MWolfe1963
I often read lil snipplets in books and want to know more of the story, one that peaked my interest was that of Navy captain Charles Adair. We've all heard about MacAuthor and others using the PT Boats to escape from the Philippines bascially 500 miles to one the the southern Philippines island.."Mindanao", I think, {Wern will soon correct the spelling if I'm wrong}...From there in caught a plane.
Adair manned this lil 80ft two masted Yacht with a few US officers and Filipino crew and sailed it all the way to Surabaya, Java, then Australia, took a total of 82 days. They almost destroyed once coming under attack from enemy aircraft and barely dodged a enemy CA. They hid in coves during the day and travelled mostly at night until they cleared the Philippines. They often dealt with lack of food, clean water, etc...on some occasions they would barter with natives
"The USS Lanikai was previously owned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios (MGM Studios) for use in making the film The Hurricane, starring Jon Hall and Dorothy Lamour", so if you ever watch that you can see it's not that big, certainly not for the 4000 plus nms in often heavy seas Adair and his crew travelled to Australia.
Adair was more famous for another role, after the Battle of Leyte for playing a key role of rescuing the survivors of lost US ships, many the famous DD's that probably saved Taffy 3 and all her escort carriers. Rumors abound why no real orders were given to rescue the men in the sea, but Adair seemed to be the only one interested and got a plan together that saved over 1000 men from the sea, most historians agree most of these men would've been lost, time was running out.
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Originally Posted by MWolfe1963
