May 26th, 2026 Next Summary May 28th

Politics - Kremlin issues warning

- Syrskyi status question mark

Combat Ops - Little change on ground

Weather

Kharkiv

63 and partly cloudy, gusting over 30. Partly to mostly cloudy all week, a chance of isolated showers tomorrow. Daily lows in the 40s, daily highs around 60. Winds westerly, 10-15kts.

Melitopol

67 and mostly cloudy, gusting over 20. Parlty to mostly cloudy this week, rain showers and thunderstorms possible daily. Daily lows near 40, daily highs in the low 60s. Winds westerly, 10-15kts.

Kyiv

66 and mostly sunny, gusting over 35. Clouding up tonight, possible showers tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday windy. Tomorrow in the 50s, then 4 days with lows near 40, highs around 50 and mostly cloudy. Winds westerly, 15-20kts, gusting higher.

Politics

Yesterday Russian ForMin Lavrov told SecState Rubio that Russia is beginning “systematic, continuous strikes on decision-making centers, command posts and defense industry sites” in Kyiv. The “defense industrial sites” appears to be focused on drone production facilities.

Lavrov later urged foreign nationals, diplomatic staff and embassy personnel to leave Kyiv.

The response from the diplomatic community is that personnel will remain in Kyiv.

Putin’s extreme mouthpiece Medvedev commented:

Well, apparently they’ve got diplomats to spare and need to trim the headcount.

Moscow earlier today commented that Russian forces will not target the Verhovna Rada or the Office of the President.

Ukraine’s ForMin Sybiha urged allies not to give in to “‌Russian blackmail.”

French Ambassador Veyssiere noted people going about their daily business in Kyiv:

“It’s a way to demonstrate resilience, and I think it’s extremely important that we, around the world, we would support that.”

The Czech Republic is amending current law to revoke temporarily protection status for anyone who has been outside the “Schengen Area (the EU) for more than 30 days and Ukrainians receiving humanitarian aid will be required to be inside the Czech Republic 16 days per month or more, effective January 1st, 2027.

Mariana Bezuhla, a member of the Verhovna Rada, in a one-on-one meeting with President Zelenskyy, asked Zelenskyy about military reform and the possible removal of Gen. Syrskyi, and reported this:

"He spoke about our constant striving for peace, about the conflict between the Ministry of Defense and the military leadership, about replacing Syrskyi, and whether there is anyone to replace him with… The answer was quite detailed and logical, but not very encouraging.”

Ground Operations

Overall, operations on the ground show few changes in the last 4 or 5 days. Recon probes and small unit infiltration and never-ending drone strikes, continue along virtually the entire line. There are some indications that some Russian elements have been withdrawn from the Sumy area and from the area just east of Kupyansk, though whether this is part of some troop rotation or shifting units to other parts of the line - or both - isn’t yet crystal clear. My guess, based mainly on inference, is that both shifting forces and rotation of units is taking place. This will probably leave the Russian line between Borova and Kupyansk slightly less capable for the near term.

The same appears to be happening in the south, from the general Orikhiv area westward to the Kamyanske area.

Both Ukrainian and Russian forces continue intense drone strikes across the forward edge of battle and this continues to tie down forces. Both sides are using more fiber optic drones, with Russian fiber-optic controlled drones now reaching as 30 miles (50 kilometers) beyond the lines and have begun to strike targets in north-eastern Kharkiv City. Note that Russian fiber optic lines in large part come from China.

Ukrainian forces reports more aggressive Russian use of spring foliage and it does appear that the irregular “checkerboard” disposition of Russian and Ukrainian forces is slowly spreading westward along much of the front line. Interestingly, Russian forces still seem able to rotate troops into and out of the checkerboard no-mans land more regularly than the Ukrainian units, but why that is so isn’t clear, as both are suffering under the threat of persistent ISR and FPV drone strikes.

Ukrainian forces have noted that they are counter-attacking in the Slovyansk area, but there were no gains. There were both small Ukraine gains and Russian gains confirmed in the general Kostiantinivka, as the “checkerboard" continues to evolve. Overall, it appears that there is some further spreading of the infiltration area westward into that city.

And Russian forces made small confirmed gains in the towns north of Pokrovsk.

North of Hulyaipole (in the Verbove area) Russian recon probes continue and the infiltration checkerboard is growing; the same is true west and north-west of Hulyaipole. However, the area actually controlled by Russian forces in this area has shown very little change in May.

Further west, imagery confirmed some Ukrainian gains just south of Novodanylivka (just south of Orikhiv).

Air and Maritime Operations

Ukrainian forces struck the Belets oil depot in Unecha, about 35 miles north of the Ukraine - Russia border, 80 miles north-east of Chernihiv.

The Ukrainian General Staff claims that since March 1st Ukrainian missiles and drones have struck 81 Russian air defense sites, and since January 1st that includes 12 x Pantsir medium range mobile SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems.

The Belarusian Security Council claims that Ukrainian drones violated Belarusian air space 116 times during the past week.

Ukrainian forces have used flight paths along Belarusian borders - particularly the western border - in strikes into the St. Petersburg area. Flying along the borders will complicate engagements by Russian and Belarusian forces.

During the night of May 25th-May 26th Russian forces launched strikes into Ukrainian airspace, with at least 2 x Iskander ballistic missiles and 122 x strike drones. The UAF claimed it shot down, or defeated with EW, 111 drones.

Damage was reported in Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, Odessa, Sumy and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. 

Targets included the power grid and transportation infrastructure. Ballistic missiles strikes were reported in Dnipropetrovsk and Odessa.

There were at least 6 civilian wounded as a result of these strikes.

RuAF tacair struck 1 Ukrainian town.

During the night of May 24th-May 25th Russian forces launched strikes into Ukrainian airspace, with at least 262 x strike drones. The UAF claimed it shot down, or defeated with EW, 246 drones.

Damage was reported in Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv oblasts. 

Targets included the power grid and transportation infrastructure.

There were at least 14 civilians wounded as a result of these strikes.

Economic Reporting

Feb22  Feb9 Mar9 Apr8 May8 May22 May26

Brent      94.71   68.57 106.40 91.78 100.50 104.10 100.10

WTI     92.10   64.04 103.60 93.53 94.91 97.55 93.92

NG       3.97      3.20 3.37 2.73 2.79 3.00 2.96

Wheat     8.52  5.29 6.25 5.79 6.14 6.49 6.37

Ruble     85          77.40 78.20 78.54 74.26 71.44 71.94

Hryvnia 28.6 43.03 43.93 43.45 43.90 44.13 44.28

Urals 91.66 56.37 90.97 124.85 92.56 101.30 96.32

ESPO 94.52 59.77 84.99 103.27 105.56 103.50 104.21

Sokol 99.31 62.85 101.55 96.88 95.96 100.28 94.41

Thoughts

 

Russia’s strike into Kyiv is - per the Kremlin - in response to the Ukrainian strike on Starobilsk during the night of May 21st-22nd, which hit a college dormitory (Russian version) or a drone unit’s command post (Ukrainian version). The Russian Foreign Office called the attack a “flagrant disregard for international humanitarian law… yet another blatant demonstration of the Nazi and terrorist nature of the Kyiv regime.” 

The building was, at one point, part of a college. Whether it was being used as such 4 days ago, or as a CP, or both, isn’t crystal clear. And I suspect that with every hour that passes determining which version of the story is correct will become increasingly more difficult. But for the Russians, they have a justification for retaliation and escalation. 

What isn’t clear is what they will actually do to escalate. They have been producing and using missiles and drones (the larger strike drones - variations of Shahed drones) pretty much at a steady pace; there aren’t a great deal of extra missiles and drones sitting around. 

One disturbing possibility would revolve around civilian casualties. Russian operations have, in 4 years, killed just short of 16,000 civilians and wounded perhaps 40,000. This number is not just from missile and drone strikes, it’s all civilian casualties. Note: this does not include the civilians killed and wounded in the Mariupol area during the first 6 months of the war (not definitively known but estimated at one point at over 20,000 killed.)

The number - 16,000 - while individually horrible, appears to be a very low number given the number of missiles and drones launched into Ukraine. Daily reported casualties from bomb and missile and drone strikes often are in single digits, and sometimes there are none reported. 

Could the numbers be much larger and are being withheld by the Ukrainian government out of worry as to what the people of Ukraine would say if they knew the real number? Might this be an effort by the Russians to deliberately push up the casualty count and change the political debate inside Ukraine, in the hope of forcing concessions?

I have no way of knowing but to a certainty, but I will repeat what I was told many Moons ago by a good friend and F-4 guy, with a bunch of time over Vietnam: Dropping bombs on people pisses them off.

Russia is now very pissed off, and Ukraine is very pissed off and about to get more pissed off.  There is going to be an escalation.

v/r pete   

 May 25th, 2026 Memorial Day

The war continues with few changes on the ground. But there are some developments, perhaps the most significant is in drone operations over the past several days.

Early in the morning of May 22nd one (or more) Ukrainian drone struck a building in Starobilsk, Luhansk Oblast (Russian occupied Ukraine). Russia claims that it was a dormitory at the Luhansk Pedagogical College and that the occupants were college students. Ukraine denied this and insisted it only strikes legitimate military targets, and that the building they struck was a headquarters of an element of the Rubikon Center for Advanced Unmanned Technologies - which operates Russia’s most advanced combat drones. At least 21 were killed and 42 wounded. 

Following the strike Putin apparently ordered a strike on Kyiv, killing 4 and wounding 100. The strike included 1x Oreshnik IRBM, 30 x Iskander ballistic missiles, 2 Kinzhal ballistic missiles, 3 x Zircon missiles, 54 x Kh-101 and Kalibr cruise missiles, and 600 x strike drones. The UAF claimed to shot down or defeated with EW, 54 missiles and 549 drones.

While it doesn’t seem to directly relate, this needs to be wrapped into a discussion of casualties.

I listen to a fair number of podcasts, YouTube videos and the like, about the situation in Russia and Ukraine, and the war in Ukraine. It's interesting how many of them appear to make little effort to sift through facts; they report the story coming out of Kyiv or Moscow with virtually no filtering. The use of adjectives and adverbs - one might say "the wildly hyperbolic overuse of adjectives and adverbs" in order to get into the swing of things - is a fairly reliable indicator that what you’re listening to is, in fact propaganda, not news, and certainly not analysis. Time and again ”analysts” talk about “The Ukrainians (or Russians) have just (done something) that has devastated the Russians (Ukrainians) and Moscow (Kyiv) has no answer.” 

To listen to these analysts is to believe that the enemy army (take your pick) is about to be rolled up and the war should be over by Friday morning. We have, for example, all seen the Ukrainian success with drones. But few understand that Ukraine has conducted very large drone attacks on Russia and Russian forces manage to defeat 90-95% of the Ukrainian drones - about the same percentage of successful intercepts as Ukrainian forces. Russia, of course suffers from being 28 times larger than Ukraine, making defense of any given spot that much more difficult. It’s also of note, in as much as Russia is sharing with China, that Russian electronic warfare continues to improve and the ability to misdirect drones is improving on both sides, but Russian capabilities are, perhaps, better than the Ukrainian and Western EW capabilities. Little of this sort of thing is discussed in most reporting. There are exceptions but they're few. And perhaps the most glaring example is the question of casualties. 

Before talking about casualties, it's important to note that no discussion of casualties is worth a tinker’s damn if there is no comparison between the two sides. If you talk about the Yankees and note that they are 31-22 so far this season but fail to mention how any other teams are performing, you in fact say very little. So, if you are going to talk about Russian casualties, you need to talk about Ukrainian casualties as well. It’s also important to note that there are certain ratios and relationships that roughly hold from one war to another - depending on the type of war and the quality of the casualty evacuation “system” in place and the medical care available for casualties. 

In Iraq and Afghanistan the US standard was “less than an hour” and, while that was not achieved in every case, it was in most cases. And the numbers show this: prior to the Civil War the ratio of killed in action (KIA) to wounded in action (WIA) ran almost 3 to 1. During the Civil War, there was a much greater effort to have ambulances ready on the battlefield and the ratio fell to roughly 1 to 1. By WWI the ratio was almost 1 to 2, almost 2 WIA for every killed in action. WWII was a bit more violent and the ratio fell to 2 to 3. Korea and Vietnam were both in the 1 to 3 range (I suspect the presence of helicopters helped that change).

In Iraq and Afghanistan, with complete air control, and with large bases at many sites within flying distance of nearly every battlefield, this ratio changed dramatically, jumping to 1 to 7 (1 KIA for 7 WIA).

In Ukraine neither side has air control and in many areas neither side even has ground control. All movement is difficult. There are few hard numbers on any of this, but the anecdotal reports suggest that evacuation of wounded - which is done almost exclusively by truck or IFVs, and some UGVs, is slow and wounded often wait many hours (and too often days) for medical care. This will mean that the ratio of KIA to WIA is going to be much worse (lower) than the ratio the US had in Iraq or Afghanistan. Any claim that it’s higher than Vietnam would require extraordinary proof to be believed. As I keep going over the numbers I’m increasingly of the opinion these numbers support an assessment that both sides are taking casualties at something perhaps a little better than WWI but not quite Korea or Vietnam (again, no helicopters are flying over the forward edge of battle). This would support something on the order 2.5 WIA for each KIA.

Russia, we are told - repeatedly - is suffering from truly tremendous casualties. Just recently Gen. Syrskyi, the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian military, noted that Russia took some 80,000 irrecoverable casualties so far this year and some 140,000 others. He has also said the Russians took 39,000 irrecoverable losses in March, then said there were 39,000 casualties in March. The point is, the numbers keep changing.

But, we do have several decent statistics on Russian killed, and these come from “Mediazone,” the only organization (at least in the unclassified world) that has made a serious effort to go through every possible record in Russia and count up KIAs. They recently re-evaluated their numbers, having gained access to estate documents and probate courts across Russia, and the number now appears to be something on the order of 350,000 killed. Using the 2.5 to 1 ratio would support a total wounded count of 875,000. Of that number, it has been reported several times that 70% of wounded return to duty in less than 30 days, and virtually all others (30% of wounded) will not return to duty. This places “irretrievable losses” at 612,500 (350,000 + 262,500). In addition, Russia has some 70,000 deserters so, the number of true losses is on the order of 700,000.

It's worth noting that, apart from public statements about Russian losses which, again, are regularly inflated, Russian losses are remarkably flat, that is, while there are some brief spikes in casualties, a loss rate - KIAs - of about 6,000 - 7,000 per month holds for most months. And, severely wounded tracks at about 4,500 - 5,000 per month. While there have been spikes, any claim that is well above those numbers needs to be taken with a good deal of salt. And be accompanied by proof.

To recap, Russian numbers are on the order of:

350,000 KIA, 262,500 severely wounded (will not return to duty), 662,500 wounded (return to duty), 70,000 deserters, 8-10,000 POWs

There are no such public numbers for Ukraine. The Ukrainian government does not release casualty figures (just twice in the last 3 years), and there are several reasons to seriously doubt those numbers. The first is simply that the Ukrainian army has said that it is working to keep the army at 800,000 troops. They have also said - from President Zelenskyy on down - that they are bringing 25,000 to 27,000 new troops into the army every month. And have been for 4 years. That means well over 1.2 million conscripts brought into the army and with few exceptions, no one has been allowed to leave the army. Adding on the army at the start of the war and you have a total force of roughly 1.7 - 1.8 million (maybe more - the numbers for early 2022 appear to be deliberately fuzzy). If they are struggling to maintain 800,000 that suggest losses of one sort or another of 900,000+

300,000 are known to have deserted. There are perhaps 10-15,000 POWs. Note that Ukrainian army leadership says that some 70% of wounded return to duty. This leave some 600,000 as irretrievable losses. This would place Ukrainian KIAs in the range of 320,000, and severally wounded at 280,000 (with 520,000 WIA (return to duty) and 300,000 deserters and perhaps 10,000 POWs).

Is there anything else that supports this huge number?

Yes.

At the end of August 2023, 18 months into the war, a German company that makes prosthetics reported that since 2022 there was a demand for “more than 50,000 prosthetic devices” in the Ukrainian army. About a year ago a similar report noted that the demand had climbed to well over 100,000, and then clarified to make the point that “100,000 people in the army had had amputations.” This is a fairly steady rate - almost 2500, per month. Interestingly, there has been very little quantitative talk about amputations or prosthetics in Ukraine since, as if there is an effort to bury the numbers.

But what can we infer from those numbers?

As with other numbers of this sort, it’s possible to have variances. During the Civil War (1860s medicine) there were some 60,000 amputations, perhaps 1 for every 20 casualties, 1 for every 10 - 12 killed. By the time you get to Afghanistan and Iraq, US soldiers with amputations totaled some 2,000, with 6,800 KIAs and 52,200 WIAs. Clearly, the quality of CASEVAC in Ukraine is not comparable to that in Iraq and Afghanistan. Something closer might be WWI. Comparing amputation numbers to WIAs seems off (and the numbers are too high). Amputees who don't receive medical care don't remain wounded, they die on the battlefield. The relevant ratio is Amputees to KIAs. The best (lowest ratio) I can find (US forces in Iraq), gives 3.4 to 1. Rounding down to 3 to 1 would still mean that Ukraine already had 150,000 KIA by the end of summer 2023, and 300,000 KIA by spring of 2025, a KIA per month rate of roughly 7,500 - 8,000 per month (250 - 265 per day). That would place current Ukrainian casualty numbers at 380,000 KIA, 280,000 severely wounded, 670,000 wounded, return to duty, 300,000 deserters and perhaps 10,000 POWs as of this month.

That is a nearly incomprehensible number, especially for a country of 34 million. It might help explain 300,000 desertions, roughly 1 million military service aged men remaining outside the country and another estimated 1 million in hiding inside the country. But it matches roughly with the numbers from the publicly stated conscription numbers.

IF the prosthetics company was roughly accurate, the Ukrainian army has suffered tremendous numbers of casualties. IF there were 100,000 amputees as of a year ago, and someone insists they only had 55,000 KIAs, I would respond “prove it,” as that would make the casualty and loss statistics, and medical treatment statistics, unlike any war ever fought.

The Ukrainian government recently noted that the Russian losses since January 1st have averaged 1,021 per day, killed, wounded or captured. Something on the order of 145,000 total casualties. Total captured is less than 1,000 so, 144,000 KIA and WIAs. That would break to about 40,000 killed and 30,000 severely wounded (not returning to duty) and 75,000 wounded, returning to duty. That works out to 275 KIA per day and 205 severely wounded per day. As of the end of last year Russian casualties were running an average of about 200 KIA per day and 500 WIA per day (about 150 severely wounded per day). Could it have jumped some 43% in the last 5 months? Possibly, though there is something of the bureaucratic agenda here: there was a government announced goal to kill a certain number of Russians per month. The fact that Russian daily KIAs would then (barely) exceed possible Ukrainian KIAs seems bureaucratically convenient. Certainly, there will be a tendency to reach the right numbers no matter what is reported from the battlefield. 

Where does all this leave the war?

These numbers, horrible as they may seem in absolute terms, still need to be weighed against the losses suffered by the other side. And as demonstrated by the Russian response to the strike in Starobilsk, no one is saying, “Hold! Enough!”  Whether it was a school or a military facility - or both, the Russian response, and undoubtedly the Ukrainian response to the Russian response, will be more pointed strikes. Huge casualty counts on both sides: 0.4% of Russia’s population killed or seriously wounded and perhaps 1.7% of Ukraine’s population killed or seriously wounded (or maybe more), are not slowing down either side. Rather, they appear more determined than ever to continue the war. Hard to say either side is winning or close to winning. One might say both sides are losing.

v/r pete  

 PT Boats

Memorial Day 2026

The PT Boat: 690 were made before the end of World War II and they saw duty in every theater of the war. For most people today I suspect there’s a vague recollection that President Kennedy was the captain of a boat (109) that was cut in two by a Japanese destroyer (IJN Amagiri) off Kolombangara, and that his leadership saved the lives of the surviving crew members. But there is much more to the story of the PTs and this is a good weekend to bring it up.

Depending on the variant, they were 78 (Higgins, and Huckins Yacht) or 80 feet long (Elco) and were made of two diagonally layered 1 inch mahogany planks (not plywood). Each hull had several watertight compartments making them remarkably tough for their size, and they were powered by 3 x Packard V-12 engines. These engines originally produced 1200-1250 HP each but later were upgraded to 1500 HP each. According to the US Navy, PTs could make about 41 or 42 knots (47-48 mph), limited to that speed by "overspeed cutouts” that were intended to limit engine RPM if the propellers came out of the water. But, per Dick Keresey, captain of PT105, there was a more or less standard practice among the engineers to “tape down” the cutouts and that would allow the boats to get past 50kts (57mph) in a flat sea.

As for armament, that was all over the map. They all began with torpedoes, normally 4 x Mk-8 torpedoes, and .50 caliber machine guns in a wide range of variations (singles and twins). Some later added 20MM cannon, 37MM cannon, 40MM cannon, mortars, even twin 8-cell pods carrying 5 inch rockets, a small number of depth charges, and in a few cases naval mines. Many others were built and then transferred to the British the Canadians, the Australians and the Soviets.

PT boats were not officially named. Many were given names by their crews but there were instances where named boats were shot up and some crews considered names as unlucky, so it varied from squadron to squadron.

All told, some 531 boats served in combat. 99 PTs were lost during the war, 32 in heavy seas, accidents or friendly fire, 67 by enemy action, to include 8 (including 109) lost to ramming by the enemy. Some 60,000 officers and sailors served in PT boat squadrons during the war. A squadron had up to 12 boats, and each boat had crews of as many as 17 men, and there were maintenance personnel also with the squadrons. Crews were usually slightly smaller than 17, in some cases as few as 12. Of the 60,000 men in these units, it isn't clear how many actually served on boats, and the “process” of manning and moving officers and sailors around once in a squadron was not exactly formal… Of the 60,000 men, perhaps half actually served on the boats in combat. Of that number, there are differing accounts as to exactly how many were lost during the war, but there is a list of roughly 900 names of sailors, and I’ll defer to that list ( https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/CloseQuarters/PT-D.html  ).

PT boats first received notoriety during the war when LT (later VADM) John Bulkeley evacuated Gen. MacArthur and wife and son and several staff members off Corregidor on March 11th, 1942; Bulkeley received the Medal of Honor. What was missed is that that action was perhaps one of the less risky actions of Bulkeley’s career in PT Boats, actions for which he also received a Navy Cross, 2 Distinguished Service Crosses, 2 Silver Stars, a Croix de Guerre with Palm, and multiple Philippine Distinguished Conduct Stars.

But heroics - and great risk - were daily fare for the PTs. Boats were regularly shot up, many who served was wounded, and as mentioned earlier, some 900 were killed.

While the movies show them attacking larger ships - and they did, those attacks were both less successful, and less significant than the nearly nightly actions that took place around Guadalcanal, in the seas between the Solomon Islands (known as “The Slot”) and around New Guinea. Nightly - PT boat actions were overwhelmingly at night - they would go out in search of small Japanese vessels (sometimes referred to as barges, sometimes as lighters, but they were a wide assortment of vessels) that were ferrying supplies, ammunition and troops around the Solomons, New Guinea, and later the Philippines. Initial operations took place with no radars, then a few radars in a squadron, with the radar equipped boats leading and guiding the others, or trying to. But PT boat crew commentary routinely noted that they’d proceed to an area of suspected barge activity then patrol on a single engine, moving slowly to avoid creating a wake, as the wakes could be seen by the enemy. As most didn’t have radar (the Navy had no night vision devices), detection was usually the result of sighting a black silhouette against a dark sky, rather than the much more difficult problem of seeing a ship’s black silhouette against a much darker island; a night at sea with no Moon can be very dark, a night at sea with no Moon looking for the silhouette of a ship against a pitch black island is worse.

PTs also inserted Marine Raiders into various islands to conduct harassment or deception raids, and survey beaches, and inserted Navy UDT (Underwater Demolition Teams - the "grandfathers" of the SEALs) to survey landing areas and clear obstacles. This was also done along the coast of Italy and southern France, and also northern France immediately prior to the D-Day landings. Interestingly, following the loss of PT-109 Kennedy received command of PT-59 and took part in the extraction of a platoon of Marines on Choiseul Island, part of a battalion sized raid conducted on that island as a diversion to landings on Bougainville (45 miles north-west of Choiseul). The raiding battalion was led by LTCOL Victor “Brute” Krulak, later LTGEN Krulak, whose son was later Commandant of the Marine Corps.

This sort of thing was standard, day-to-day operations for the PTs. And, in all of these actions everything took place at close range: torpedoes, to be at all likely of hitting anything, were launched inside 1,000 yards, machine gun and 20MM and 40MM cannon fire, to be accurate and effective on the barges at night, had to be fired at half that distance. The real targets were the barges; Japanese destroyers, escorting the barges, would suffer only minor damage from machine guns or small cannons, and there were only a handful of incidents where the torpedos actually managed to hit a larger ship, fired from only 400 - 500 yards away.

Still, the PTs managed to sink more than 200,000 tons of shipping and were a key element in breaking the Japanese operations in the Solomon. 

It has all mostly faded by now, but I would ask you to take a look at the list at the link above. Like most casualties, they were young. In the case of the PT boats, they were largely athletes and risk-takers. As Gen. Patton observed: “Don’t mourn that such men died. Rather, thank God such men lived.”