The PT’s main tactic was not the hell-roaring dash of the correspondents’ romances, but a sneaky, quiet approach in darkness or fog. The PT was designed to slip slowly and quietly into an enemy formation in bad visibility, to fire torpedoes at the handiest target, and to escape behind a smoke screen with whatever speed the condition of the boat permitted. With luck, the screening destroyers would lose the PT in the smoke, the confusion, and the darkness. Without luck—well, in warfare everybody has to take some chances. What most annoyed the PT sailors about their lurid press was that the truth made an even better story. After all, they argued, it takes guts to ease along at night in an agonizingly slow approach to an enemy warship that will chew you to bloody splinters if the lookouts ever spot you. And it takes real courage to bore on into slingshot range when you know that the enemy can easily run you down if your torpedoes miss or fail to explode, as they did all too often. Compared to this reality, one of those imaginary 70-knot blitzes would be a breeze. One disgusted PT sailor wrote: “Publicity has reached the point where glorified stories are not genuinely flattering. Most PT men resent the wild, fanciful tales that tend to belittle their real experience.... There is actually little glamour for a PT. The excitement of battle is tempered by many dull days of inactivity, long nights of fruitless patrol, and dreary hours of foul weather at sea in a small boat.” He griped that the PT sailor would prefer the tribute of “They were dependable” to “They were expendable.” Maybe so, but the public just would not have it that way. The dash and audacity of the sailors of those little boats had appealed to the American mind. It was the story of David and Goliath again, and the sailors in the slingshot navy, no matter how they balked, joined the other wild and woolly heroes of legend who go joyously into battle against giants. This is the story of what the mosquito fleet really did. 2. Attrition at Guadalcanal In August 7, 1942, exactly eight months after Pearl Harbor, American Marines landed on Guadalcanal in the southern Solomon Islands, as the first step on the long road to Tokyo. The Japanese reacted violently. They elected to have it out right there—to stop the Allied recovery right at the start and at all costs. Down from their mighty base at Rabaul, they sent reinforcements and supplies through a sea lane flanked by two parallel rows of islands in the Solomons archipelago. The sea lane quickly became known as The Slot, and the supply ships, usually fast destroyers, became known as the Tokyo Express. The night runs of the Tokyo Express were wearing down the Marines. As they became more and more dirty and tired they became more and more irritated to find that the Japanese they killed were dressed in spruce new uniforms—sure sign that they were newcomers to the island.