Swim For Life: John F. Kennedy and the PT 109 Rescue

With the world shutting down, we’re reaching into our archives and pulling some of our favorite stories from the SwimSwam print edition to share online. If you’d like to read more of this kind of story, you can subscribe to get a print (and digital) version of SwimSwam Magazine here. This story was originally published in the 2018 Summer edition of SwimSwam Magazine.

Story by Iain Martin

This August marks the 75th anniversary of the heroic swim made by a young John F. Kennedy to rescue the survivors of his ill-fated PT 109 during World War II.

On the moonless night of August 2, 1943, Kennedy’s 80-foot patrol boat was lurking in Blackett Strait in the Solomon Islands, waiting to ambush a small Japanese convoy. Yet the hunters became the hunted when the enemy destroyer Amagiri rammed PT 109, killing two sailors and leaving an injured Kennedy with 10 other survivors adrift 40 miles behind enemy lines. They clung to the slowly sinking bow section of PT 109 throughout the night, hoping for rescue.

When morning came, Kennedy knew their situation was dire. Pat McMahon, the boat’s chief engineer, had third-degree burns and could not swim. Others had also been burned or ingested fuel and were barely functioning. No one had any food or water, nor a first aid kit or a life raft. To make matters worse, the bow section where the wounded lay was slowly capsizing and about to sink. With the morning light came the good chance they would be seen by enemy lookouts on islands only miles away.

The men prayed that the dawn would bring their salvation, but by mid-morning it was clear that they were not going to be rescued. Around 10 o’clock, the wreck gurgled and rolled over. The men clung to the sides of the now upside-down hull. Kennedy knew it was time to decide their next move. They had to somehow reach land before darkness fell.

It was time to swim for their lives. The question was: Where should they go?

They could see the huge volcano on the island of Kolombangara to the northeast, just a few miles away. To the west was the island of Vella Lavella, and to the south, only a mile distant, was the island of Ghizo. Kennedy knew they were all held by the Japanese. He pointed to one of the smaller islands in the channel to the southwest. It was a tiny speck of sand nicknamed Plum Pudding Island by the British colonials for its shape.

“We will swim to that small island,” Kennedy said. “We have less chance of making it than some of these other islands here, but there’ll be less chance of Japanese too.”

It was a 3-1/2-mile swim, but the current was with them. The dangers were real — being spotted by the enemy, separated, or rendered a feast of oceanic whitetip sharks. But the men had Kennedy, a former Harvard swimmer who was trained in survival techniques by the legendary swimming coach Jim Farrar. Kennedy had spent his summers on Cape Cod and was an expert sailor. He understood the ocean, with its currents and tides. He also knew exactly where they were among the small chain of islands.

Kennedy organized the men into two groups. The best swimmers would help pull those too weak to swim. They used two large wooden timbers salvaged from the wreck as a makeshift raft to keep everyone together. He and McMahon would be the second group.

Cutting a strap from McMahon’s life vest, Kennedy used it as a rope to tow the wounded sailor. He swam a breaststroke as McMahon floated on his back. When Kennedy’s arms became tired, he put the strap between his teeth to keep going.

It took them four hours to swim to Plum Pudding Island, which was 100 yards long and 40 yards wide with a few coconut trees. When they reached the beach, Kennedy was exhausted and vomited seawater. Knowing they would be helpless if the enemy saw them out in the open, McMahon struggled to his feet and with his burned arms helped Kennedy crawl up the sand and into cover. Moments after they all hid among the trees, a Japanese barge chugged right past the beach.

With only a few hours of rest, Kennedy was back in the water, wading over coral reefs extending southeast toward Ferguson Passage, where American boats might be signaled for a rescue. With a .38 revolver tied around his neck, and clutching an electric lantern wrapped in a life vest, Kennedy swam into the deep channel, hoping the American boats would come.

Hours later, when no PT boats appeared, Kennedy began the long swim back to his men. He made it to the reef but could not summon the energy to climb out of the water as the ocean currents swept him away.

A small miracle saved him. Before dawn, the tides had changed, and the currents reversed to the southeast and back into Ferguson Passage. By dawn, Kennedy could make out his surroundings and realized the tides had placed him close to where he began swimming the night before. Nature had given him a rare second chance.

Kennedy struck out for Plum Pudding Island a second time. Fearing he would drown from fatigue, he swam first to Leorava Island, the closest land. It was just a stretch of sand above the waves, but he could rest. As Kennedy struggled to make it to the beach, the surrounding reef of sharp coral sliced open his feet and legs as he stumbled over them. When he reached the sand, he collapsed and fell into a deep sleep.

Hours later Kennedy awoke, and using his last ounces of energy, he began to make his way back to Plum Pudding Island, stumbling over rocks, climbing along the reef in chest-deep water, and swimming the deep channels toward his men.

Since the collision, he had been in the water for over 30 hours. With no food or fresh water to drink, and suffering badly from his bruises and cuts, Kennedy used the deepest reserves of will to keep himself going.

When Ensign Leonard Thom pulled Kennedy from the water around midday, he was shaking from hypothermia. Though Kennedy had failed to secure a rescue, the men were inspired by their skipper’s determination to do his utmost to save them. Years later, Gerard Zinser, the mechanic, said, “I served 20 years in the Navy, and I never had an officer that would ever come close to what I saw Kennedy do.”

Good fortune smiled on Kennedy and his survivors. Three days later, they were discovered by two teenage Melanesian natives, Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana. Working as scouts for the Coastwatchers, the young men risked their lives to deliver to Allied hands a message carved into the husk of a coconut: “NARU ISL … COMMANDER … NATIVE KNOWS POS’IT … HE CAN PILOT … 11 ALIVE … NEED SMALL BOAT … KENNEDY.”

Two days later, Kennedy and his men were rescued from their island prison by PT 157.

The PT 109 story would make Kennedy famous throughout America when Reader’s Digest published the account written by John Hersey. It helped pave the way for Kennedy to eventually reach the White House in 1961.

Kennedy later said of the incident: “I firmly believe that as much as I was shaped by anything, so I was shaped by the hand of fate moving in World War II. Of course, the same can be said of almost any American or British or Australian man of my generation. The war made us. It was and is our single greatest moment.”

Iain Martin is a freelance writer and historian from Connecticut. His newest book for middle school readers, “In Harm’s Way: JFK, World War II, and the Heroic Rescue of PT 109,” is available from Scholastic on July 31.