the island I live on my Dad and Uncle were both extras in the movie. My uncle was one of the Marines storming the beach and My Dad was a stand in on the boat. You get a good look at his back as he looks over the stern watching the wake. Unfortunately, since he was a stand in for one of the crew you never see his face he passed away when I was 6 so it would have been cool if we could see his face. He was a Chief in the Navy serving on the Carrier U.S.S. Enterprise in the early 1970's when he passed. I can still remember going on her at the dock. She was like a city and looked so huge to me as a kid.

The whole concept is fascinating: build yachts out of wood, saving the scarce steel for other weapons.

Amazing piece of hardware. Used correctly still a very lethal tool against large well defended targets. I'd like to have one.

This is a great insight to the US at home during ww2. The book The Mosquito Fleet documents all theaters in which the PT fleet operated. Cliff's notes: PT boats were used at night, and the few times they approached IJN battleships they would crawl along at low speed to try to get within a mile of the target. US torpedoes were unreliable and it's not certain they ever hit anything. The PT missions were uncoordinated since it was dark and they would maintain radio silence. If spotted the PTs would create lots of smoke and leave as quickly as possible. PTs in the South Pacific eventually had their main threat change from battleships to destroyers to armed barges, and thus the need for torpedoes diminished. The PTs landed their torpedo launchers and mounted additional gunnery. 40 mm anti aircraft guns were very effective against barges, and were about the largest gun that could be mounted. I believe some PTs mounted rocket launchers to assist with beach landings in Italy. To confuse German defenses, the PTs would navigate to a couple miles off a beach at 3am, and start generating lots of voice communication over their radios, trying to sound like an invasion force. Either there would be no invasion or else another beach would be attacked, but meanwhile the Germans would report an imminent attack where none was coming.

I believe these boats are located in a building next to the Battleship. Until I visited Battleship Cove I thought the three ships ( Sub , Battleship and German ship) was everything but I was wrong. I have been there several times with the family. Great Time. Highly Recommended.

The Santa Maria was the largest of Columbus's expeditionary vessels and his flagship. Measuring around 70 feet in length, it carried a crew of 40 men.

Great footage of these wonderful craft I always thought this was based on a British design such as the PV-70 ,and the PT-9 which was built by the BPC and Scott-Paine approached ELCO whom he already had dealings with about production using US engines due to supply issues in the UK.

Wholeheartedly agree with you Radioguy! Mercy the bar has been lowered these days:/ Let's keep reaching out to our youth and do our best to educate them with facts 🇺🇸

Those boats viewed in this video seem to be later production craft as they were armed with the Oldsmobile produced 37mm auto cannon similar to that in the Bell P-39 and P-63 aircraft. Also the single 40mm bofors on the stern. Upgrades over the twin M-2 50 cal Brownings in twin turrets and the single 20mm Oerlikon on the stern found in earlier versions of the ELCO boats.

This video-production evokes the excitement which must have been resident in the operational crews. Just WOW!

Frickin' beautiful. I want one. I have always loved and admired the elegance, craftsmanship, and performance on the water of PT boats. This is an outstanding piece of Naval engineering created during World War Two, almost 100 years ago, that is still impressive and awe-inspiring today. I love older technological advances brought upon by the demands of war that surpass all expectations and are still venerated and in wide use today, such as the M1 Garrand and later the M14 battle rifle, the Ka-bar knife, the P51 Mustang and the Vought F4U Corsair, and beautiful airplanes such as the Consolidated PBY Catalina and the Lockheed P38 Lightning. So proud to be an American as well as a US Marine Corps veteran. Semper Fi.

Real craftsmanship , skill & pride is what those ships were built with.. I would of love to heard workers commentary about building something like that !!

Can you imagine how much faster and agile they would have been if hydrofoil technology had been developed by then?

Check out that slide rule at about 2:00! I'm surprised that they were able to source so many tropical woods during the war. It seems that besides sourcing problems, a steel hull would have been far less resource and labor intensive. We all think about war, about the combat. Few recognize all of the planning and labor necessary to support combat. Especially during war, as compared to peace. Should a man help built PT's or bombers, or go into combat. The Willow Run B-24 bomber factory turned out a new plane every 55 minutes at its peak! Elco went on to make consumer boats after WWII with Elco as the brand.

I'm 75 now, when I first got into manufacturing it was the tail end of slide rules and drafting boards. Not a computer or CAD program to be had. The engineers still built the most amazing tools and machines. The amazing pool of talent that was needed was mind boggling and a thing to behold. Computers have taken over most of the 'grunt work' involved, but the talent still exists today. I just wish so much of it didn't have to be dedicated to war production...

I'd always wondered about the building process of PT boats, all I can say is.... FASCINATING !!!!

What a fantastic place to visit! Plan on spending a lot of time there . The USS MASSACHUSETTS alone could take a day! All the PT boats are in a big building out of the weather and very nicely displayed! The USS Lionfish is moored there too. If anywhere near Battleship Cove stop and visit!! 👍🖖🏻🖖🏻

What an absolute pleasure to watch this video, so very proud to be an American, as a Union electrician for almost 30yrs now, I know the proud Men & Women who built these phenomenal watercraft and the feeling of Wow, I helped craft / build those water beauties. God Bless you & the U.S.A.

For a war ship, they were quite a work of art.

I saw a P.Tboat tied up to a pier next to the USS Constituion in Sa Diego in '73. Although 80' long it look midgit size to the connie.when it took off it belched a huge cloud of blsck smog at first then just took off across the bay. Very impressive.

Thanks . Such Craftsman and Craftswomen doing amazing work . So sad that after the war these proud boats were lined up and burned . I guess I know why , it just doesn't sit very well with me . As battle lines are being drawn . Can Americans be Americans again ? Let's take our anger out on our foes and not each other . May God Bless Us All .

My father served on one as a 50 cal gunner in the Aleutian Islands against the Japanese attempts to infiltrate. Great boats.

we are glad this video has been getting a lot of views in the next couple weeks we will be putting up some videos on pt 617 here at battleship cove

One of the most Underrated Warships ever, is the Elco PT Boat. 👍👍& 10⭐ for this highly accurate, historical video documentary.

My late uncle, Errol Merryman served aa a radioman on a PT boat at Guadalcanal in WWII.

Amazing how these craft were built out of wood, so much craftsmanship. Skills we probably don't have any of anymore.

The PT's tactics alone ,essentially David vs. Goliath , by engaging The Imperial Japanese Navy at ,( pre -Midway), full strength,would make for a great documentary itself.

PT boats were also built at the Higgins yard and New Orleans Louisiana. I worked at that yard building the mark 5 assault boats and when they hit the water we put them in what they called the old PT slip to finish them out!

Its good that this is in focus...to a degree anyway. Theres a lot of examples on TRvid now where people are taking the time to convert all these old films to HD video and them put them online....Its a real shame when many of the ppl taking the time to do this dont seem to realise that there is a focus ring on a projector. There are also adjustments so the colour doesnt get washed out by turning the bulb down etc etc. If done right, tgey should be as crisp as any super high definition vid from the modern era.

I had the pleasure of going deep sea fishing on a converted PT boat based out of San Diego, in the 70's. They're a lot bigger than they look on screen.

Great vid showing the men and women that built these awesome boats. I have to wonder what happened to the skillful workers after the war ended.

I wonder what the total hours were from the time the wood is prepared or the keel laid, to the time the completed boat is in the water. Just cutting all the wood to specs was time consuming. There wasn't an assembly line approach to building them. There was a couple of frames where the process seems kind of inefficient. And space seemed to be tight.

My uncle was a MoMM on PT-337, RON 24. God Bless all who serve this great nation.

Can just imagine the brainstorm that conceived of their intended purpose ,and their design.The PT boats & their fearless crews made hitting the Imperial Japanese Navy on the run , an art form.The British adapted the idea, in a different form for their Desert Rats .Outfitting US issue Jeeps with heavier machine guns & extra gasoline tanks to raid & harry Rommel's Afrika corps.

Infrastructure fascinates me. How did all of those wooden boats get produced and delivered to the fighting theaters? Thanks.

There was a factory near Wilmington De that built PT boats, when completed there were sailed up the Delaware River to the PHILA Navy Yard. That was during WWII

It's a damn shame that these works of art are almost extinct.

In the sixties and seventies PT BOATS were used as sight seeing boats on the New Jersey coast and probably other places

Amazing doco - much appreciated, thank you!

25.30 references "other equipment too secret to be mentioned" refers to radar sets. These became available in April 1943 in limited numbers. At first one in six received 'radio sets' as they were referred, then one in four. However by the time my Uncle Leo Piersall's boat PT532 was launch in October 1943 under the command of Ensign Stephens all boats got 'radio sets'. This greatly aided navigation as many boats were lost to 'reef hang-ups'. 28:30 references "Devil boats". This term began to be used in November 1944 when they were issued five inch rockets in a four by four tube launcher. Uncle Leo said they weren't too bad to reload either. These rockets carried a five inch artillery shell a mile and a quarter. This was not the eight or ten miles of a cannon, however it didn't matter as engagements at night occurred at close quarters.

My father had the dubious honors of scuttling P.T. Boats in the closing days of W.W. II. He told me that they would take them out some where in the middle of the Bellingham bay Washington and set them ablaze.

those 80 foot Elco's were some beautiful pt boats and deadly there are 2 examples at Battleship cove in fall river Massachusetts

Excellent documentary. Im a former US NAVY Gunners Mate. DD 704 USS BORIE Served in the very early 50's. and proud of our country.

2:08 "At full speed, the engines make a noise that discourages conversation but engineers are less dependent on small talk than those singing Cowboy diddy's on deck." LMAO. Seriously, the narrator actually says that! I got to know who the brilliant scriptwriter of this is! I think this is a really great video but that cracks me up.

Give credit where credit is due. Hubert Scott-Paine of the British Power Boat Company had developed Air Sea Rescue fast motor boats in the UK. He took his PT boat to Elco in 1939. This was the template for these boats.

The big pity is that at war's end, with no use for the boats, scores were simply burned in the Philippines as there was no interest or the cost was too much to bring them home. Almost all wooden boats go the same way even today.

I remember seeing John Wayne's PT Boat at the marina, just amazing!

WHO hasnt imagined being on a PT boat at some point in their lives?

When you think of the vast majority of these fast proud warships and how they ended their service lives shortly after the surrender of the Japanese Empire. It’s heartbreaking…. They were corralled on a remote shoreline location somewhere in the Philippines Islands, all lashed together; several hundred of them, soaked with fuel oil and torched. All intentionally burnt to their keels. All of them, save a small handful that conveniently weren’t around to be destroyed. I think less that a half dozen or so somehow got a reprieve and we’re converted to some civilian purpose.

war sucks. but it can give a sense of unity and cooperation within a company and teamwork that rarely happens in other cases.

I spent some time on one of the PT's descendants. The plastic fantastic - the PBR of the riverine forces in Nam '66-67. I wonder if there is a River Rat museum somewhere.

A nod to Scandinavian-American craftsmen is much appreciated. A wood-based construct benefitted from that heritage.

The late president John F. Kennedy served in the US Navy as a patrol boat officer.

Thanks for sharing this historic film.

If anyone has ever heard of my dads friend in Lancaster pa. Herman Berch has/had a PT in his barn and has had it since about 1952. It was damaged in the Korean war sent to Philly ship yard 4 repairs by some mistake because they really didn't fix or work on wooden hull boats at the Philly yard.... Berch said that is how he got ahold of it because it sat there for years out in the open until it was dragged off to a new storage building in 1958. It was left there until 1964 when Berch bought it from the Navy. The 3 inch deck gun was removed but he ended up with it. I doubt the guy is still alive he was old when I was kid & saw the thing.. I am wondering what happened to it???? Anyone got any info where a nearly 100ft long warship would vanish to in the farm lands of Pennsylvania???

I love PT boats , and our U.S. Navy . Full Speed ahead !

Thank you for sharing this with us all🇺🇸.

Facinating! So many were made no doubt few remain.

When our military was strong, and we had pride in our country.

At 27:40 > 27:43 + where she's passed the Hellsgate Bridge, that's in Astoria Queens, crossing the East River and along the Astoria Park waterfront heading east towards Long Island and open water. I grew up there and spent a good part of my youth playing in the park as a kid in the 60s and then as a young man I lived in different neighborhoods around Astoria after getting out of the Navy in 1977. ('73 >'77) So long ago...

People actually knew how to do something then! Craftsmen at it's finest!

I'm current writing a story script, creating characters and vehicles for a 4 player co-op video game and was wondering if I were to use modernized versions of the PT boats would they be copy-righted in the way I would have to change the name and design of the ship?

Wow, I didn't realize how Slow, Speeding Bullets were back in the day!😁 Great Boats though!👍

Is this the boat that Jeremy Clarkson had reproduced for the Vietnam Grand Tour special? Sounded amazing

I have no stories but love these great boats

Thoroughly enjoyed that.....Many thanks for posting.👍👍👍

Who doesn't think that the local bar was packed after every shift A lot of strong young girls wow

Could you imagine today's generation being told that they had to work that hard

No mention that PT-9 the prototype most ELCO boats were based on was designed, built and purchased from a little company called the British Power Boat Company…. From Southampton, England.

I found a great PT Boat pin in a shoebox of odds & ends I paid $20 for at a house sale. Googled it and saw it went for up to $300 😀

After Commander Buckley transported General MacArthur out of the Philippines, he commanded PT boats in New Guinea, where my father served with him. My dad had a pet monkey on board named Tojo who, unfortunately, used Buckley's bunk as his personal head (bathroom). Needless to say, Buckley was not amused. My dad exited the Navy as a Chief Petty Officer at the war's end and served as a California Highway Patrol officer for many years until the U.S.involvement in the Viet Nam war. He had always missed his days on his PT boat and wanted to return to naval service aboard the river patrol boats (PBRs) being used in the Mekong Delta because they were the closest thing to the PT boats he loved. So, he re-enlisted, was given his previous rate as a CPO, served at a few different stations for a few years before he went through some jungle warfare training and then went to Viet Nam. There he earned a Bronze Star with a combat "V" and, after completing his tour of duty, he retired. When Buckley, who was now an Admiral, noticed my dad's name among those who were retiring, he sent my dad a congratulatory letter commending him for his service and joking about Tojo's crapping in his bunk more than 20 years earlier.

These are my favorite WWII boats.

Excellent video. Thank you!

The. Fact that they spit out that many wooden boats is insane it takes a master carpenter years to learn the trade

A brilliant and enlightening video,I also liked the comparison to the “Mosquito”very apt i thought.Roly 🇬🇧.

When I was five years old I used to swim in theThames River down stream from ELCO one day I heard a mighty Roar the man of the house came running out hollering for me to get out of the water then ELCOs prototype PT boat came by I was then told that the previous time that boat was traveling at top speed they were going out on the sound for testing they had left a four foot high wake causing a lot of damage to boats and piers along the river a sound and sight I will never forget 👍👍

I know these boats were manned by heroes but what giants did they kill?