We radioed for airplanes to help us with this valuable prize. Just as we started our torpedo run from about 500 yards away, the destroyer shot a recognition flare and identified themselves as friendly. It was a close call. We were within seconds of firing our fish. The task unit was off course and had wandered into a forbidden zone. _June 23, 1944_: PTs 144 (_The Southern Cross_) and 189 departed Aitape Base, New Guinea, for patrol to the west. We closed the beach at Sowam after noticing lots of lights moving. They appeared to be trucks, moving very slow. Muffled down, hidden by a black, moonless night, we sneaked to within 150 yards off the beach and waited for a truck to come around the bend and onto the short stretch of road that ran along the beach. Here came one, lights blazing. Both boats blasted away. The truck burst into flames and stopped, lights still burning. The last we saw of the truck (shore batteries fired on us immediately, so we got out) it was still standing there with headlights burning and flames leaping up in the New Guinea night. It has become quite a sport, by the way, shooting enemy trucks moving along the beach with lights on. The Japs never seem to learn. We fire at them night after night. They turn off the lights briefly, then they turn them back on again when they think we have gone. But we haven’t gone. We shoot them up some more, and they turn off the lights again. And so on all night long. The Japanese apparently smarted under these truck-busting attacks, for Lieut. Cunningham’s entry three nights later tells a different story: _June 26, 1944_: PTs 144 and 149 left Aitape Base, New Guinea, to patrol toward Sowam Village, where the road comes down to the beach. We were after trucks. We closed cautiously to three-quarters of a mile off the beach, then it seemed that everything opened up on us, 50 and 30 calibers, 40 mms and three-inchers. At the time they fired on us we were dead in the water, with all three engines in neutral. To get the engines into gear, the drill is to signal the engine room where the motor mack of the watch puts the engine in gear by hand. There is no way to do it from the cockpit. Then, when the gears are engaged, the skipper can control the speed by three throttles. I was at the helm in the cockpit when the batteries opened fire, and I shoved all three throttles wide open, forgetting that the gears weren’t engaged. Of course, the boat almost shook apart from the wildly racing engines, but we didn’t move. The motor mack in the engine room below wrestled against me to push the throttles back. He was stronger than I was and finally got the engines slowed down enough to put them into gear. _Then_ we got moving fast. We made it out to sea OK without being hit, but I sure pulled a boo boo that time.