This weekend we saw PTF-3, one of the Fast Torpedo Boats from the Gulf of Tonkin incident

It’s being restored nearby in DeLand, Florida.

Info here.

Cool!  That's a piece of history right there.

One of my best HS friends' father was a PT boat skipper in The Big One.  I read some of his history, but he seemed resistant to talking about it, so I never pressed the issue.

There's an eerily similar website for PT-109. I did a CFD analysis of the PT-109 hull as part of my hydrodynamics class, those things were waaay ahead of their time in terms of performance. Whoever made these websites rocks because they spec'd out everything you'd possible need to an anlysis. Cool to see the next generation of those. 

I love that they are wooden boats.  It just seems so quaint.

I know that the Navy commissioned wooden mine-sweepers until the (edit) late 1950's. 

In reply to bludroptop :

The Avenger class was built until '95 and is still around. It's a wood hull.

I was supposed to be replaced by, amongst other things, the LCS (lol). 

DeLand is about half an hour away, and we used to autocross at the airport–the boat is parked at a naval air museum on the airport grounds. All these years, I had never been. 

When looking for some places to make pictures, I remembered the museum and found that it’s still open. They have like three planes, the boat, a Jeep, a helicopter and a museum. Didn’t sound like much, but it was close by and offered free admission. We visited this Saturday: me, my wife and a friend of ours. 

We parked and then entered the main building. An older gentleman with a walker followed us in.

“Are you ready for your tour?” he asked.

“Um, sure.”

He walked the three of us through the whole building, hitting the highlights. He told us about the WASPs (didn’t get the credit/respect they deserved), Tuskegee Airmen (among the best fighter pilots, period), the airport’s role in training WWII pilots, etc. He handed us books and clipping and pictures. 

Then he walked us over to the museum’s TBF Avenger that was pulled from Lake Michigan. He handed us off to someone who was working on the plane and, again, he walked us through the entire project. We got a peek inside and were invited to touch the wings and control surfaces. He showed us the ice cream scoop found inside the plane. 

And afterward, again, we were handed off for a personalized tour of their Tomcat. 

We didn’t get to tour the PT boat since they were in the middle of installing some equipment, but our first guide did talk about the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The guide also noted that it was more than a hundred degrees inside the boat at the moment.

It was equally hot outside and this was already our third stop of the morning so we said our goodbyes, made plans to return, and went to get bagels. 

I dropped some cash in the donations box. 

In reply to David S. Wallens :

If anybody is ever in central Delaware, or on your way between the beaches and points north, do not skip the opportunity to visit the Air Mobility Command Museum.  The best free admission you'll ever spend, and they sometimes have open cockpit days.

In reply to Duke :

Thanks. Haven’t been there, but when in Scouts we visited Battleship Cove and spent the night on a ship. 

There was no attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats in the Tonkin Gulf.  It was a phony story set-up by the CIA and the Johnson Administration to get congress to allow LBJ to send 300,000 troops to Vietnam.  At least one fire control petty officer was reduced in rank for refusing to fire in an empty sea.  Read The Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg to get the true background of that phony war.   I'm prejudiced on this subject as those 300,000 were from my generation and I made 3 Nam cruises working the flight deck on carriers.

I found it interesting that the site for the boat’s restoration puts the word enemy in quotes:

While on a mission in the Tonkin Gulf, PTF 3 was detected by the “enemy”,chased by VC Patrol Boats, and forced to run for cover between two US Destroyers.

Did it smell of rich mahogany? 

DirtyBird222 said:

Did it smell of rich mahogany? 

Like everything there, it smelled of 110 in the shade. It was hot that day. We didn’t expect the personalized tours to the point where we took very few photos. We’ll be back.

In reply to David S. Wallens : What I posted is an historical fact from investigations after the war.  I'm glad they're restoring a piece of history.  As the old saying goes " those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it".

In reply to Mustang50 :

You are very correct that those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. Once it doesn’t quite feel like 110 in the shade (and we have a free Saturday morning), we’ll head back.