inaccuracies ???

The episode of rescuing the soldiers from the beach- where the boat ran out of fuel- did not occur with the 109, but happened later, when Kennedy was in command of PT 59. I suppose they inserted it into the film to pad out the narrative. He took command of the 109 on April 24, 1943. The boat was lost a little over 3-months later, on August 1. He became skipper of the 59 on Sept. 1. The beach operation took place on Nov. 2.

The characters of the talkative "Seaman Rogers" and the grumpy and sarcastic "Commander C.R. Ritchie," played by Lew Gallo and James Gregory respectively, were completely fictitious. Any scenes in which those characters appear are fictitious.

The character of "Commander Ritchie" is the PT squadron's maintenance officer in the film, but may possibly have been based on the real Lt. Commander Thomas G. Warfield, the strict, disliked by many (and questionably-competent) commanding officer of the PT squadrons at Rendova during the period depicted in the movie.

In real life, the failure of the 109's engines to reverse and the crash into the floating shed occurred in the Russell Islands (not at Rendova) to which the boat had moved up to from Tulagi, and the 109 was engaged in patrolling out of the Russells (as it had been at Tulagi) before moving up to Rendova. In the Russells, there was an incident in rough seas in which one of the 109's forward torpedoes started to launch, and came partly out of it's tube, knocking a depth charge in front of it through the deck into the crew's quarters below, during which a crewman was injured as he scrambled up from a bunk.

The 109 performed several patrols after arriving at Rendova also, during one of which the boat was attacked by a Japanese float plane that dropped a bomb close by the boat, slightly wounding two of the crew. None of this was portrayed in the film.

In real life, the night the crew landed on Plum Pudding island after swimming there from the mangled foredeck of the 109 and JFK swam out into Blackett Straight trying to flag down patrolling PTs, he eventually landed on a tiny island (Leorava) with one tree and a patch of bushes along the reef near Plum Pudding, slept there, and returned to Plum Pudding and the crew in the morning. Barney Ross did the same after his attempt (which Robert Culp, as Ross, does mention in the film).

JFK and Ross then swam from the second island the 109 crew moved to (Olasana) to a larger island (Naru, also known as Cross) nearer Ferguson Passage, found a dugout canoe, a crate of Japanese candy and a tin of water, and spotted (and were spotted by) two native islanders at the far end of the island, whom they couldn't be sure weren't Japanese -- and who thought JFK and Ross may be Japanese.

The same natives who had spotted JFK and Ross on Naru paddled to Olasana and found the rest of the crew, and told them there were "Japanese" on Naru (JFK and Ross). Ensign Thom, one of the crew (Starkey) and a native took one of canoes and started to paddle to Rendova, but turned back due to rough seas and distance. JFK paddled the canoe back to Olasana by himself that day with the candy and the water for the crew, then went back to Naru for Ross. JFK and Ross tried to canoe out into Ferguson Passage that night in rough weather, but capsized and were tossed back onto Naru (a lobby card photo exists of Robertson and Culp as JFK and Ross paddling a canoe in high seas at night, indicating the scene was filmed, but cut from the finished film). JFK and Ross then swam back to Olasana the next morning.

Ensign Thom also wrote a note for the coast watcher with the stub of a pencil on a scrap piece of paper he'd had in his pocket -- which wasn't included in the film -- which was sent along with JFK's more famous coconut-husk message.

As mentioned elsewhere, the rescue of the Marines off Choiseul by PT 109 in the film was actually performed by JFK and his crew in PT 59, a PT boat that had been converted to a gunboat (torpedoes and torpedo tubes removed), several months after the ramming and loss of PT 109.

...shouldn't they have looked a little more Polynesian?