COBI Patrol Torpedo Boat PT-109 Set 4825

COBI's Patrol Torpedo Boat PT-109 is a 1:35 model built from 3,726 blocks, 72 cm long, with a display stand. The deck lifts off, revealing the crew quarters, technical spaces and the engine room with their equipment. Four sailor figures are included, the armament and fittings are movable, and all markings are pad-printed.

The president who was run over by a destroyer

On the night of 2 August 1943, in the Blackett Strait in the Solomon Islands, the Japanese destroyer Amagiri — 2,000 tonnes moving at speed in the dark — struck PT-109 amidships and cut the boat in half.

Two of the thirteen men aboard were killed instantly. The rest were in the water, some burned, clinging to what floated, with the nearest friendly position miles away and Japanese-held islands in between.

The boat's commander was Lieutenant John F. Kennedy. He swam for four hours towing an engineer, Patrick McMahon, who was too badly burned to swim, with the strap of McMahon's lifejacket between his teeth. He got the crew to a small island, and then swam out into the strait on subsequent nights hoping to signal a passing boat.

They were found after six days by two Solomon Islanders, Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana, who were scouting for the Allies. Kennedy carved a message into a coconut shell — position, number of survivors, a request for a boat — and the two men carried it thirty-five miles by canoe through Japanese-patrolled water to a coastwatcher station.

Everyone was rescued. Kennedy kept the coconut shell, had it encased in glass, and used it as a paperweight on his desk in the Oval Office. It is in his presidential library.

The boat

Three Packard V-12 petrol engines, 1,500 hp each, around 41 knots. Four 21-inch torpedo tubes, a 20 mm Oerlikon aft, twin heavy machine guns, and — fitted by the crew the day before that last mission — a 37 mm anti-tank gun lashed to the bow. A PT boat carried twelve to seventeen men; thirteen were aboard on the night she was lost.

Before you order

3,726 pieces and 72 centimetres. This is a project measured in weeks and it needs a space decided in advance.

In the COBI range

Set 4849 is the LCVP Higgins boat, and 2048 and 2055 are figure sets with sailors and Marines sized to populate this deck — useful if you want more than the four figures supplied.

Specifications

Pieces: 3,726 · Figures: 4 sailors · Scale: 1:35 · Removable deck with full interior · Display stand included
Model dimensions: 72 × 20 × 26 cm (28.3 × 7.9 × 10.2 in)