Re: Philippine Motor Torpedo Boats of WW2
Posted by:
airintel (IP Logged)
Date: November 09, 2018 12:31AM
Andreas,
About fifteen years ago I did a bunch of research on the Q-boats, including a lot of emails with Ramon Alcaraz, who commanded Q-112 and was later CO of the Philippine Navy. My research is in storage, but off top of my head:
Boats were never numbered Q-I/III. Thornycroft misinterpreted the Q-111 and painted the hull number with a Roman numeral III.
DANDAY (Q-114) (not Dandy) was a launch from the sunken Philippine presidential yacht CASIANA, salvaged and put in service as a patrol boat. Q-115 was named BALER and had a similar origin, cannot recall details at moment.
None of the boats building at Cavite other than AGUSAN (Q-113) were near completion and were burned when Cavite was evacuated (and/or lost in the air raid of 10 December 1941).
The vessel cited as "Q-II" by Kafka (whoever that is) was actually the Philippines Fisheries Commission patrol boat FISHERIES II. It was built by Wheeler in Brooklyn NY (I assume Kafka got confused with the old F.W. Wheeler yard in Bay City MI). It was basically a prototype of the US Coast Guard 83' footer. She was taken over by the Navy in December 1941 (I think her Filipino crew abandoned her) and assigned to Inshore Patrol, lost with capture of Corregidor in May 1942.
Hope this helps a little; if I can ever find my research, I'll post an update.
Dave W