I visited PT-305, a restored WWII-era combat veteran patrol torpedo boat, for my October 6 story in the New Orleans Advocate | The Times-Picayune. Read it here. Recently re-restored and returned to the National WWII Museum campus after a few years of offering rides and tours on Lake Pontchartrain, the boat is an awesome macro-artifact snugged again in the John E. Kushner Restoration Pavilion, which does double-duty as the STEM Innovation Gallery teaching lessons in WWII-era science, technology, engineering, and math.
Listen to a podcast interview with Curator and Restoration Manager Cory Graff, who oversaw PT-305’s re-restoration once it was returned to the museum, here. The walk-and-talk is also posted to several other podcast platforms.
Below are some images, complete with timecodes, to accompany the interview.
At 2:35: “Good thing this building was here.”
At 5:54: PT-305 on the lake.
At 11:35: PT-305’s engines.
At 16:53: Display cases, informational panels, and video display.
At 25:20: Deck and weapons.
Further reading:
The boat’s home page, complete with video of its journey to the lake in 2016, is here.
A New York Times account of the move is here.
A blog post by Graff is here.
Blog posts by Josh Schick are here and here.
A YouTube playlist of PT-305 videos is here.
Special thanks to Cory (above) and Keith Darcey, Senior Communicatons Manager for the museum, who hosted my visit.
And thanks as always for reading and maybe listening.
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