Kennedy eventually broke up with Arvad, but the imbroglio left him depressed and exhausted. Arvad had spent time reporting in Berlin and had grown friendly with Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, and other prominent Nazis-ties that raised suspicions she was a spy. They had a torrid affair-many biographers say she was the true love of Kennedy’s life-but the relationship became a threat to his naval career. Kennedy was soon enjoying life as a young intelligence officer in the nation’s capital, where he started keeping company with 28-year-old Inga Marie Arvad, a Danish-born reporter already twice married but now separated from her second husband, a Hungarian film director. The senior Kennedy persuaded Kirk to let a private Boston doctor certify Jack’s good health. Captain Alan Goodrich Kirk, head of the Office of Naval Intelligence, had been the naval attaché in London before the war when Joe Kennedy had served as ambassador to the Court of St. When Jack signed up for the navy, his father pulled strings to ensure his poor health did not derail him. Most debilitating, doctors wrote, was his birth defect-an unstable and often painful back.
Army’s Officer Candidate School had rejected him as 4-F, citing ulcers, asthma, and venereal disease. From boyhood, he had suffered from chronic colitis, scarlet fever, and hepatitis. As one historian put it, Kennedy’s fragile health meant he was not qualified for the Sea Scouts, much less the U.S.
Getting young Jack into the navy took similar finagling. With financial backing from his father and the help of New York Times columnist Arthur Krock, he had turned his 1939 Harvard thesis into Why England Slept, a bestseller about Britain’s failure to rearm to meet the threat of Hitler.Įnsign John F. At 24, he was already something of a celebrity. Jack Kennedy was sworn in as an ensign on September 25, 1941. But in his last months in combat, he appeared to be a troubled young man trying to make peace with what happened that dark night in the Solomons. Kennedy would later embrace the myths of PT-109 and ride them into the White House. Kennedy, they said, was hell-bent on redeeming himself and getting revenge on the Japanese. Returning to duty in command of a new breed of PT boat, he lobbied for dangerous assignments and displayed a recklessness that worried fellow officers. The young officer was deeply pained by the death of two of his men in the collision. And it was his father’s media savvy that helped turn an embarrassing disaster into a tale worthy of Homer.Īirbrushed from this PR confection was Lieutenant Kennedy’s reaction to the accident. It was Kennedy’s presence, of course, that made the collision big news. KENNEDY’S SON IS HERO IN PACIFIC AS DESTROYER SPLITS HIS PT BOAT, declared a New York Times headline. Kennedy, commander of the 109 and son of the millionaire and former diplomat Joseph Kennedy. The Globe story and others heaped praise on Lieutenant (j.g.) John F. Eleven of the 13 men aboard survived, and their tale, declared the Boston Globe, “was one of the great stories of heroism in this war.” Crew members who were initially ashamed of the accident found themselves depicted as patriots of the first order, their behavior a model of valor. The collision was part of a wild night of blunders by 109 and other boats that one historian later described as “the most screwed up PT boat action of World War II.” Yet American newspapers and magazines reported the PT-109 mishap as a triumph. With virtually no warning, a Japanese destroyer emerged from the black night and smashed into PT-109, slicing it in two and igniting its fuel tanks. The 80-foot craft had orders to attack enemy ships on a resupply mission. Patrol Torpedo boat 109 was idling in Blackett Strait in the Solomon Islands.
on August 2, 1943, a hot, moonless night in the Pacific.
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