50 Cents - Charles III Barge Escape

In August 1943, Lieutenant John F. Kennedy's PT-109 was rammed and sunk by the Japanese destroyer Amasagi in Blackett Strait, part of the New Georgia Sound — waters that fall within the broader Solomon Islands chain. Kennedy towed a wounded crewman by clenching the man's life jacket strap in his teeth for hours, eventually reaching Plum Pudding Island. Local scouts Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana, working with Allied coastwatchers, located the survivors and carried Kennedy's coconut-shell message to the nearest Allied base, a detail that official American accounts underplayed for decades.