On a Moonless Night in 1943, Dozens of Tiny American PT Boats Crept Across the Black Waters of the Solomon Sea — Armed With Nothing But Torpedoes and Nerves — and When They Struck Japan’s Mighty Convoy Headed for Guadalcanal, They Didn’t Just Sink Ships, They Shattered the Imperial Navy’s Entire Strategy of War

Story: “The Night the Mosquitoes Bit the Dragon”

1. The Shadow War

In the summer of 1943, the Pacific was a vast graveyard of ships.
Every island, every stretch of ocean, was a battlefield.

Japan’s navy — once the most feared in the world — was still trying to supply its far-flung garrisons, including those on New Georgia and Kolombangara in the Solomon Islands.

But the Americans had learned something crucial: the Japanese supply convoys only moved at night.

The U.S. Navy called them “Tokyo Express” — swift, heavily armed destroyers racing through the darkness to deliver men and munitions under cover of moonlight.

It was a deadly game of cat and mouse.

And that’s where the PT boats came in.

2. The Mosquito Fleet

PT boats — Patrol Torpedo boats — were small, fast, and fragile.
Built mostly of wood, barely 80 feet long, they carried four torpedoes and a handful of machine guns.

They were nicknamed “the Mosquito Fleet” — small but able to sting.

Sailors joked that a single bullet could set them ablaze, and they weren’t wrong.
But their speed and stealth made them perfect hunters for the dark.

One young skipper wrote in his diary:

“We fight in darkness with plywood and courage. We’re ghosts with engines.”

That August, one squadron of PT boats received orders that would change the war in the Solomons — and ripple across Japan’s entire Pacific strategy.

3. The Intelligence

It started with a decoded message from U.S. naval intelligence.

The Japanese planned to send a night convoy of destroyers and transports through Blackett Strait to resupply troops on Kolombangara Island.

If those supplies got through, the island campaign could drag on for months.
If they didn’t — Japan’s forward line in the Solomons would collapse.

Admiral William “Bull” Halsey gave the order:

“Stop that convoy. I don’t care if you have to ram them. Not one ship gets through.”

That mission fell to a handful of men in fast wooden boats — led by Lieutenant Commander Robert Kelly of PT Squadron 23.

4. The Night Patrol

On the evening of August 7, 1943, sixteen PT boats left their base on Rendova Island under a black, moonless sky.

Engines throttled low, lights off, they slipped into the sea like silent predators.

Each boat carried a crew of twelve — most barely in their twenties.

Their plan was simple:

Split into two lines across the narrow strait.

Wait for radar contact.

Attack the convoy at point-blank range.

But nothing ever goes according to plan in the dark.

5. The Waiting

Hours passed.

The men sat in silence, eyes straining over the water.
The only sound was the rhythmic hum of engines and the crash of waves against the bow.

Kelly stood on the bridge of PT-159, binoculars in hand.
He checked his watch — midnight.

Suddenly, the radar operator whispered,

“Contact. Bearing 045. Range five miles.”

Kelly turned to his crew.
“Battle stations.”

The men moved quickly, loading torpedoes, checking triggers.
The tension was electric.

Then, through the darkness, they saw it — faint lights flickering on the horizon.

6. The Tokyo Express

It was a Japanese convoy — nine destroyers and six transports — slicing through the black water in formation.

Through his binoculars, Kelly could see their silhouettes — massive, fast, and bristling with guns.

Compared to the PT boats, they were giants.

Kelly muttered, “We’re fighting battleships with motorboats.”

But retreat wasn’t an option.

He keyed his radio.
“All units, this is Lead. Engage.”

7. The Attack Begins

At 1:10 a.m., PT Squadron 23 opened fire.

Torpedoes streaked through the waves, leaving white trails in the dark.

Moments later —
BOOM.

A column of water and flame erupted from the lead transport.

“Hit confirmed!” the gunner shouted.

Kelly swung the boat hard, dodging tracer fire from a destroyer now bearing down on them.

Searchlights cut through the night, sweeping the sea like swords of white light.

The PT boats scattered, darting in and out like insects.

Machine guns rattled.
Torpedoes roared.
The sea burned.

8. The Trap

The Japanese destroyers returned fire, their big guns thundering into the night.

One PT boat, PT-157, took a near hit that sent its crew sprawling.

Kelly’s voice crackled over the radio:

“Stay low and keep moving! Make them chase shadows!”

And they did.

The PT boats used their small size to disappear into the smoke, reappear on the other side, fire, and vanish again.

The Japanese gunners couldn’t track them.
Every muzzle flash they fired at hit nothing but ocean spray.

Within minutes, two more transports were hit.

The Tokyo Express was in chaos.

9. The Decoy

Kelly knew they couldn’t sink the entire convoy — but they could delay it long enough for the American bombers waiting at dawn.

He ordered two boats to act as decoys, drawing fire while the others circled around for another strike.

“Make it look like the whole U.S. Navy’s out here!” he yelled.

The decoy boats weaved in and out of the Japanese line, firing flares and machine guns to confuse the enemy.

From above, it must have looked like dozens of attackers.

The Japanese commander, convinced he was facing a massive ambush, ordered the convoy to break formation.

That was the fatal mistake.

10. The Second Wave

At 2:00 a.m., the PT boats struck again.

This time, they aimed at the transports now scattered and exposed.

Two torpedoes slammed into the Toshi Maru, splitting it in half.

Another transport caught fire and drifted toward shore.

The once-tight convoy was now a maze of smoke, wreckage, and confusion.

On the destroyer Amagiri, an officer shouted,

“We can’t find the enemy! They’re everywhere!”

It was the first time Japan’s vaunted night tactics — perfected over years — had failed.

Tiny American boats had outmaneuvered their mighty destroyers.

11. The Cost

But victory came at a price.

One PT boat, PT-109, didn’t return that night.
It was commanded by a young lieutenant named John F. Kennedy.

His boat had been rammed by a Japanese destroyer in the chaos and sunk.
Kennedy and his crew swam to a nearby island, surviving for days before being rescued.

(That story would become legend — and would one day help elect him president.)

But in that moment, few knew what had happened.

All they knew was that the mission had succeeded.

The Tokyo Express had been stopped.

12. The Morning After

At dawn, American reconnaissance planes flew over the strait.

They saw burning wrecks scattered across miles of ocean — transports listing, oil slicks stretching across the waves, lifeboats drifting.

The Japanese lost four ships that night.
But the greater loss was strategic.

Without supplies, the garrisons on New Georgia and Kolombangara soon fell.

It was a small battle — but one that cracked Japan’s logistics chain in the South Pacific.

A few hours later, Japanese Admiral Gunichi Mikawa received the report.

He read it twice, silent.
Then he said,

“If our great navy is to be defeated by these… motorboats, then our empire has no future.”

13. The Shift in Strategy

After the attack, Japan began to realize a brutal truth:

The age of massive battleships was over.
The sea now belonged to whoever could move fastest, strike hardest, and disappear.

PT boats — those “mosquitoes” the Japanese once laughed at — had become a weapon of terror.

Convoys that once sailed confidently through the night now moved slower, hugging the coast or waiting for cloud cover.

Every shadow on the water looked like an ambush.

The U.S. Navy’s small wooden boats had done what fleets of battleships could not:
they made Japan afraid of the dark.

14. The Unsung Heroes

In the weeks that followed, PT squadrons continued to harass Japanese convoys across the Solomon Islands.

They sank barges, raided shore bases, and intercepted supply ships.

By the end of 1943, they had destroyed or damaged over 200 Japanese vessels.

Their pilots never wore medals or paraded in cities.
Most were farm boys and fishermen turned sailors.

But among them, they carried something greater than fame — they carried the pride of having changed the course of the war with little more than wood, gasoline, and courage.

15. The Legacy

After the war, naval historians studied that August night in 1943.

They called it “the turning point of Japan’s night dominance.”

Before then, Japanese destroyers ruled the darkness — swift and deadly.
After it, they were hunted.

And though the PT boats never sank Japan’s biggest ships, they sank something far more important — its confidence.

16. The Quiet Aftermath

Years later, Robert Kelly — the squadron commander — was asked how he felt knowing that small wooden boats had helped topple one of the most powerful navies in history.

He smiled faintly and said,

“They called us mosquitoes. Maybe that’s true.
But even a mosquito can bring down a giant — if it bites enough times.”

17. Epilogue

Today, if you walk the beaches of the Solomon Islands, you can still find fragments of those PT boats — bits of burned wood, twisted propellers, rusted torpedoes buried in coral.

Fishermen tell stories of the nights when the sea lit up with fire, when small boats fought big ships and won.

And every time the wind moves over the water, it whispers a reminder:

Sometimes, history isn’t written by the biggest guns —
but by the smallest boats and the men who dared to steer them straight into the jaws of giants.