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MTB Training Center Melvill training started in March 1942 with 51 officers and 177 enlisted men. This first Training was with ten PT boats of MTB Squadron Four using Elco Naval Division built 77-footers boat: PT-59 to PT-68. The men lived and worked in quonset huts. MTB Training Center Melvill had buildings for 34 classrooms, PT maintenance, and 197 huts for living quarters. At is peak it had 90 officers and 860 sailors in a three-month training time spans. By March 1945 the MTB Training Center Melvill trained 1,797 officers and 11,668 enlisted men, with 28 PT boats. The 28 PT boats included: Elco 80-foot boats, Higgins 78-foot boat, Huckins 78-foot boats, and 70-foot Higgins Hellcat boats. A the MTB Training Center Melvill men practiced PT Boat formation and maneuvers; PT repairs and live fire gunnery. The Japanese called PT boat Devil Boats, the Navy called them the Mosquito Fleet, after their logo. At the MTB Training Center Melvill, was the Motor Torpedo Boat Repair Training Unit (MTBRTU). Motor Torpedo Boat Repair Training Unit was staffed by 30 officers and 950 enlisted men. Motor Torpedo Boat Repair Training Unit trained men on repair of the three 1,500-horsepower Packard 4M-2500 engines built by Packard. MTB Training Center Melvill also had a Naval Fuel Depot with high-octane fuel for the boats. Also by the Training Base was a Naval Net Layer Depot. Near by on Goat Island was the Newport Torpedo Station, which supplied the PT-Boats and submarines. The Navy, by this end of the war had 44 PT boat squadrons, generally comprising 12 boats. All told, the Navy commissioned over 650 PT boats by the end of the war. Gunnery training at the Anti-Aircraft Center took place a Price's Neck on Newport's Ocean Drive. After the war most PT boats were scrapped due to the lack of need and the vast fuel use of the three engines, thus the base was closed under the command of Naval Station Newport in November 1945. The site was Lovell Hospital during the Civil War and in the 1890s it was the Bradford Coaling Station. The Torpedo Station closed in 1951. Today part of the base is the Melville Marina and Safe Harbor New England Boatworks and fuel depot.
Notable events
In 1943, a PT boat launched a torpedo that went off course and sank a freighter anchored off the Quonset Point Naval Air Station.
PT-200 hit an submerged object and sank, while patrolling Rhode Island coastal waters.
In 1942, PT-59 launched a torpedo in error, it traveled seven miles and hit the cargo ship USS Capella at Jamestown, Rhode Island she was repaired and returned to service. Capella was beached to stop her from sinking.
PT-235Archived 25 November 2010 at the Wayback Machine Photos of life on board a PT boat in the Pacific in World War II by PT boat Veteran Milt Donadt of PT-235
MTB Training Center Melvill (MTBSTC) in 1943
United States
United States Navy
Mk 13 torpedo launch from PT boat in 1943
Map of MTBSTC, US Navy June 30, 1945
PT-140 underway off Melville in 1943
PT Boat Seal
PT-32
Mosquitoes, dashing through the seas at express train speed
Packard Marine Engine M4 2500 at Battleship Cove in Falls River, Massachusetts
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