PT 109 AND JFK 2nd – John F. Kennedy and PT 109 Tulagi, Solomon Islands. PT Boat Officers (L-R) James ("Jim") Reed ... Lt. (jg) John F. Kennedy aboard the PT-109, 1943. (John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library) It is arguably the most famous small-craft engagement in naval history, and it was an unmitigated disaster. At a later date, when asked to explain how he had come to be a hero, one of the young commanders involved, by then an aspiring politician, replied laconically, "It was involuntary. They sank my boat." John F. Kennedy's comment speaks a soldier's clear-eyed appraisal of the mechanics of heroism. It is of course unjust, however true it may be, and to do justice to the young Lieutenant Kennedy, we must look at everything that he leaves out— everything that happened after the Japanese sank his boat sixty years ago this summer in the South Pacific during World War II. To understand the events of August 1 - 2, 1943, which cul...
The great strength of American capitalism is also its great weakness, namely, its extremely high weapons productivity. A number of factors have produced increases in productivity, like, the mechanization of the production process that got under way in England as early as the 18th century. In the early 20th century, then, American industrialists made a contribution in the form of automatiion. ..Amor Patriae