Ironically, the day after incredible escape of all PT hands without injury, Lieut. Tatro, skipper of the 489, while working on a 20-mm gun, let a wrench slip and a trunnion spring threw the heavy tool into his forehead, injuring him seriously. By November 1944, there was no more work for the PTs in New Guinea, and the last patrol was made just twenty-three months after the first one, 1,500 miles to the east. The PT navy in New Guinea had grown from one small tender and six boats to eight tenders and 14 squadrons. Almost nightly action had taken a terrible toll of the Japanese. The shore was littered with the wreckage of _daihatsus_ and the jungle was littered with the skeletons of thousands of Japanese soldiers who had died for lack of supplies. Major General F. H. Berryman, Commander of the Second Australian Corps, wrote the PT commander: The following evidence emerging from the recent operations will illustrate the cumulative effect of the activities of your command: A. The small degree to which the enemy has used artillery indicates a shortage of ammunition. B. The enemy, in an endeavor to protect his barges, has been forced to dispose his normal field artillery over miles of coast when those guns might well have been used in the coastal sector against our land troops. C. Many Japanese diary entries describe the shortage of rations and the regular fatigues of foraging parties to collect native food, which is beginning to be increasingly difficult to obtain. D. A Japanese prisoner of war stated that three days’ rice, augmented by native food, now has to last nine days. This is supported by the absence of food and the presence of native roots on enemy dead. E. There is definite evidence that the enemy has slaughtered and eaten his pack-carrying animals. From the above you will see how effective has been the work of your squadrons and how it has contributed to the recent defeat of the enemy. The war in New Guinea was over, but the Allies were still a long way from Tokyo. Across the water were the Philippine Islands, garrisoned with tens of thousands of Japanese. There was hard fighting ahead for the PTs. 6. The War in Europe: Mediterranean While Americans and their Allies were fighting the Japanese in the Pacific, on the other side of the world their comrades in arms grappled in a Titanic struggle with the other two Axis powers. Half of the European Axis partnership was halfhearted Italy, but the other half was the martial and determined state of Germany, led by an insane genius at the black arts of killing named Hitler.