[akdavis]

Originally Posted by Charlielima

I'll be the first to snivel for 4 blue jackets with BARs on the boat. With the 20mm, 40mm, and Torps I think the boat would be ready for the group. 50 cal and 37mm should be the next step for modders to kick in. Rockets and depth charges? I'd like a green or camo boat skin and crew dressed for PT boat service first. What mods do we need to be ready for this when this boat is ready? I believe there was a PG version too. No torps. More or heavier guns. BZ Gunits! Your project has interest, momentum, and input. That should = success. CL

The Elco 77' boats PT 59, 60 and 61 were converted to gunboats. Here is a model of PT-59:

In late 1943, the USN saw that the Japanese forces in the Solomon Islands were beginning to supply their troops in heavily armed and armored landing barges. The standard gun armament package of the early PT boats, consisting of two twin .50 caliber machine guns in turrets and the Oerlikon 20mm gun were seemingly not having much luck against the armor of the barges. Something had to be done and it was found that the 110' PGMs (Patrol Gunboat, Motor) that were built on the hulls of the 110' wooden hull SC were too slow to accompany the PT boats. What was needed was a vessel that could keep pace with the PT boats. The only answer to that problem was another PT boat.

Originally, PT-59, 60 and 61 were set aside to be modified in the field to the all-gun gunboat configuration once the Elco eighty-foot boats superseded their effectiveness as torpedo boats. The torpedo tubes were removed and were replaced with three shielded machine gun mounts on each side and a shielded Bofors 40mm gun (Army type) was placed fore and aft on the centerline. The original two turrets containing the twin .50 caliber machine guns were retained and the boats received SO Type radar sets and the machine guns, Bofors guns and some of the upper works was plated with STS armor plating.

PT-60 and 61 received twin .50 caliber machine guns along their sides where the torpedo tubes were, however the 59 just had single mounts. But, on the 59, possibly left over from her days as a PT, at frame 22, were (on both sides of the boat, just forward of the cockpit) two twin .50 caliber machine guns. This can be backed up and verified by the accompanying photographs secured by Chip Marshall from the National Archives.

The 59 boat was assigned to Lt. J.F. Kennedy as his second combat command after losing PT-109 and third overall command, as an instructor at the PT Training Center at Melville, Rhode Island, he commanded the seventy-eight foot Huckins PT boat, PT-102. However, PT-59 was his second command in a combat zone. She was, according to Robert Donovan's book, undergoing conversion whilst Kennedy was recovering from his ordeal after having the 109 rammed.

The Higgins PTGBs had .50s down the centerline: