PT Boats
In 1939 agreement was reached with the American Electric Launch Company (Elco) to purchase a British Power Boat 70-footer (later named PT9), as a template for American production under licence. PT9 was taken by the SS President Roosevelt to Elco’s works at New London, Connecticut. On 3 October Scott-Paine met President Roosevelt and senior Elco representatives at the White House to authorize the creation of a new naval arm, the PT Boat Squadrons. Production started at a new Elco factory at Bayonne, New Jersey in January 1940.
The Canadian Power Boat Company was set up by Scott-Paine in 1940. This produced 39 boats, mainly MTBs.
After the passing of Lend-Lease in 1941 comparative trials, nicknamed the Plywood Derbys, were held between rival American boatbuilders, Elco winning both. Elco went on to produce 754 70-, 77-, and 80-foot (24 m) PT Boats, including Jack Kennedy’s PT109, & the boat that rescued General Douglas MacArthur from Corregidor.
Read more about this topic: Hubert Scott-Paine
Famous quotes containing the word boats:
“Three miles long and two streets wide, the town curls around the bay ... a gaudy run with Mediterranean splashes of color, crowded steep-pitched roofs, fishing piers and fishing boats whose stench of mackerel and gasoline is as aphrodisiac to the sensuous nose as the clean bar-whisky smell of a nightclub where call girls congregate.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)