The PTs still might have escaped, but hard luck 77 picked that evil moment to run aground. A shell from _Lough_ hit her, blowing the crew into the water. The _Lough_ shifted fire to 79, and hit her on the portside. The boat exploded and sank, carrying down with her the skipper, Lieut. (jg) Michael A. Haughian, Joseph E. Klesh, MoMM1c, and Vincent A. Berra, QM3c. The 30 survivors of the two boats, swimming in the light of the burning 77, assembled and held a muster. Besides the three dead on the 79, Lieut. Stillman was missing. He was never seen again. The shipwrecked sailors swam together to an enemy-held shore two miles away. Guerrillas sheltered them until February 3rd, when they were picked up by PTs 227 and 230. On March 2, 1945, just two weeks short of three years after he left the Rock on Lieut. Bulkeley’s PT, General MacArthur landed on recaptured Corregidor. Finally, he had returned. And he returned the same way he had left—by PT 373. In the last days of the war, the PTs fought the familiar kind of mop-up action against bypassed pockets of Japanese troops that they had been fighting for three years in the Pacific. Nightly patrols fought minor actions, but targets became harder and harder to find. When the war ended on August 14, 1945, the Japanese came out of the woods and the PTs learned for the first time the tremendous enemy power they had kept bottled up far from the fighting front. At Halmahera, for instance, six PTs picked up Lieut. General Ishii, Commanding General of the army forces there, and Captain Fujita, Naval Commander, and took them to 93rd Division headquarters on Morotai, where they surrendered 37,000 troops, 4,000 Japanese civilians, 19,000 rifles, 900 cannon, 600 machine guns, and a mountain of miscellaneous supplies. For almost a year the PTs of Morotai—down to two understaffed squadrons at the end—had held at bay a Japanese force powerful enough, in the days of Japanese glory, to conquer whole nations and to hold vast stretches of conquered lands in iron control. The Japanese themselves paid the top tribute to the PT fleet. “The enemy has used PT boats aggressively,” one of their tactical publications read, “On their account our naval ships have had many a bitter pill to swallow.” So much for the past of the torpedo boat. What about its future? The PT fleet was quickly disbanded after the war. Today, although the Soviet navy has more than 500 motor torpedo boats—according to _Jane’s Fighting Ships_—and even though Soviet-built torpedo boats ply Cuban waters almost within sight of American shores, the U. S. Navy has not a single PT in commission.