The torpedo boat actions that followed are often hard to understand. PTs, by the nature of their attack, provoke wild melees, and survivors of melees rarely remember precisely what happened. What they do claim to remember is usually faulty and contradicted by circumstantial evidence. PT skippers kept only sketchy logs, and those entries giving the time an action took place are often especially inaccurate. As nearly as a historian can tell, however, here is what happened to the PTs. At 10:15 P.M. Ensign Peter B. Gadd, skipper of PT 131, on station 18 miles south of Bohol Island almost exactly in the middle of the Mindanao Sea and 100 miles from Admiral Oldendorf, picked up two targets on his radar screen. They were between the three-boat section commanded by Lieut. W. C. Pullen, and Bohol Island to the north. Lieut. Pullen tried to reach Admiral Oldendorf by radio, but failed, so he led the PTs 152, 130 and 131, in a torpedo approach. The radar pips broke into five separate targets, and when a light haze lifted, the skippers clearly saw what they thought were two battleships, two cruisers and a destroyer. The enemy opened fire at three-mile range, with his biggest batteries. Starshells burst overhead and the PTs tore away through a ghastly glare that made them feel naked under the rain of high explosive. An eight-inch shell hit a torpedo of 130 smack on the warhead and tore through the bow. Miraculously, there was no explosion. The 152 was hit by a 4.7-incher, probably from a destroyer that was closing fast, with searchlight blazing. (This destroyer, the _Shigure_, was the only ship of the Japanese van to survive the coming massacre.) The explosion tore away the 37-mm. cannon, killed the gunner, stunned the loader, and wounded three sailors. The boat was afire. Aboard the stricken 152, Lieut. (jg) Joseph Eddins dumped two shallow-set depth charges into his wake and pumped 40-mm. shells at the pursuing destroyer. “Our 40 mm. made the enemy reluctant to continue the use of the searchlight,” said Lieut Eddins. The destroyer snapped off the light and sheered away from the geysers of exploding depth charges. The fight had lasted 23 minutes. Now there were two more targets on the radar screen and the PT sailors were frantic to get their radio report through to the waiting battleline. Lieut. (jg) Ian D. Malcolm of 130 ran south until he found Lieut. (jg) John A. Cady’s section near Camiguin Island. He boarded PT 127 and borrowed its radio. Just after midnight on October 25th, Lieut. Malcolm made the first contact report of the position, course, and speed of the enemy. It was the first word of the enemy received by Admiral Oldendorf in fourteen hours.