Australia’s WW2 unions weren’t always on the side of the Allies!
Regards,
While I was wandering around in my uniform (I was a Marine Major back then), I was accosted by a young woman from an antiwar group who seized on me and loud and annoying and soon we had a crowd around us as she accused the United States of "committing wars all over the world and that Reagan was a madman with his finger on the nuclear trigger and to Australians, the Yanks aren't any better than the bloody Russians!".
At that point, I had had enough and despite the large crowd now packed around us, I said loudly "stop! - while your young men were protecting Britain around Tobruk, our young men were fighting to defend Australia from the Japanese. I just came from Darwin where I saw the wreckage of a US P-40 where a young American man gave his life for Australia - when was the last time a Russian gave his life for Australia?"
I braced myself for the inevitable backlash from the crowd, but it turned out that the majority were American tourists and I got applause instead of jeers - and that young women slunk off.
According to him, only half of the boats had radar and earlier in the evening (it was a very black night), only the radar boats fired their torpedos at a string of Japanese destroyers intel had said were coming - missed them - and then the returned to base.
The remaining boats didn't have radar, which included PT-109 and PT-105 and they stayed at their posts waiting for the Japs to come back through.
According to him, JFK had put the crew on 50% watch, so half were sleeping and the Japanese suddenly returned and the IJN Amagiri was almost on top of them by the time they saw her. JFK allegedly ran the throttles to "full" but the mufflers were closed and the engines stalled during those critical seconds and they got cut in half.
According to Keresey, it was a kind of "new guy" mistake and he didn't blame him - but he did blame the radar boats for leaving the area and making all the remaining boats blind.
He got some of his crew killed by not getting out of the way of a slower Japanese ship.
And don’t forget why he was there in the first place - they had to get him away from his Nazi spy lover.
MacArthur wanted JFK court-martialed for dereliction of duty (because he probably was asleep at the helm). Nimitz blocked the action because Annapolis grads and West Pointers loathe to pass on an opportunity to poke one another in the eye with a stick.