By then the 346 had arrived. The skipper saw the approaching planes, but recognized them as friendly types and thought they were the air cover from Cape Gloucester, so the PT crews ignored the planes and continued with the salvage and rescue work. First hint that something had gone wrong was a shower of bombs that burst among the PT boats. The PT officers frantically tried every trick in the catalogue to identify themselves, and in despair finally turned loose their gunners, who shot down one of the planes. The loss of one of their mates angered the pilots and they pressed their attacks harder. Two of the three PTs went down. The plane flight commander called for a Catalina rescue boat to pick up the downed pilot. The Cat never found the pilot, but instead picked up thirteen survivors of the torpedo boats. Their arrival at Green Island was the first word the horrified pilots there had that their targets had been friendly. Three PT officers and 11 men were killed, two plane pilots were lost, four officers and nine men were wounded, two PTs and two planes were destroyed, in this useless and tragic encounter. Most PT patrols were not as disastrous, of course, but it was a rare night that did not provide some adventure. Lieut. (jg) James Cunningham kept a diary during 1944, and a few extracts from this journal show the nature of a typical PT’s blockade duty: _March 12, 1944_: PTs 149 (_The Night Hawk_) and 194 patrol the north coast of New Britain. At 2300 we picked up a target on radar—closed in and saw a small Jap surface craft. We made a run on it and found out it was aground and apparently destroyed. We destroyed it some more. We moved to the other side of Garove Island, where we saw a craft under way heading across the mouth of the harbor. Over one part of the harbor were very high cliffs, an excellent spot for gun emplacements. We blindly chased the craft and closed in on it for a run. Just then the guns—six-inchers—opened up from the cliffs on us, and it seemed for a while that they would blow us out of the water. We left the decoy and headed out to sea, laying a smoke screen. The concussion of the exploding shells was terrific. I still believe the craft was a decoy to pull us into the harbor, and we readily took the bait. The thing that saved us was that the Japs were too eager. They fired too soon before we were really far into the harbor. On the way home, about 10 miles offshore from New Britain, we picked up three large radar pips and figured they were enemy destroyers, because they were in enemy waters and we were authorized to destroy anything in this grid sector. We chased within one mile, tracking them with radar, and got set to make our run. We could see them by eye at that range and identified them as a destroyer and two large landing craft.