Editing They Were Expendable (section)

===Depiction of PT boats' effectiveness===
The movie likely exaggerated the actual effectiveness of the PT boats in the war, and in at least one instance loosely referenced Commander Bulkeley's own exaggerated statements.   Lt. Brickley, the character most closely based on the real Commander John Bulkeley, declares at one point in the movie that PT boats had "sunk two converted cruisers, an auxiliary aircraft carrier, a 10,000-ton tanker, a large freighter, a flock of barges, and numerous sons of Nippon!" This statement is very similar to a claim made by the real Commander Bulkeley himself during the war that "Our little half squadron sank one Jap cruiser, one plane tender, and one loaded transport, badly damaged another cruiser, set a tanker on fire, and shot down four planes".  According to William Doyle, the  author of ''[[PT 109: An American Epic of War, Survival, and the Destiny of John F. Kennedy]]'', "after the war, when Japanese naval loss records were examined by U. S. Naval Intelligence experts, it was learned that these claims were inaccurate and exaggerated".<ref> Doyle, William, PT 109: An American Epic of War, Survival, and the Destiny of John F. Kennedy, (2015), New York, William Morrow Publisher, pg. 30</ref>  Contemporary historians of President John F. Kennedy, William Doyle, and Fredrik Logevall noted that some of the primary problems of the PT boats were the accuracy and relatively slow speed of their Mark 8 torpedoes.  Added to the problem of inaccuracy at reaching target, as many as 50% failed to explode on contact with enemy ships due to faulty calibration by the Navy in the early years of the war.<ref>Logevall, Fredrik (2020). JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917–1956. New York: Random House, pg. 335</ref><ref> Mark VIII torpedoes failure to explode, and inaccuracy in Doyle, William, PT 109: An American Epic of War, Survival, and the Destiny of John F. Kennedy, (2015), New York, William Morrow Publisher, pg. 55-57</ref>