PT sailors sometimes wondered what the Stone Age people of Halmahera, people who fought with barbed ironwood spears, made of the strange war being fought in their waters by the white and yellow intruders from the twentieth century. Lieut. (jg) Roger M. Jones, skipper of PT 163, tells about an encounter that has probably entered the mythology of these pagan people. In October 1944, Lieut. Jones’s boat and the 171 left Morotai for a routine patrol to keep the bypassed Japanese of Halmahera from crossing to Morotai. In the six weeks since the landings, PTs had already sunk fifty Japanese barges, schooners, and luggers carrying troops and supplies. During the New Guinea campaign, as the use of torpedoes shriveled for lack of suitable targets, the 163 had mounted an awesome battery of ten 50-caliber machine guns in twin mounts, two 20-mm., a 37-mm., a 40-mm. autocannon, and a 60-mm. mortar. The night’s problem was simple. Intelligence had told the PT skippers that there would be no friendlies in the patrol area on the west coast of Halmahera—no friendlies at all. “Shoot anything that moves.” [Illustration: PHILIPPINE ISLANDS] LUZON MACARTHUR MAKES ROUND TRIP TO CORREGIDOR BY PT MINDORO PT 233 SINKS DESTROYER KIYOSHIMO LANDING BEACHES KAMIKAZES STRIKE AT PTs BRESTES HIT SAMAR TRACK OF CENTRAL STRIKING FORCE BATTLE OFF SAMAR WITH CENTRAL STRIKING FORCE PTs SINK SC 53, PC 105 and UZUKI LEYTE BATTLE OF SURIGAO STRAITS PT 493 LOST HERE MINDANAO TRACK OF SOUTHERN STRIKING FORCE 1st PT SIGHTING OF JAPANESE FLEET To make a coordinated attack, the two PTs hardly needed to communicate. They had gone through the motions so many times that they performed the maneuver like a reflex. The drill was to close a radar target slowly and silently to 200 yards, fire a mortar flare, and open fire with every gun that would bear instantly as the flare burst to smother the surprised Japanese before they could answer. That split-second timing, the business of opening fire simultaneously with the bursting of the star-shell, was drilled into gunners repeatedly by dummy attacks on floating logs. Twenty-five miles short of the patrol area, the radar man found a target five miles off the beach. The two skippers were jubilant; here was a target made to order—too far out to sea to run for the beach, out of the range of protecting shore batteries, in water deep enough for a high-speed strafing run by the PTs, with no chance of hitting a rock. The boats went to general quarters and closed the target. Lieut. Jones took the unnecessary precaution of warning his gunners. “Look alive, now—open fire the _instant_ the flare goes off.” At 200 yards the skippers could make out a dim shape, but details of the target were hidden in the darkness. Lieut. Jones gave a last warning to gunners to be quick on the trigger, and fired his flare. Twenty-four gun barrels swung to bear on target. The flare burst.