Crash Boat: Wartime Missions of the P-399, Guadalcanal to the Philippines

After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, young Americans lined up at recruiting stations across the nation. Crash Boat is the compelling story of an armed United States air-sea rescue boat crewed by volunteers during World War II in the South Pacific. Only months earlier, they had been civilians, living the best years of their lives. In the Pacific, they conducted dramatic rescues of downed pilots and clandestine missions off of enemy-held islands at great peril and with little fanfare. George D. Jepson chronicles these ordinary young men doing extraordinary things, as told to him by Earl A. McCandlish, commander of the 63-foot crash boat P-399. Nicknamed Sea Horse, the vessel and her crew completed over thirty rescues at sea, weathered typhoons, fought a fierce gun battle with Japanese forces, experienced life from another age in isolated native villages, carried out boondoggle missions, and played a supporting role in America’s return to the Philippines.