Robert B. Kelly; PT Boat Hero of Pacific Combat
COLUMBIA, Md. — Robert B. Kelly, a retired Navy captain whose combat experience as a PT boat commander in the Pacific in World War II became the basis for the best-selling book and movie “They Were Expendable,” has died of pneumonia. He was 75.
Kelly was executive officer of the famed Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron 3. He won a Navy Cross, the Navy’s highest decoration after the Medal of Honor, for sinking a Japanese light cruiser off the island of Luzon in the Philippines on the night of April 8, 1942.
He was commander of the lead boat in the four-craft PT boat squadron that evacuated Gen. Douglas MacArthur, his family and staff by night from the island of Corregidor, where the U.S. forces were trapped by the Japanese army, on March 11, 1942. He was awarded a Silver Star for that effort.
Later in the war, Kelly was commander of a PT boat squadron in the Solomon Islands, where he won a second Silver Star for action in combat against the Japanese. One of the men serving under him was Lt. John F. Kennedy, whose boat, PT 109, sank after it was rammed by a Japanese destroyer on the night of Aug. 2, 1943.
Kelly was a native of New York City and a 1935 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.
Author William L. White based “They Were Expendable” on the experience of Squadron 3 in the Philippines, and actor John Wayne played the part of Kelly in the 1945 movie.
After the war, Kelly taught marine engineering at the Naval Academy and served at the Naval War College. He retired from the Navy in 1961 after having served as deputy chief of staff of the Navy’s Caribbean command.
Survivors include his wife, Barbara Lee Benedict Kelly of Columbia, and three children.
