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Dreams of restoring WWII PT boat end

VANCOUVER, Wash. — Over the past dozen years, a group of Vancouver enthusiasts had voiced high hopes for PT Boat 659.

A glorious restoration. A waterfront display. A captivating lesson for those young ’uns who don’t appreciate the role the fast, powerful “patrol torpedo” boats played in World War II.

On Monday, those dreams were drowned out by the growl of a reciprocating saw.

Among those watching the demolition near Pearson Field were Jerry Pierce, a retired carpenter and history buff, and Tom Czekanski, director of Collections & Exhibitions for the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

Pierce, who brought along a 4-foot-long model he built of the boat, said it was too bad the ambitious restoration plans were never realized. He’d read about PT Boat 659 several years ago and was drawn to the vessel.

“The fact that the poor thing was sitting here, waiting for people to save it,” Pierce said.

Not all of the boat was destined for the scrap heap, however, Czekanski said.

Parts are being salvaged — enough to fill three 18-wheeler trucks — and will be used in the $5 million restoration of PT Boat 305, Czekanski said.

“It’s always a shame to see one of these go,” he said, over the noise of the saw. “But if it wasn’t going to be restored, it’s better to salvage.”

Czekanski received the go-ahead from the Navy, which owns the boat, to take 659 apart.

PT Boat 659 arrived in Vancouver in 1996, months after a committee began working to secure the donation and transport of the boat from Camp Withycombe in Clackamas County, Ore., where it had been stored for years.

Sam Jones, who led the efforts, said Monday he hadn’t known the boat was being taken apart. He stepped down as president of the PT Boat Council several years ago because of health problems. Judith Davis, who took his place, could not be reached Monday for comment.

In 2004, Davis acknowledged the group’s inability to raise enough money to restore the boat and announced plans to send 659 to the New Orleans museum.

“I had mixed emotions at first,” she said in 2004. “We finally all agreed this was the best solution.”

But 659’s trip to New Orleans never happened, Czekanski said, because moving costs were prohibitive: an estimated $350,000.

Even if they had splurged, he’s not sure how 659 would have handled the trip. It has been sitting so long in the rain and it hadn’t held up well, he said. Load up the 50-ton vessel and send it on a long road trip, “and you’d just be shaking parts off.”

Instead, the museum went after PT Boat 305 — which, unlike 659, saw action during the war and sank two German ships while deployed in the Mediterranean Sea. Also, 305 didn’t have to be moved across the Rocky Mountains: It was in Galveston, Texas, a few hundred miles from New Orleans.

The draw of PT boats is their place in American culture. John F. Kennedy commanded PT 109 in the Pacific theater during the war. The boats later received more attention through “McHale’s Navy,” a television show that aired for four seasons in the 1960s, and John Wayne and Robert Montgomery starred in “They Were Expendable,” a movie about PT boats.

Czekanski credited the appeal to their underdog status.

At the start of the war, the Navy was outmatched by Japan’s larger fleet, he said. But the fast PT boats were heavily armed and highly maneuverable vessels that could harass larger enemy ships while avoiding detection.

“This was the war where PT boats really made a difference,” he said.