The undeniable triumph of Squadron Three was the flight of MacArthur. On March 11, 1942, at Corregidor, the four surviving boats of the squadron picked up the general, his staff and selected officers and technicians, the general’s wife and son and—most astonishingly—a Chinese nurse for the four-year-old boy. In a series of night dashes from island to island through Japanese-infested seas, the little flotilla carried the escaping brass to the island of Mindanao, where the generals and admirals caught a B 17 Flying Fortress bomber flight for Australia. The fantastic and undeniably exaggerated claims of sinkings are regrettable, but in no way detract from the bravery of the sailors of Squadron Three. They were merely the victims of the nation’s desperate need for victories. William White’s contribution to the false giant-killer image of the PTs is understandable, but other correspondents were less responsible. One, famous and highly respected, said that all PTs were armed with three-inch cannon. Putting such a massive weapon on the fragile plywood deck of a PT boat was a bit like arming a four-year-old boy with a big-league baseball bat—it’s just too much weapon for such a little fellow to carry. The same reckless writer said that PT boats cruised at 70 knots. Another said that a PT could pace a new car—which amounts to another claim for a 70-knot speed. Almost all of the reporters, some of whom surely knew better, wrote about the PTs’ armament as though the little boats could slug it out with ships of the line. In the fantasies spun by the nation’s press, the PTs literally ran rings around enemy destroyers and socked so many torpedoes into Japanese warships that you almost felt sorry for the outclassed and floundering enemy. PT sailors read these romances and gritted their teeth. They knew too painfully well that the stories were not true. What was the truth about the PT? Early in World War II, before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor pulled the United States into the war then raging in Europe against Germany and Italy and in China against Japan, the American Navy had been tinkering around with various designs of fast small boats armed with torpedoes. British coastal forces had been making good use of small, fast torpedo boats, and the American Navy borrowed much from British designs. On July 24, 1941—four and a half months before America entered the war—the Navy held the Plywood Derby, a test speed run of experimental PTs in the open Atlantic off Long Island. The course ran around the east end of Block Island, around the Fire Island lightship to a finish line at Montauk Point Whistling Buoy. Two PTs of the Elco design finished with best average speeds—39.72 and 37.01 knots—but boats of other designs had smaller turning circles. Over a measured mile the Elcos did 45.3 knots with a light load and 44.1 knots with a heavy load.