Three small rafts rose with the
twelve-foot swells of the South Pacific, barren but for the slowly sinking
B-17 Flying Fortress that had become lost en route to New
Guinea. .
.
The
first hint of trouble had come early that morning at about 8:30 when Captain
Cherry had dropped from cruising altitude to about 1,000 feet to watch for the
four-by-eight-mile island of Canton where the plane would land for
refueling. When the 9:30 estimated arrival time came and went
without sight of the small speck that interrupted thousands of miles of ocean,
concern aboard the B-17 began to grow. At 10:15 Rickenbacker inquired
how much fuel remained, as pilot and navigator struggled to find what had gone
wrong. "A little over four hours," Cherry replied.
The crew made radio contact with the
American outpost at Palmyra, another of the small islands that dotted the
Pacific. Captain Cherry climbed to 5,000 feet while the ground crew at
Palmyra began firing antiaircraft shells set to detonate at 7,000 feet to mark
the island's location. From the cockpit Captain Cherry could see
nothing. From the windows behind him in the cargo compartment the
anxious crewmen who scanned the horizon for any sight of life were equally
fruitless.
.
It was after noon when Sergeant Reynolds
sent out an SOS. By now the airplane was so far off course that the call
for help wasn't
heard even at Palmyra. The pilot dropped closer and closer to the
waves below in preparation for the inevitable moment when the fuel was gone
and the engines died. Behind him Rickenbacker and the crew of the airplane
were hastily breaking out rafts and gathering provisions for the anticipated days at
sea, while mentally steeling themselves for the imminent impact.
Captain Cherry handled that fateful and
dangerous moment
skillfully, setting his airplane down in the trough between two waves.
Had he been even one or two seconds off in his calculations, the B-17's nose
would have plunged into a 12-foot wave, sending it immediately to the bottom
of the ocean. Sergeant Reynolds continued to bang out his SOS in Morris Code until the moment the
airplane slammed into surface, tossing provisions and human cargo from wall
to wall.
.
Quickly the green-blue water of the ocean
began to fill the B-17 as injured and dazed men struggled to release the rafts
and exit the doomed airplane. Captain Cherry, Sergeant Reynolds, and
co-pilot Captain Whittaker got into one of the two larger rafts.
Lieutenant John De Angelis, the crew's navigator, struggled to inflate the
smaller raft for himself and Alex. When Alex tried to climb in, the raft
capsized in the 12-foot swells, forcing both men to coax already exhausted
bodies to fight for survival.
.Rickenbacker and Sergeant John Bartek,
the flight engineer took the remaining raft. They held it steady as
Colonel Adamson slid out onto the wing of the sinking B-17. A year older
than Rickenbacker, Adamson was the oldest of the eight men that went down in
the Pacific that day; and he was in severe pain. His back had been injured in
the crash, thus it was all he could do to
slide from the wing and into the waiting arms of Eddie Rickenbacker.
Quickly the eight men took stock of their
situation, glancing anxiously at each other across the waves that quickly
separated them. Despite the efforts to gather water, rations and
emergency supplies in the minutes before the crash, when the moment of truth
had come, none of the men had managed to transfer these to the rafts. It
would probably have been impossible anyway, as everything had been scattered
about inside the fuselage upon impact.
The big B-17 remained afloat for six
minutes, causing the men to later regret the decision not to quickly return
for water. Then the end came, the nose dropping and the tail raising
heavenward as it plunged to the ocean floor. Rickenbacker looked at his
watch...it was 2:36 p.m. Honolulu time on October 21, 1941.
The heavy seas swamped all three
rafts, and the men bailed with abandon, at first unmindful of the fact that
the current was pushing them further and further away from each other.
Quickly Rickenbacker called them all back in, all of them paddling furiously to join
their comrade. Then the three rafts were lashed together in a line.
Rickenbacker later echoed his sentiment at the time, a philosophy that should
be well remembered by any man in crisis: "A strong man may last
a long time alone but men together somehow manage to last longer."
None of the eight men dared guess at how
long they might have to survive. No one knew where they were, the
Pacific was a mighty big place, and to further complicate matters, there was a
war on.
Day 1
Colonel Adamson was in the worst shape,
lying almost motionless in Rickenbacker's raft and struggling against intense
pain. All of the men were seasick and went through an initial period of
vomiting that eventually faded...except for the young Alex who had swallowed
much of the briny ocean when his raft capsized. His body retched for
hours into the evening and, though relatively uninjured, he seemed to be
suffering nearly as badly as Adamson. The plane's impact had thrown
Reynolds, still pounding out his SOS until the last minute, against the radio
console cutting a deep gash in his nose. The only other major injury was
to Bartek who shared the second raft with Rickenbacker and Adamson. He had ripped his fingers to the bone on a piece of metal while
untangling the ropes to push the rafts out of the forward hatch when the plane crashed.
As the afternoon wore on the
eight survivors took stock of their situation. The rafts held no
drinking water and all of their emergency rations rested on the ocean floor inside
the
B-17. Rickenbacker had a chocolate bar in his pocket, Alex nearly half a
dozen, but these had been destroyed when his raft capsized. Captain
Cherry had stuffed four oranges in his pockets moments before the crash, and
these comprised the full compliment of food the men would have available in
the coming days.
Rickenbacker was still fully dressed in a
blue, summer-weight business suit complete with necktie and pocket
handkerchief. Colonel Adamson was still in full uniform as well, and the
pilot and co-pilot had their flight jackets. The
other men had stripped for the swim from the sinking plane to the rafts, their
bodies now laying exposed to the elements.
Three
men were crammed into each of the larger, 5-man rafts with De Angelis and Alex
sharing the smaller 2-man raft. Rickenbacker wondered who had determined
the raft's rated capacity. Each of the larger ones measured only 6'9" long
and 2'4" wide. The three men in each were literally forced to overlap each other
in the pitching seas that threw them from swell to swell.
Almost as soon as the rafts began their
odyssey, the eight survivors began noticing that they were indeed not
alone. From day one until the rescue 24 days later, large sharks
followed the men, patiently waiting for a meal. As night enveloped the
eight men a stillness fell across the Pacific, broken only by the agonized
groans of Colonel Adamson and the sound of Alex retching in dry heaves as the
smaller raft trailed the two larger ones.
Day 2
Throughout the first long, cold night the
men had kept up a system of two-hour watches, scanning the darkness for any
signs of light from a passing airplane or ship in the distance. During
the night the rafts were
bumped again and again by the sharks that followed, a grim reminder of the
only alternative to the cramped quarters of the small rafts. Rick
suffered in agony, his body still not fully recovered from the Atlanta
crash. He had still been walking with a cane when the B-17 was lost at
sea, undergoing regular daily treatments to his broken body. The stiffness and chill of the night now left him in great pain.
Early morning revealed a calming of the high waves, and the three
rafts pulled closer together. Rickenbacker was made custodian of
the four oranges that comprised the men's rations. The men determined
that they would split one orange every two days, spreading them out to last a
week and a day. Now Rick carefully cut the first orange in
half, then quarters, and finally eights. Each man thankfully
consumed his breakfast, the only meal scheduled for the day.
The ocean surface became mirror-calm that
second day, and
the sun became unbearably hot as it rose into the morning skies. By noon
the exposed bodies of the men who had stripped for the swim to the rafts began
turning pink, then brilliant red. Blisters rose as skin baked in the
unrelenting heat. Rickenbacker had three large handkerchiefs in his suit
pocket, and passed these around. The men tied them bandit-fashion
below their eyes to protect their faces. Rick's eyes were sheltered by
the battered hat Adelaide had threatened to burn for years. Now he was thankful
it had survived not only his fashion-conscious wife, but the plane crash and
its aftermath.
When darkness fell on the second night,
Captain Cherry brought up the subject of the 18 flares and Very gun for firing
them. These, along with two pistols carried by the pilot and co-pilot,
were among the meager lot of survival gear that reached the raft.
Despite the fact that the men were not sure whether or not their errant flight
path had taken them into Japanese-controlled waters, it was decided to fire
three flares each night for six days in hopes of attracting rescue.
The first flare was shot upward as soon
as the darkness was complete. The shell was a dud and emitted no signal
light to be seen, even if some human other than the eight men been anywhere
near that part of the ocean. Rather than
wait the planned interval to release the second flare, Cherry reloaded and
fired again. This time the flare burst to burn dimly for a few
seconds. It was better than the first, but not what the men had hoped
for.
Days 3 - 7
Captain Cherry fired the third flare of
that night shortly before dawn broke. The seas remained totally calm,
the rafts idle on the surface. The sun continued to broil flesh and
cause multiple blisters and seeping skin ulcers. Colonel Adamson still
could barely move from his pain, and Alex continued to retch and shiver.
The other men seemed stronger, and for a brief time determined to
survive. At that however, death seemed almost preferable to
torture. The salty water of the Pacific coated the bodies of the men,
then evaporated to leave a white, salty film.
Rickenbacker later described the men's
first six days at sea as the worst days of his life--far more painful and
miserable than the Atlanta plane crash. The fourth night, and each night
thereafter until the flares were exhausted, Captain Cherry fired three
signals. On the fourth day, Rickenbacker cut the second orange into
eighths and the men had their second meal. Most of the men savored their
morsel as long as they could, eating even the rind. Rickenbacker and
Cherry saved their rinds for bait. Two hooks and fishing lines had been
among the supplies that survived the crash, but the men had no bait. In
the clear, calm waters the men could see hundreds of fish around their
rafts. None of the fish, sadly enough, had an appetite for orange
peelings.
On their fifth day at sea the men decided
to eat the third orange, primarily out of concern for Adamson and Alex who
seemed only to become sicker and weaker. Temperaments began to fray and
discouragement became as pervasive as the hot sun during the day or the chill
at night. Almost to a man, bodies were blistered, raw, and oozing
puss. Conditions in the small rafts were cramped as the men tried to
keep from stiffening up. Any time one man moved in the raft to ease a
cramp or find comfort in a new position, his body would brush up against the
raw flesh of his comrades, causing pain for all of them.
Lieutenant
Whittaker, the 41-year-old co-pilot of the ill-fated B-17, watched the
fruitless efforts of Rickenbacker and Cherry to catch fish. When the
orange peelings failed to entice a bite, Rick had even fashioned Adamson's
key-chain as a makeshift spinner. The fish nosed it curiously, but
refused to take the hook. Whittaker took one of the oars, tearing away
the flat paddle with pliers and attempting to sharpen it to a point. The
next shark that bumped against the raft felt the point of Whittaker's
makeshift spear, far to dull despite the man's best efforts, to penetrate the
thick skin. After several more jabs Whittaker tossed the useless spear,
now equally useless as an oar, into the bottom of the raft.
Colonel Adamson, as a colonel, was the
ranking member of the group. He was also in great pain, sick, and often
delirious. Twenty-seven-year-old Captain Cherry held up reasonably well,
and continued to command his crew. But it was Eddie Rickenbacker, the
aging legend of a war past, who became leader, mentor, father-figure...and villain
for the doomed group. As the weaker men began losing hope and giving in
to the seductive serenity of death, he determined to shock their senses and
motivate them to continue on.
At age 22, poor Alex was the youngest of
the eight. He was also in the worst shape, shivering uncontrollably even
while the sun blistered his body. Unknown to the others, his
unquenchable thirst had driven him to drink seawater. Much of the time
he was delirious, chanting "Hail Mary!", crying out for his mother,
or rambling about a girl he called "Snooks". During his few
lucid moments he would pull a photo of "Snooks" from his wallet,
talk to it, pray over it. He was convinced now that he would never see
his young sweetheart again. It was obvious to all that Alex was fading
fast and had given up the fight.
Rickenbacker
pulled the rope that tethered his own raft to that of De Angelis and Alex in
the rear of the string, drawing them closer until he was face to face with
Alex. "What is wrong with you kid? Why the hell can you take
it?", Rick shouted as loud as his weakening voice would allow. It
was brutal, but in Rick's mind, a necessary shock-treatment to motivate the
young man to fight for his life. The other men looked at Rick in shock
and disdain, unaware that this outburst had been a calculated effort to save
the man's life. It was only as a result of the argument that followed
that Rick learned that the young man was recently released from the hospital
after contracting a tropical disease of the mouth that left him perpetually
thirsty. He had been fragile before the crash, now he was close to
death.
On the sixth day at sea Rickenbacker
split the fourth and final orange. Already it was drying out and
probably wouldn't have survived another day. It vanished along with the
last shreds of hope. Until the last orange was consumed, the men had
something to look forward to. Now, nothing remained for tomorrow but hot
sun, shivering nights, and more doldrums on the surface of the ocean.
Tempers continued to flare, bickering was constant, and even the stronger men
were totally falling apart.
Rickenbacker had noticed Sergeant Bartek,
who shared the middle raft with himself and Adamson, reading daily from the
New Testament he carried in his jumper pocket. Rick called the others to
pull their rafts closer, and instituted a twice-daily services of Bible
reading and prayer. Two of the men initially objected, both professing a
lack of religious conviction. Rick insisted that all of them contribute,
each finding and reading a passage of scripture at each of the twice daily
prayer services. In the days that followed, some of the men became
bitter when they failed to see answers to their prayers, but the practice went
on. Rickenbacker later wrote: "Under the baking sun on the
limitless Pacific, I found a new meaning, a new beauty in its (The Bible)
familiar words."
Day 8
Captain Cherry had just finished reading
the morning prayer service, the eight men had each prayed in turn and sung a
hymn. Rick was starting to doze off as the prayer service gave way to
small-talk when he was awakened by a light pressure on his head. At
once, he guessed it must be a sea gull, and a glance at his companions through
slowly opening eyelids told him he must be right. All eyes were on
Rick's hat.
Slowly
Rick began moving his arms, reaching his hands alongside his ears and then
upward. All the while he resisted the strong urge to grab quickly for
the bird lest it escape. A deep hush fell across the group of men and
all eyes remained riveted on Rick's every move.
Rick sensed his hand near the brim of his
hat and continued to move in slow, even, calculated motions. He couldn't
see the bird, could only guess at its position on his head. When his
hands were close to where he thought the gull must be he closed his hand, and
felt the welcome texture of a leg.
In a fraction of a second he wrung its
neck and stripped its feathers to reveal moist, dark meat. He divided it
equally among the eight men, saving the intestines for bait. When the
men had savored the sinewy but delicious sea gull, Cherry dropped his
fishing line from his raft with a piece of the bird's intestine. Almost
immediately he landed a small mackerel about 12 inches in length. This
meat was cool and moist, satisfying thirst as well as hunger.
Rickenbacker was equally successful when he dropped his own fishing line into
the water, landing a small sea bass. It was kept for the following day's
repast.
Day 9
His spirits buoyed by the 2-course meal
on his ninth day at sea, Rickenbacker dozed off when darkness fell. At
midnight he woke with a jar...something was happening...for the first time in
a week he felt movement.
Around
the raft waves were picking up and a wind was whipping through his tattered
clothes, illuminated now by flashes of bright lightening. The men could
smell rain, and quickly stripped off their clothing to capture the first
drops. The storm teased them for two hours and then, as Rick leaned his
head face up over the edge of the raft, he felt the first drops hit him in the
face, followed by another, and then another.
And then the rain stopped, almost as
quickly as it had started.
Lightening still lit the clouds above,
and the men could see a squall in the distance. "It's over
there," Rick shouted, as the men picked up oars and paddled with what
little strength remained. Somehow, in desperation, they found the
strength and were soon being tossed about in the middle of the
squall.
In the heavy waves disaster struck before
water could be collected. A rope came loose and the small raft
containing De Angelis and Alex was drifting away into the darkness. The
men in the remaining rafts continued to paddle furiously, searching the dark
waters for their comrades and fearing they were lost. Then a white flash
of a cresting wave backlit the small craft. The men paddled towards it
and, before all was lost, re-secured the line.
The rain revived even the quickly fading
Adamson enough that he could pitch in to collect water. The men used the
first raindrops to rise out their salt-caked clothes, then spread them out
again to capture the fresh water and wring it out into containers before
disaster struck again. The lead raft with Cherry, Whittaker and Reynolds
capsized, throwing the men into the now-raging surf. Rick recalled,
"Determined men who won't give up can do anything." Somehow,
with the help of their comrades, the three men clung to the hand-lines along
their raft until it could be righted and they were pushed and pulled back in.
The water collected that night was meager
in comparison to the need, but it brought some relieve and more importantly,
some new hope. During the morning the men ate the small fish Rick had
caught the previous day, washing it down with each man's ration of
water. As the day wore one, Alex's condition worsened and Rick increased
the dying man's water ration. As evening fell, Rick transferred Bartek
to the tailing raft with De Angelis and carefully moved the convulsing, nearly
lifeless body of Alex to his own raft.
For
two nights and two days Eddie Rickenbacker cradled the quivering body of young
Alex in his own, much like a father cares for his own. It was a gentle
side of his nature Rick had not yet revealed during this dangerous time,
opting instead to motivate his comrades by making them angry enough to
survive. Indeed, not all of Rick's outbursts had been calculated...he
was human and prone to his own weak moments of irrational thought and
irritable behavior. But for forty-eight hours he did his best to nurture
the quickly fading young sergeant. It was not difficult for anyone to
see that the gesture was futile.
On the evening of the twelfth day at sea
during one of his few lucid moments, Alex asked to be placed back in the
trailing raft. In the darkness that night Rickenbacker listened to the
young man's shallow breathing across the still ocean. Somewhere in the
passing of time Alex gave a long sigh. Then, all remained quiet.
Day 13
It was obvious in the early morning
darkness that Sergeant Alex Kacamarczyk had died, but it was not so easy to
accept. At daybreak Bartek paddled up to Rickenbacker's raft where Eddie
checked for a pulse, a heartbeat, or a shallow breath. The body was
already stiff, but Rick refused to do what had to be done unless he was
certain all hope had passed for Alex. Captain Cherry and Lieutenant
Whittaker verified Eddie's determination. De Angelis did the best he
could to offer the young man a Catholic burial service, and then the body of
the young sergeant was rolled over the edge and into the sea. It didn't
sink as they thought it would. Instead, the lifeless body of Alex
Kacamarczyk followed the rafts for some distance, floating face down on the
swells of the Pacific.
Days 14 - 18
The death of Alex served a crushing blow
to the morale of all seven survivors, reminding them that death was near and
forcing them to come to grips with their own mortality. The loss of one
man left the smaller slightly more spacious, and Bartek asked De Angelis to
change places with him. De Angelis consented to give up the small raft,
but preferred to float with the other officers, generating a series of changes
that might have been comical but for the desperate situation of the seven
men. Sergeant Reynolds joined Rickenbacker and Adamson in the middle
raft, Lieutenant De Angelis joined Captain Cherry and Lieutenant Whittaker in
the lead raft, and Sergeant Bartek floated alone in the trailing smaller raft.
In the early darkness before daybreak
Rickenbacker sensed something wrong. No longer could he feel the tug of
a rope behind his own raft. Bartek's small raft was adrift, and
Rickenbacker was sure that it hadn't been an accident. When light began
streaking across the horizon, Bartek could be seen in the distance. His
lone-wolf venture hadn't got him very far and at the insistent yells of the
other men, he paddled back to tether his raft in its proper place. He
later admitted honestly that he had untied the raft himself during the
night. No one asked him why.
Despite his pain and constant delirium,
Colonel Adamson had made daily notations on the side of his raft with a
pencil. With the water from the storm five days earlier gone and the
doldrums returning to the glassy-smooth Pacific, he wrote the last notation of
the odyssey: "Fourteenth day. Rick and I still
alive." It appeared to be his epitaph. His body burned to a
pulp, his back and neck wracked with pain, and his mind fogged by nearly
constant delirium, he was obviously close to death. For Rickenbacker it
was especially disheartening. Adamson had been a long-time, close
personal friend and confident. Now he was wasted away, dying, and there
was nothing Rick could do to intervene.
Sometime during the night Rick felt the
raft lurch violently. His first thought was that a shark had
attacked. Then he noticed there was more room in the raft. Adamson
was gone.
Reaching over the side, Rick felt
Adamson's shoulder. In despair, his friend had apparently decided to put
an end to his misery. Rick would not let him die, holding tightly to him
but too week to pull him back into the raft. Only with help from the
lead raft was the flaccid body of Colonel Adamson returned to its position at
the rear of the raft.
Daylight brought some clarity to
Adamson's fogged mind and, realizing what had happened he tried to force a
smile and stuck out a week hand towards Rickenbacker. Eddie recognized
the sincere apology for what it was...and then did what he claimed was one of
the most difficult actions of his life. "I don't shake hands with
your kind," he snarled at his best friend, ignoring the proffered
handshake. "If you want to shake hands, you've got to prove
yourself first!"
Hans Adamson sadly withdrew his hand,
mulling over his close friend's rebuke. For Rick it was an emotional
moment. Chances were very good that Hans was close to death, and his
last memory of Rickenbacker would certainly be a sorrowful one. At the
same time, Rickenbacker honestly believed it was at that moment that Adamson
determined to fight...to survive...to live.
"Rickenbacker, you are the meanest,
most cantankerous (expletive) that ever lived," one of the other
survivors shouted across the water. Inside hearts crushed by too much
pain and suffering, anger arose. Several of the other men determined in
their hearts that they "would live for the sheer pleasure of burying
Rickenbacker at sea", and later admitted the same to Rick.
.
In his own mind, Rickenbacker refused to
give up, or to let anyone else give up. "It was clear to
me," he later recalled, "that God had a purpose in keeping me
alive. It was to help the others, to bring them through. I had
been saved to serve. It was an awesome responsibility, but I accepted it
gladly and proudly.
"I did not forget that I myself
still had a mission to perform and a message to deliver to General
MacArthur."
.
Despite the anger and profane words
exchanged among the seven men, the twice-daily prayer services continued until
about the seventeenth day. That was the day the men finally decided to
part ways in hope of rescue. Against Rick's better judgment, he had
always felt the men had the best chance of rescue by remaining together, the
others convinced him it was time to separate. The hope was that the
three healthiest men might be able to break out of the current that drifted
all three rafts southeast, and perhaps find a transport ship or
airplane. With most of the remaining water and all of the remaining
oars, the three Air Service officers in the lead raft set out in the early
afternoon. As darkness fell, little headway had been made. When
morning dawned Rickenbacker looked across the green swells only to find the
three rafts still floating nearly side-by-side. It was a great source of
disappointment, diverted only by an unexpected rainfall.
The run of good fortune continued into
the night when a pack of sharks began feasting upon a school of mackerel all
around the rafts. In the frenzy that followed, one mackerel jumped into
Rickenbacker's raft, followed by another that jumped into Cherry's
raft.
Day 19
The rain that had refreshed the seven
survivors intermittently became more steady with the dawn. By
early afternoon the waves had become large, white-capped swells. Water
had been collected that might last for several more days. Suddenly
Captain Cherry yelled above the howl of the winds:
"I hear a
plane. Listen!"
 Summer,
1943
Major Joseph Jacob Foss was finally back to work,
away from what he later called "The Dancing Bear Act"
that had followed his earning the title Ace of Aces, his
appearance on the cover of Life magazine and the presentation of
his Medal of Honor. He was assigned to the Marine base at Santa
Barbara, California, where he was building the new VMF-115 and training
his pilots in the new F4U Corsairs. All of his nearly 100 Marine
pilots were young, green, and in need of solid leadership.
Authorized to recruit his own top officers, Foss requested assignments
for several of the men who had served with him on Guadalcanal.
The new Corsairs were supposed to
be highly superior to the old Wildcats men like Foss had flown out of
Henderson Field a year before, but Major Foss was finding them temperamental.
They tended to cut out at altitudes above 21,000 feet, and several
crashes had occurred during testing and training, some of them
fatal. Foss brought the matter to his commanding officer, who
quickly put Foss on the phone to General Bill Wallace who was in charge
of Marine aviation for the entire West Coast.
"General, I'm having a
terrible time with these Corsairs," he stated bluntly.
"You'll have an expert
tomorrow," the General promised. Foss smiled to himself;
military men are quite used to such promises and their probable outcome,
or lack thereof.
Two days later Foss was working in
his cramped office when someone knocked on the door. "Come
in," he intoned routinely, scarcely looking up from his work
as a tall, slender man in plain Khakis with no military insignia walked
in.
"Major Foss," the
gentleman announced, "It's good to meet you. I'm Charles
Lindbergh."
"The REAL Charles
Lindbergh?" Foss asked incredulously as he looked more closely
at the new arrival. Lindbergh simply nodded his head.
"Come in, come
in!" Foss said, hardly able to contain his
excitement. "When I was a kid I wanted to meet you in the
worst way when you flew into South Dakota, but the cops threw me off the
stand. And here you are. Gosh!"
Lindbergh smiled and looked a
little embarrassed. "General Wallace sent me over to see
if I can help you solve the Corsair problem."
Lindbergh spend several weeks with Foss
who not only finally got the handshake he had wanted fifteen years
earlier, but gained a friend for life. (Foss later served as
co-chairman of the non-profit Lindbergh Foundation.) Foss also
learned quickly that the man abhorred being called Charles or Lucky
Lindy. "He wanted to be known either as Slim or
Charlie."
To Major Foss' great relief,
Lindbergh was indeed the expert he needed, and quickly the problems with
the Corsairs were fixed. At the end of the month the time came to
say "good-by". Lindbergh asked Foss if he could address
the men before his departure. Naturally, Foss quickly consented.
"I just want to thank you
for your generous support of my efforts here," Lindbergh told
the young men who would soon be off to war. "I've really
enjoyed working with you, and there's only one more thing I'd really
like to do. I'd like to fly tail-end Charlie with this
outfit."
The applause was long and earnest
before Foss announced, "You've got a job flying with us any time
you show up. But if I have anything to do with it, you won't be
flying tail-end Charlie. I want you up the line."
May 25, 1944
It was a somber day as Major Foss
returned to his operations office on Emirau Island in the Pacific.
He and his VMF-115 had been back at war for more than three months, and
he was returning from the funeral of one of his pilots who had died the
previous day in the test flight of a Corsair. As he got closer to
his tent he noticed a new Corsair on the airfield indicating he had
company. A tall, slender man in khaki but devoid of military rank
or insignia was walking towards him, hand outstretched.
"Hi Joe," he
greeted the squadron commander. "You remember what you
said? You promised me I could fly with you."
 Major
Foss returned a warm but firm handshake, smiled and said, "Charlie,
Consider yourself on duty right now!"
Over the weeks that followed,
Lindbergh fulfilled his job as an observer, flying missions with
the men of VMF-115. Indeed he felt that if he were to understand the
problems with the Corsairs, he would need to experience the same
problems the young Marine pilots were experiencing. Thus when they
took to the skies for bombing or strafing missions, one of the Corsairs
flying formation in the hostile skies was piloted by Lindbergh himself.
"He flew from morning
till night, and he taught us some tricks," Foss
remembered. "Charlie was no coward. I remember one
time we were bombing Kavieng, going after an oil dump that had been
spotted there...The area was heavily fortified and the hidden
entrenchment of antiaircraft fire was intense. The order was to
drop our loads and get the hell out of there. I looked back and
saw number eight--Charlie--turn around and go back for a second
round. When he was coming down the first time he'd noticed a
major dump hidden off to the side, so he made a swing around for a
second run by himself with all that AA fire concentrating solely on
him. Apparently he hit something, because there was a big
explosion and clouds of smoke billowed.
"When we got back to
base, I jumped out of my plane and walked over to chew him out.
"Charlie, you just don't do that. There's no way you're
supposed to go back after a target alone. It's a sure way of
dying young."
Sadly, too few Americans knew then,
or are aware even today, of the combat courage of Charles Augustus
Lindbergh.
 Lindbergh
flew every combat mission with VMF-115 from the date of his arrival
until the unit was sent home on June 1. He arrived a celebrity to
the young Marines on Emirau, but became an admired friend, not for what
he'd done twenty years before but for his courage and dedication in this
new war.
During his visit to Foss and
VMF-115 a photographer snapped a photograph of Charlie and Foss, which
was promptly printed in Parade magazine, finally advertising to
the world the man's presence in the war zone. (Lindbergh's Pacific
mission had been sanctioned by the Navy without the knowledge or assent
of the President.)
Major Foss was suddenly deluged
with letters, hundreds of them, from citizens on the home front who had
seen that photo. Most of the letters admonished Foss for
associating with "bad company" and advised him to avoid
Charles Lindbergh.
Foss was furious, as were the other
men that flew missions with Charlie, and as a unit they undertook to
answer each and every one of more than 700 such letters. Foss
himself pulled no punches in his own replies, stating: "Lindbergh's
out here fighting a war at his own expense while YOU'RE at home!"
|
LINDBERGH'S PACIFIC
MISSION
The Pacific mission had been
proposed early in 1944. Lindbergh would visit the combat
air units as a representative of United Aircraft Corporation,
which produced the new F4U Corsair. His job was to observe
the men in the field, and help them correct problems with the "Bent-winged
Flying Coffins". He would wear a Naval uniform
devoid of any rank or other insignia, for his status was
strictly that of a civilian.
Though vilified by civilians
at home, he was welcomed warmly by the Marines upon his
arrival. In early May Charlie made a gunnery flight to
learn his guns with John L. Smith, now a Lieutenant
Colonel. On May 19 he arrived at Henderson Field at
Guadalcanal, then traveled to Bougainville before arriving at
Eirau in search of Joe Foss on May 25. There he flew with
VMF-115 until they went home, and continued to fly with VMF-222
after Foss' departure. During the period he also
accompanied a PT boat crew on a combat mission.
By the time his work with the
Marines was completed, he flew more than a dozen combat air
missions in the Corsairs, both bombing and strafing.
Marine Corps commanders looked the other way when the civilian
fired his guns on these missions...even a civilian had a
right to defend himself.
When the Army Air Forces
learned of Lindbergh's presence and his success in helping the
Marine pilots solve problems with their Corsairs, they invited
Charlie to visit their own airbase and observe their P-38s in
action. He arrived at New Guinea on June 15, quickly
checked out on the P-38 (which was one of the few aircraft he
had never piloted), and soon was flying with the Army
pilots. In the following two weeks he completed four
combat missions with the 475th Fighter Group commanded by
Colonel Charles H. MacDonald, who emerged from World War II as
the third-leading American Ace in the Pacific with 27
victories. During these missions Lindbergh discovered a
way to effectively conserve fuel consumption and extend the
airplane's range by 400 miles. Before his concepts could
be effectively put into use however, Charlie got some bad news.
On the evening of July 5
Lindbergh received word that "a rumor was circulating to
the effect that I was flying combat in New Guinea, and that, if
true, there should be no more of it." To answer
these charges, Lindbergh was called to Australia, arriving at
Brisbane on July 12 to meet with General George Kenney,
commander of the Allied Air Forces in the Southwest Pacific.
"Kenny told me that
a situation had arisen which caused some of the officers at
headquarters much concern: that somehow I had managed to get
into the forward areas in New Guinea without their knowing
about it; that rumors had filtered back to the effect that I
was flying combat with the Army squadrons; and that, of
course, flying combat as a civilian was against all the
regulations there were.
"He went on to tell
me that if I were caught by the Japs, I would have my head
chopped off immediately if they found out I was flying combat
as a civilian.
"I told him...that I
didn't want to go back to New Guinea and sit on the ground
while the other pilots were flying combat."
"Kenney spoke about
Army regulations, the 'reaction back home' if I were shot
down, etc. I asked him if there wasn't some way to get
around the regulations. He became thoughtful and his
eyes twinkled. 'Well, it might be possible to put you on
observer's status, but, of course, that would not make it
legal for you to do any shooting. But if you are on
observer's status, no one back in the States will know whether
you use your guns or not.'"
Lindbergh didn't care what his
status was, he just wanted to be able to do his job. Later
in that same afternoon, Charlie echoed this once again...in a
private meeting with General Douglas MacArthur himself.
MacArthur was impressed with Lindbergh's ideas nearly double the
effective range of the P-38 through his fuel-conservation ideas,
and was eager for Lindbergh's knowledge and experience
throughout his air command. He even promised Lindbergh he
could "Could have any plane and do any kind of
flying" he wanted to.
Lindbergh spent two days
visiting Australia, content to move about at will since the
press did not know he was there and no one recognized him.
On July 15 he flew back to New Guinea to resume his work with
the three combat squadrons of the 475th Fighter Group.
|
Throughout the last two weeks of
July Lindbergh spent his time teaching the Army Air Force pilots his
techniques for extending the range of their flights: Cruise
Control--reduce standard 2,200 rpm to 1,600, set fuel mixtures to
"auto lean," and slightly increase manifold pressures.
Properly applied it stretched the range of the P-38 Lightening by
as much as 400 miles--a nine hour flight.
 Lindbergh
also continued his flights: bomber protection, reconnaissance,
strafing. He flew with the best. In addition to being
the command of Colonel MacDonald, the 475th Fighter Group was the home
of Major Thomas McGuire, well on his way to becoming America's all time Ace
of Aces. (Before his death on January 7, 1945, Major McGuire
claimed 38 aerial victories, earning a Medal of Honor and making him the
second-leading American ace of World War II.) All of them
quickly gained a great respect for Lindbergh, both for the mechanical
genius he brought to aviation, as well as for his courage in the
air. He was accorded officer's privileges, but addressed as Mr.
Lindbergh due his civilian observer status. He was
also treated as one of the squadron, taking the same kudos for a job
well done and a good-natured ribbing when he erred. On one mission
Lindbergh began dropping behind the rest of the formation as quickly as
it had taken off, unaware he had forgotten to retract his landing
gear. Ahead of him, one of the pilots quipped into the radio, "Charlie,
get your wheels up! You're not flying the Spirit of St.
Louis."
July 28, 1944
Captain Saburo Shimada and Sergeant
Saneyoshi Yokogi were flying a rescue mission to locate a downed comrade
in their two-seat, armed Mitsubishi 51 Sonias. Both were veterans,
well trained and schooled in the crucible of aerial combat.
Returning home, the two Japanese pilots had the misfortune to run into
the US Army Air Force's Captive Squadron (9th Squadron, 49th
Group).
In the distance Colonel MacDonald
and Charles Lindbergh were returning with their own flights, listening
to their American counterparts barking directions over their radios as
the dogfight stretched into half-an-hour.
"There he is now!
Go in and get him."
"Can't somebody shoot him down?"
"Damn...I'm out of ammunition."
"Somebody get him who's got some ammunition."
"The (expletive) is making monkey's out of us."
"Who's got some ammunition?"
With great skill and cunning,
Captain Shimada and Sergeant Yokogi were weaving in and out of cloud
cover to escape--much to the frustration of Captive Squadron.
Only the Japanese pilots' experience and skill was preventing disaster,
as they twisted and turned in an aerial ballet that would have been
comical were it not so dangerous. In the distance MacDonald's
pilots circled, eager to locate the enemy planes and enter the fray.
"What's the matter,
Captive, having trouble?"
Captive Squadron didn't
acknowledge the good natured jibe. They didn't want MacDonald's
squadron swooping in to claim the credit on this one. As the two
Jap Sonias broke and ran for home, two Captive Squadron pilots
managed to flame Yokogi's aircraft and send it into the sea.
Diving in from 3,000 feet,
MacDonald found Captain Shimada's Sonia and stitched a few bursts of
machinegun fire across the fuselage. It was at that point Shimada
realized there was no hope in trying to out run his pursuers, and turned
to fight. Banking sharply Shimada lined up and dove on the first
P-38 he saw. It belonged to the second element leader in
MacDonald's formation, Charles Lindbergh, who later recalled that deadly
day:
"We are spaced 1,000 feet
apart. Captain (Danforth) Miller gets in a short deflection
burst with no noticeable effect. I start firing as the plane is
completing its turn in my direction. I see the tracers and the
20's (20-mm cannon) find their mark, a hail of shells directly on the
target. But he straightens out and flies directly toward me.
"I hold the trigger down
and my sight on his engine as we approach head on. My tracers
and my 20's splatter on his plane. We are close--too
close--hurtling at each other at more than 500 miles an hour. I
pull back on the controls. His plane zooms suddenly upward with
extraordinary sharpness.
"I pull back with all the
strength I have. Will we hit? His plane, before a slender
toy in my sight, looms huge in size. A second
passes--two--three--I can see the finning on his engine
cylinders. There is a rough jolt of air as he shoots past
behind me.
"By how much did we
miss? Ten feet? Probably less than that. There is no
time to consider or feel afraid. I am climbing steeply. I
bank to the left. No, that will take me into the ack-ack fire
above Amahai strip. I reverse to the right. It all has
taken seconds.
"My eyes sweep the sky
for aircraft. Those are only P-38's and the plane I have just
shot down. He is starting down in a wing over--out of
control. The nose goes down. The plane turns slightly as
it picks up speed--down--down--down toward the sea. A fountain
of spray--white foam on the water--waves circling outward as from a
stone tossed in a pool--the waves merge into those of the sea--the
foam disappears--the surface is as it was before."
It was Charles Lindbergh's first
(and only) aerial victory. It would never be officially credited
to his military record however, for Captain Shimada was shot down over
the Pacific by Mr. Charles Lindbergh...a civilian observer.
Three days later the tables were
reversed...and it was very nearly Charles Lindbergh who was shot
down. The American icon never saw the enemy aircraft, or heard
Colonel MacDonald shouting into the radio, "Zero on your
tail!" until a stream of tracers was reaching out for his
P-38. The only thing that saved Lindbergh in that first fateful
moment was the Jap pilot's poor gunnery skills. Lindbergh didn't
panic, but went immediately into a high speed turn as MacDonald shouted
over the radio, "Break right! Break right!" Lindbergh
coolly stayed his course, leading the trailing enemy into the range of
MacDonald, who intercepted with a series of tracers of his own.
The crippled Zero broke and ran, and the American P-38's returned
home, now low on fuel.
August 1 was the day the first man
to make a solo flight across the Atlantic, was nearly lost over the
ocean half-a-world away. It was also the day that ended the combat
exploits of Charles Lindbergh. Word of the flight three days
earlier, and Lindbergh's first aerial victory, had reached higher
echelons.
Colonel MacDonald was reprimanded,
then grounded for sixty days. Lindbergh noted, "I am fully
as much to blame for the flight as he; but unfortunately he must carry
the responsibility, as he commands the group."
Ultimately, Colonel MacDonald's grounding was lessened to a sixty-day
leave at home, a welcomed opportunity for him to see the son that had
been born in his absence. Lindbergh continued to fly for ten more
days, then visited other airfields en route to Australia.
On August 22 Charles Lindbergh and
Douglas MacArthur met again--just the two of them. But for
Lindbergh's detailed War Journal, MacArthur's reaction to the
controversial flight of July 28 would never have been known:
"How many Japanese planes
have you shot down?" MacArthur asked.
"One," Lindbergh replied frankly and honestly.
"Where was it?"
"Off the south coast of Ceram." MacArthur
smiled at that.
"Good! I'm glad you got one."
On September 16 Lindbergh arrived
in San Francisco. The man had spent four months in the war zone,
flown fifty combat missions with the warriors of a new generation, and
proved he was still the hero he had been seventeen years
before.
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EPILOGUE
The end of World War II found the older
heroes of decades past returning to active but relatively quiet
lives. Eddie Rickenbacker turned his attention back to
running an airline and continuing to promote aviation. He
died in Zurick, Switzerland on July 23, 1973 at the age of 82,
and was buried in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio.
In 1947 Billy Mitchell's dream of a
separate United States Air Force came true, and Charles
Lindbergh worked for a time as a consultant to its new chief of
staff. In 1954 President Dwight Eisenhower restored
Lindbergh's commission, appointing him a brigadier general in
the U.S. Air Force. Until his death on August 26, 1974 he
devoted much of his time to conservation, campaigning for the
protection of endangered species and the world
environment. He was buried on the grounds of the Palapala
Ho'omau Church in Kipahulu, Hawaii.
In the shadow of the two great men, America
found a new generation of heroes...men who rose to the challenge
thrust upon the United States at Pearl Harbor on a calm Sunday
morning in December, 1942. In the four years of warfare
that followed, millions of young men and women rose up to defend
freedom and save our world, proving that within their breast
beat the same heart of courage that had inspired their fathers
to greatness. Each step of the way, these new heroes were
encouraged, motivated, and inspired by heroes of the past.
Part II
WORLD WAR II
Click Here To Return to the
Wings of Valor Main Page
Sources:
Cook, Donald, For Conspicuous Gallantry, C.S. Hammond & Company,
Maplewood, NJ, 1966
Foss, Joe and Donna, A Proud American, Pocket Books, 1992
Lindbergh, Charles A, The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh,
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., New York, NY 1970
Manning, Robert, Above and Beyond, Boston Publishing Company, Boston,
MA, 1985
Rickenbacker, Edward V., Rickenbacker, An Autobiography, Prentice
Hall, 1967
Rickenbacker, Edward V., "Pacific Mission" (Parts 1, 2 and
3), LIFE Magazine, January 25, February 1 & February 8, 1943
Runyon, Damon and Kiernan, Walter, "Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker",
Dell Publishing Company, New York, NY, 1942
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Part I
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Six weeks later most of the cast had been whittled away and Rickenbacker was doing his best to reassure an anxious America that the will to survive can be greater than "Slipping into that sensuous and beautiful state... into that lovely land where there is no pain."
In
Long Beach, California Rick visited with the new pilots of his old
94th Aero Squadron. It was a thrill marred only by a ruling
years earlier by the adjutant general's office that the famous
hat-in-the-ring insignia could not be used by the modern-day 94th
Squadron. The young pilots communicated to Rick that they
wished to resurrect the historic trademark, and Rick went directly
to General Arnold. In an April 12 Letter General Arnold
thanked Rickenbacker for his efforts over 32 days to visit with 41
groups of men in the Army Air Service. In that same letter he
advised: "Uncle Sam's Hat-in-the-Ring insignia of the
94th Pursuit Squadron which you commanded with such distinction
during the first world war is now being returned to that unit."
Rick
went to England therefore as a civilian, with unprecedented authority from
the Secretary of War to order the commanders to assist him in the
completion of his mission. He took with him as his personal aide
Colonel Hans Adamson. Adamson had handled the media during Rick's
U.S. tour months earlier. On Rickenbacker's secret mission to Europe
during the Fall of 1942 Adamson's job was reversed...keeping the press
away from the American hero.
Rickenbacker
and Bartek were transferred from the flying-boat a short time later,
to be rushed to a hospital at the nearby American base aboard the P.T.
boat. Colonel Adamson, so near death his survival was still
uncertain, was flown on to the hospital.
Rick left Hawaii on December 15, leaving Hans
behind in a hospital to continue his recovery. Eventually it
would be complete, and the intrepid colonel who had come so close to
death in the Pacific, lived a long and fruitful life. On
December 19 Rick reported personally to Secretary Stimpson. The
following day from his home in New York, Rickenbacker gave a stirring and
patriotic radio address to the Nation. He told America, "You
can never approximate the sacrificed our men are making on the
battlefront for you and me. If I can only help you understand
that, then I will be able to enjoy the first Sunday afternoon I have
spent at home in many, many weeks."
Eddie
Rickenbacker was quickly approached by Life Magazine for
the story of his incredible ordeal and survival at sea.
Over the next month he wrote it and it was published in three
parts in three consecutive weeks beginning on January 25,
1943. In that story Rick wrote of his "21 days adrift
in the Pacific". The $25,000 fee he received for the
story was contributed to the Army Air Forces Aid Society, and
was presented to the wife of General Hap Arnold who served
as that organization's vice president.
an
unbelievable record of aerial combat--95 confirmed victories. Smith had
personally knocked down 16 enemy planes, making him the Ace of Aces of
this new war. By the time the squadron was sent home on October 12, Smith
had upped his tally to nineteen, just seven shy of Captain Eddie's WWI
record. 
