by Tod Olson
The fliers headed back toward Funafuti, scanning waters they had already searched, just in case.
That same morning, November 12, Rickenbacker was beginning to lose hope. He and Bartek and Adamson hadn’t seen a plane since the rafts split up. He had a strong suspicion they had traveled right through a chain of islands and were drifting out to sea again.
His hand shook as he poured the morning’s ration of water. Adamson and Bartek could barely raise their heads to drink.
“Have the planes come back?” Bartek mumbled.
“No,” Rickenbacker said.
“They won’t come back,” Bartek said. “I know they won’t come back.”
Again and again he repeated it, until he lapsed into a stupor.
Rickenbacker passed the time dangling his hands in the water, trying to grab fingerlings as they skittered past. He got a couple, but his hands didn’t seem to be taking signals from his brain properly.
He was half conscious under the afternoon sun when he felt Bartek tugging at his shirt.
“Listen, Captain,” he said. “Planes! They’re back!”
Rickenbacker looked up to see two planes fly within a couple of miles of the raft, only to vanish into the clouds.
Then, a half hour later, two more appeared in the west. This time they kept coming, directly at the tiny raft. At this point, none of the men were strong enough to stand up. Instead, they sat as tall as they could, waving shirts and hats, yelling till they went hoarse.
The planes came closer and closer until one broke formation and angled down. It banked and began to circle the raft from a few hundred feet away, its bulbous pontoon just a hundred feet off the water. A radioman sat in the rear seat, smiling and waving at the men in the raft. Rickenbacker kept waving back long after it was clear they had been seen. He couldn’t quite convince himself that the fliers knew they were not three dead men in a raft.
Yet there was no question about it. For the first time in more than three weeks, someone knew they were alive.
But the pilot kept circling. In a little while, another pilot came to relieve him. The sun sank deeper in the west, and Rickenbacker wondered why they didn’t land. Maybe the pilots had called for a PT boat to come pick them up. But once darkness fell the plane would return to base. There was no way a boat would be able to find them in the dark. And they could drift 10, maybe 20 miles overnight. Wasn’t it possible they would be lost again—this time for good?
By late afternoon, the Kingfisher squadron on Funafuti could congratulate themselves: They had found Rickenbacker. Now they had to get him home.
For Lieutenant William Eadie, commander of the squadron, that was a problem. Landing a Kingfisher in mid-ocean was no easy task. And even if a pilot landed safely, how would he transport three passengers in a plane designed for two people? He would have no chance of taking off with the extra weight.
The force commander on Funafuti broke radio silence at 5:40 p.m. for the first time since marines arrived on the island. He radioed coordinates for Rickenbacker’s raft to the four PT boats. But the nearest boat was at least five hours from the raft. It would be pitch-dark by the time it arrived.
When the news came in from the PT boats, Eadie made a decision. With radioman Lester Boutte in the rear, he would take off for Rickenbacker’s raft and try to pick up the survivors himself.
At some point that afternoon, Jim Whittaker had been standing on the beach staring out at the ocean. It was hard to tell in the sunlit glare, but it looked like a squadron of ships was headed for the island—destroyers, maybe.
He shook DeAngelis awake. They had gone back in the raft that morning and rowed south along the shore until they found a small hut on the beach. It was a modest thing, but it was the first sign of civilization they had seen in three weeks. To Whittaker it might as well have been New York City. They had found fresh rainwater in some broken coconut shells, and then went back to sleep.
DeAngelis sat up when Whittaker shook him, then looked out at the water.
“They’re just barges,” he mumbled, and lay back down to close his eyes again.
“Just barges!” Whittaker yelled. “What do you want, the Queen Mary?!”
Whittaker scrambled to the raft and rowed out to meet the squadron. As it drew closer, the sun’s glare lifted, and what Whittaker had thought to be “destroyers” were revealed to be outrigger canoes crewed by islanders. The men in the lead boat welcomed Whittaker to their home by tying his raft to their boat. They sped to shore, and a young man jumped out with a crude machete and a length of rope. He wrapped the rope around a coconut tree and scrambled up with ease. By the time Whittaker arrived at the hut with the rest of the outrigger crew, there was fresh coconut milk waiting. He and DeAngelis and Reynolds drank it in. The islanders helped them aboard the canoe and sped off around the coast of the island.
By evening, they sat in a village of small huts with thatched palm fronds for roofs. The smell of chicken soup hung in the air. Their rescuers were residents of Nukufetau and were already hosting a wireless station manned by Allied intelligence officers from New Zealand. Earlier that day, a plane from Funafuti had dropped a message asking the station to be on the lookout for survivors from the B-17.
The villagers welcomed Whittaker and his ragged companions with open arms. Some of them wept openly when they saw how emaciated the men were. A nineteen-year-old islander named Toma presented Whittaker with a miniature model of the canoe he had been rescued in. “Jim America,” Toma called him.
Two New Zealanders from the wireless station soon arrived with the news that they had radioed Funafuti. The officers poured fruit juice for the survivors, and for once, Whittaker could watch the sunset without it tormenting him.
Survivors: DeAngelis (rear) and Whittaker, back on land after 22 days at sea.
Just before dark, a navy Kingfisher from Funafuti taxied into the lagoon. A military doctor jumped from its rear seat and hurried ashore. With him were the glucose injections that would finally give Jim Reynolds’s starved body the fuel it needed to survive.
While Whittaker, DeAngelis, and Reynolds filled themselves with chicken soup, Rickenbacker floated miles away, fretting. He watched the sun disappear over the horizon with dread. A Kingfisher still circled overhead. But a dark squall hung over the southern sky. If they weren’t picked up tonight and that squall caught them, who knew how far it would blow them.
As the last bit of light faded, a blinding white flare lit the sky beneath the Kingfisher. A minute later, the plane shot another flare, this one red. In the eerie glow, the pilot angled down, knifed his pontoon into the water, and settled into a smooth landing. He taxied to the raft and shut his engine down. Rickenbacker rowed close enough to grab the pontoon.
The man in the rear seat climbed onto the wing and introduced himself: Radioman Lester Boutte. The pilot was Lieutenant William Eadie. To Rickenbacker, who had lost 40 pounds, the men looked like the strongest, healthiest human beings he had ever seen.
Boutte and Eadie lifted Adamson 8 feet into the rear seat of the plane. A PT boat was on its way, Eadie said, but he didn’t want to fire another flare for fear there were Japanese in the area. Without the light, there was no guarantee the PT boat would find them. They weren’t going to wait. He and Boutte hoisted Bartek onto the right wing and Rickenbacker onto the left. Boutte tied them to each other and ran the line through the cockpit. Eadie fired up the engine and they started to taxi across the ocean toward Funafuti, 40 miles away.
They hadn’t gone more than a few miles when the dark outline of a PT boat appeared in front of them. Minutes later, Rickenbacker sat aboard the boat, sipping beef broth and pineapple juice. Bartek lay exhausted on a mat in the cabin. The boat captain led the Kingfisher, with Adamson still aboard, back to Funafuti.
For three weeks the seven survivors had not been forty feet apart. They shared water parceled out by the ounce and food that might have amounted to one decent meal. Now they were scattered among two islands, a boat, and a plane.
Two of them—Adamson and Reynolds—were clinging to life. Alex had been lost to the sea. But the rest had survived, and when the next night came they would all be sleeping in beds.
Rickenbacker, it turned out, had been lucky once again.
Rickenbacker is helped ashore at Funafuti, 40 pounds lighter and shaky on his feet but happy to be alive.
Just before dawn on the morning of November 13, he and Bartek and Adamson were carried ashore on stretchers. Lying on his back, Rickenbacker watched the moon glimmer through the palm trees. It was, he thought, one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen.
CHAPTER 15
THE ONES NOT TAKEN
News of the rescue traveled fast, from Funafuti to Hawaii to Washington, D.C.
Bill Cherry’s wife was the first to find out. She got a phone call at the aircraft factory in Dallas, where she worked. It was Friday the thirteenth. “It must be my luckiest day,” she said.
Adelaide Rickenbacker was in her New York City apartment the next morning when General Hap Arnold called. “I have good news for you,” he said.
She went on the radio Sunday with a message for all the other mothers and wives who were waiting for news from the front: “Never, never give up hope.”
Johnny Bartek’s mother, Mary, claimed she had never given up on her son. Then she told a reporter, “It’s still hard to believe.”
Newspaper reporters all across the country got on the phone and knocked on doors, looking for reactions to the rescue.
“Swell!” said New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia, when he heard Rickenbacker was alive.
“Thank God!” said Jack Glynn, a retired morgue keeper interviewed by a New York reporter. “He’s damn lucky. He’s got more lives than a cat.”
“He must have a rabbit’s foot or something,” said Eddie’s brother William.
Millions of people soaked up news of the rescue that weekend. There wasn’t a lot of detail yet, but most of the commentators didn’t care. If you believed the newspapers, this survival story wasn’t just about seven men; it was a triumph for a nation at war.
Rickenbacker and the crew showed that “American men have the courage and resourcefulness it takes to come through harrowing ordeals—and win wars,” said the Minneapolis Evening Star.
The fact that Americans hadn’t given up the search proved to a Memphis, Tennessee, newspaper that “we are not a people who hold life cheaply.”
The rescue demonstrated the U.S. military’s “increasing mastery of the air and sea,” according to the Everett Herald in Washington. If American planes could pluck three tiny rafts from such a vast stretch of ocean, how could the Japanese or the Germans or the Italians possibly hide from us?
Of course, Rickenbacker, Whittaker, Bartek, and the rest hadn’t read the papers yet. They were just seven men, lying in a makeshift hospital in the middle of the Pacific, relieved to be alive. Little did they know they had become a sign that millions of American soldiers were not risking their lives in vain.
Still 5,000 miles from home, Cherry recovers in the makeshift hospital on Funafuti.
On December 10, Eddie Rickenbacker peered out the window of a B-17. This time, he was not lost. A few hundred feet below lay the thick jungle of Guadalcanal. A month ago, Rickenbacker was nearly dead from thirst and starvation. Now he was back at work.
After their rescue, the men had been reunited in Funafuti. Whittaker had weathered the ordeal better than the rest. He walked into the one-room hospital under his own power and saw a shrunken Rickenbacker lying in bed.
“What’s the matter, Rick?” he said with a grin. “Been sick?”
After regaining some strength in Funafuti, the survivors flew to Samoa, where they spent a couple of weeks recovering at a hospital. Then Whittaker, Cherry, DeAngelis, and Bartek flew home to Hawaii. Adamson and Reynolds stayed in Samoa for treatment.
Rickenbacker took off for the western Pacific. He had lost a couple dozen pounds, but he was still the man he had been on October 21, when he insisted the crew take off in an uninspected plane. He was determined to complete his mission.
Guadalcanal was the last stop, and as his B-17 touched down, he could already tell it was, in his words, “a hellhole.” The landing strip was nothing but a scar in the jungle. On either side, the ground was littered with the twisted wreckage of planes. Pilots called it “the graveyard.”
The Graveyard: The remains of an SBD dive bomber litter the forest on Guadalcanal after being shot down by Japanese planes.
Rickenbacker was deeply disturbed by conditions on the island. The rainy season had just started, and there was mud everywhere. Daily bombings ripped holes in the airfield and the tents that housed the marines. When the men scrambled to save themselves from the bombs, they landed in foxholes waist-deep in water. Mosquitos came in swarms. Malaria, dysentery, and meager food rations left everyone weak and feverish. “Everything,” the colonel reported, “seems to rot away in the damp.”
While Rickenbacker had been out on the rafts, the marines at the airfield and the Japanese soldiers trying to take it back had also been fighting for their lives. By December it looked like the marines had won the advantage. Most likely, Guadalcanal was in American hands for good. But both sides had paid a heavy price: Nearly 40,000 men would die before the end of the campaign.
After one anxious night on the island, Rickenbacker took off on the final leg of his trip. Had he scanned the waters below, about 40 miles off the southern tip of Guadalcanal, he might have seen stray wreckage from a cruiser called the USS Juneau. The Juneau was one of about 60 ships destroyed in the six-month battle for the island. It was hit by a torpedo on November 13, about twenty-four hours after Rickenbacker was plucked from the sea by William Eadie’s seaplane. The torpedo hit the Juneau’s ammunition stores, and a massive explosion rocked the sea. The ship split in two and sunk in less than a minute.
Ships from the Juneau’s squadron thought for sure no one had survived. In fact, more than one hundred sailors clung to three rafts and bits of wreckage in the sea. Like Rickenbacker and the B-17 crew, the castaways were left without food or drinking water. They were tormented by sharks and helpless against the sun and the sea.
But there was nothing inspiring about the way this story ended. The navy knew where the survivors were. And yet, messages were lost in the confusion of battle. Even when it was clear what had happened, the navy delayed the rescue for fear the Japanese were still patrolling the area. Rescue planes finally arrived six days after the battle. Only ten men were still alive. The rest had died from their wounds, from thirst, or from shark attacks.
By the time Rickenbacker got back to Samoa, Adamson and Reynolds were ready to travel. The three of them flew back to the States, and the men went their separate ways.
Rickenbacker had a tearful reunion with Adelaide and their two sons, then went immediately to the Pentagon to report on his mission.
Cherry went to Washington, D.C., to help redesign the Air Force’s survival equipment.
Whittaker went on tour telling his story to war workers on the Pacific coast.
Bartek went home to see his parents and embarked on a speaking tour of his own.
Homecoming: Eddie greets the public on his return to New York, with his wife, Adelaide, and New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia.
Everywhere they traveled, the men were welcomed like heroes. When DeAngelis came home to Nesquehoning, Pennsylvania, there were 4,000 people in the streets to greet him—more than the entire population of the town. “I knew I had friends,” he said, “but I didn’t know I had this many.”
Eddie, of course, got the biggest reception of all. A military band greeted him when he touched down in Washington, D.C. Once again, the newspapers hailed his “courage,” his “daring,” and his “determination.”
The rest of the crew didn’t feel as warm toward Rickenbacker. In public, they said all the right things. But they remembered the tirades and the power struggles they’d endured in the open ocean. A navigato
r on board the plane that flew them back to Hawaii overheard one of the men saying, “We stayed alive on that raft just to watch that son of a b get all the credit.”
In fact, as the men told and retold the story of their ordeal, they all gave credit to a higher authority than Rickenbacker: God. They didn’t have a lot to rely on out there besides Bartek’s Bible and their own prayers. To most of the men, their survival began to seem like part of a divine plan.
For Whittaker it was a full-on conversion experience. In the bomber, before the ordeal, he had been scornful when DeAngelis wanted to pray. By the end, he was convinced that God had been watching over the rafts. He took the bird that landed on Rickenbacker’s head as a sign that prayers get answered. When a rain squall appeared to travel against the wind to dump freshwater on them, it seemed like a miracle. He wrote a book about the ordeal, called We Thought We Heard the Angels Sing.
Like Whittaker, Bartek claimed he hadn’t been especially religious as a kid. In January, two months after they were rescued, he told an audience of war workers that he wanted to become a minister. “After what happened to us out there … I feel I’m a true believer,” he said.
One voice, of course, was absent from all the post-rescue storytelling. That was the voice of Alex Kaczmarczyk. History has left no record of his mother’s beliefs. We know only that she hadn’t heard about the rescue yet when the phone rang on November 14. There was a reporter on the line, calling to talk about her son’s death. She burst into tears. “He was the only one … ,” she cried, and hung up the phone.
In 1942, millions of people had to live with the news that someone close to them had been stolen away. In twenty-two days, seven men had survived on rafts in the Pacific. In that same twenty-two days, more than 2,000 Americans died in battle. On the USS Juneau alone, 90 men were left to die in the ocean while Rickenbacker and the B-17 crew drank soup and fruit juice on Funafuti. And the fighting stretched across the globe, from Guadalcanal to China to Eastern Europe to North Africa. On average, in every three-week period of the war, more than 500,000 people died. Each one of those deaths led to an announcement—a letter, a phone call, a knock at the door. And each announcement left a person at home to wonder why their son, their daughter, their husband had been killed while others survived.