If the PT-109 incident was a "battle". then there are thousands of battles we should have articles on. It wasn't strategically significant. It is only is the "most famous of any of these battles in popular culture" because Kennedy was involved. That doesn't make it a strategically significant battle.Grant65 | Talk 01:18, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

It's not a battle anyway; PT-109 is a ship. We wouldn't list the Arizona article on a campaignbox either, even though it's (arguably) better known than PT-109. Kirill Lokshin 01:55, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes it's hard to determine whether an event is significant enough to include in a campaignbox or not if it isn't a full-scale battle. I thought about it for a long time before including Death of Isoroku Yamamoto in the campaignbox. It wasn't really a battle, but I think it's probably a significant enough event to include in the box. I agree with both of you that the ship article for PT-109 shouldn't be included. Even if someone wrote-it up as a battle article, it probably still shouldn't be included, as at that time it was a very insignificant action. Cla68 02:02, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Sugarcaddy, if the PT-109 action was that significant, we need a separate article called "Attack on_____ or "Battle of_______". I had the same dilemma when I wrote PK-AFV, but a single ship or plane is never going to be that significant unless it's the Bismarck or the Yamato. Grant65 | Talk 03:39, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Or the Graf Spee, or the Tirpitz, or ... ;-)

I don't think the key issue here is notability, but rather the fact that the sinking of the PT-109 wasn't really a military engagement in any meaningful sense of the term. Two ships collided—as far as one can tell, completely by accident—and the small one sank; but neither this, nor the subsequent return of the crew, involved any actual fighting. There's thus absolutely no reason to link the ship article here. (The overall naval operations involved may be a good topic for an article, though; but this shouldn't be combined with the article on one particular boat.) Kirill Lokshin 04:18, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

If understand Sugarcaddy's argument, Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109 was one of 15 PT boats involved in an operation which was a precursor to the Battle of Vella Gulf. But the article hardly mentions the operation and if it was so significant, it deserves a separate article. To have a PT boat in a campaignbox is absurd. Grant65 | Talk 04:54, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

If it's only militarily significant items are to be included, I might see it that way, but it think it is short-sided to leave out the most HISTORICALLY significant incident of most of those listed, and certainly the best known among the American public when PT-109 was as big or bigger than Titanic was a few years back. PT-109 is the best known name and article for the military action, which again, was militarily identical to the Destroyer battle a few nights later. The only difference is that the Americans triumphed in the latter, accomplished nothing but rescuing the crew of a sunk boat in the former. Even in that case, it's the best known to Americans case of an Australian Coastwatcher, and the two Solomon Islanders are the most notable SI's that ever lived. The 15 boats did fight, as did the destroyers, only nobody got hurt until the Destroyer hit the pt-109 on the return trip. PT-109 brings up over 100,000 hits, Battle Vella Gulf, less than 2,000 hits on Google. To me it makes little sense to note the lesser known and leave out the better known incident. The PT-109 battle never got a formal name. It's not even the first Battle of Blackett Strait. Every movie, book and TV show about the incident is called some variation of the PT-109. None of the other listed events has as many books, movies, songs, or TV shows about, or inspired as many books or TV shows (including Gilligan's Island and Survivor) as the PT-109. --Sugarcaddy 17:03, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

"there are thousands of battles we should have articles on. It wasn't strategically significant." Actually, I found a few articles on even less significant PT boat losses than the PT-109. The difference is in the notability of the incident, which the 109 was. It is probably one of the most over hyped American defeats in history, on the order of Blackhawk down or some notches down from Custer's last stand, and notable for that very reason. --Sugarcaddy 17:06, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

There are two issues here, one of which is notability, which we could argue forever. The other, as Kirill points out, is that the PT-109 article concerns a ship, not a particular event. If you want to include the loss of PT-109 in the campaign, then it needs to be a separate article, titled something like ``Sinking of PT-109`` or something like that. That's the first prerequisite that needs to be done to qualify an article for inclusion in the campaignbox. Second, there were hundreds of small naval engagements during the Guadalcanal and Solomon Islands campaigns of which the PT-109 incident was one. If someone actually wrote up battle articles for these small engagements, should they be included in the campaignbox? I think there may be valid arguments for both sides of that debate. However, it would probably be better for the small engagements to be included in the articles for larger battles. Thus, the PT-109 engagement should be included in whichever battle it happened close to (Vella Gulf, Kula Gulf, or whichever it was). Cla68 05:52, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

The hierarchy that was there had the naval conflicts only from the non-Guadalcanal campaigns, so that was a little misleading. As long as we have separate pages for the subcampaigns (Guadalcanal / New Georgia / Bougainville) all the naval battles can be listed in them. Hungrydog55 (talk) 12:40, 23 May 2015 (UTC)hungrydog55