Looks Like It Is PT-109

Robert Ballard and his team of undersea explorers Wednesday got the news they were hoping to hear about the wreck they found in May.

The U.S. Navy says that just as the explorers had suspected, evidence does suggest that it is likely that a wreck located deep beneath the Pacific Ocean near the Solomon Islands is part of PT-109, the World War II U.S. Navy patrol boat captained by John F. Kennedy.

In an interview Thursday on The Early Show, Ballard said the exploration was "like finding a needle in a haystack" and involved some luck as well as skill.

A five-member team at the Naval Historical Center concluded that the steel torpedo and tube found in May under 1,320 feet of water probably were from Kennedy's PT-109 vessel, which was sliced in two by a Japanese destroyer in August 1943.

Kennedy, who was president from 1961 until his assassination in 1963, was a Navy lieutenant serving in the Pacific when his boat sank and two men were killed.

The 11 surviving crewmen clung to the slowly sinking bow, then swam to a small island. Kennedy towed an injured crewman to shore by swimming with a strap from the man's lifejacket in his teeth.

Kennedy reportedly carved a message on a coconut and sent it through a local coast watcher to his superiors, who organized his crew's rescue despite the presence of Japanese troops and boats.

The future president was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal
and a Purple Heart.

"This was a defining moment in JFK's life," Ballard told CBS, "and he said that when he became president."

Ballard, who is planning a TV special on the hunt for the boat, said he undertook the project with the approval of the Kennedy family.

The objects found at the wreck site two months ago have been filmed but not moved, and there are no plans to salvage the wreckage, as the site is considered a burial ground.

"We have an understanding with the Kennedy family as well as others who lost loved ones - there were two people lost from the boat - that we will not disturb the site and we will not dig it up," said Ballard, who discovered the wreck of the Titanic and explored the wrecks of the Bismarck, the Lusitania and the Yorktown.

Mark Wertheimer of the Naval Historical Center said his team compared original photographs against 10 hours of video footage obtained by a team led by Ballard.

"It's very likely JFK's PT-109," Wertheimer said in an interview. "All the evidence says it is. Based on Navy records, there were no other PT boats in that specific area at that time, and it's the only PT known to be lost in the Blackett Straight."

Ballard said the discovery of Kennedy's boat is historically significant.

"This was one of the pivotal moments in his life," Ballard said in an interview. "The PT-109 finding provides an opportunity to tell the story. It was a rite of passage for Kennedy. This clearly was a moment of growing up. The PT-109 provides an opportunity to tell the history of a boy who went on to become our president."

Sen. Edward Kennedy says the apparent discovery of his older brother's boat is welcome news to his family, but carries a wider significance.

"Finding PT-109 is especially meaningful to the members of my
family, but we also believe it represents the story of all the
brave young men who fought with such courage in the South Pacific
to ensure victory during World War II," said the senator.

PT boats - speedy motor torpedo boats built by the hundreds and used against the Japanese Navy - were wooden-hulled and about 80 feet long.

More than a half century after the collision, only fragments of the wooden structure were discovered. The torpedo and the torpedo tube were found lodged in between underwater sand dunes, five miles offshore between the islands of Gizo and Kolombangara.

Wertheimer said the two pieces were covered in green and yellow marine growth. The torpedo looked broken, while a part of the torpedo tube appears to be missing.

The destruction of the boat and the young Kennedy's heroics were immortalized in a 1963 Hollywood film starring Cliff Robertson as the future president. Kennedy was assassinated the same year.

Ballard, whose expedition was funded by the National Geographic Society, the Office of Naval Research and his Connecticut-based Institute for Exploration, spent several days with his team searching a five-mile by seven-mile area using side-scan sonar technology, which penetrated beneath sea sediments and allowed them to see the wreckage.

The team then used high-definition video cameras to shoot various angles of the site.