We’ve established the old war planes strike the fancy of many BangShifters out there. How about old war boats? We’re pretty enomored with PT boats, which we think are truly hot rods from Hell. 80 feet long and packing 4,500hp from a trio of 2500ci Packard 12-cylinder engines PT Boats were also armed to the teeth and had the capability of taking out water craft many times their size.
The stats on the PT boats are pretty awesome. The engines were a clean sheet design by Packard, not a knock off of the Liberty airplane engine that the company produced enmass. It was (as mentioned earlier) 2500ci, had four valves per cylinder, 6.4:1 compression and a centrifugal blower that, in later models, was intercooled. The engines were all shynchronized together and two sat in the rear of the boat, one was in the center. Making 1500hp, and a lot of noise each. Thirst? Yeah there was LOTS of that. Supposedly a PT boat could swallow 5,000 gallons of 100 octane avaiation fuel during a single day/night cruise! In factory shape they were capable of making nearly 45-knots in the right condition. That’s an 80-foot boat from the 1940s remember!
This movie is a three part promotional film from the “Electric Boat Company” (General Dynamics) that produced these awesome machines. They build nearly 800 by the end of the war. This is the story of the baddest boats on the water during WWII!
There was once a PT boat tethered along one of the many tributaries of the Sacramento River Delta. I haven’t been able to find it again.
There’s a later version under restoration here in DeLand, FL. It’s not a WWII era boat, so it doesn’t have the triple packards. It was built in Norway and served in Vietnam.
http://www.delandnavalairstation.org/restore.htm
It’s intended to be returned to service as a Boy Scouts/Sea Cadet training boat and living history museum.
That was excellent! Thank you.