81 Days Below Zero

by Brian Murphy

  Somewhere on the factory floor in Willow Run, the movie talent scouts came across Kentucky-born Rose Will Monroe—auburn hair and plump cheeks—who became the indefatigable Rosie and the face of the home front in a morale-boosting clip seen by millions.

  But Crane, the aeronautics engineer, was likely far more impressed by another B-24 backstory. This one involves a genius in aviation design, who remains a largely unheralded hero in how the war was waged on drafting tables, wind tunnels, and test sites.

  Isaac Machlin Laddon—known as I. M. or Mac to everyone, including the U.S. Patent Office—joined the U.S. military’s experimental aviation division in Ohio in 1917, just fourteen years after the Wright brothers skimmed over the sands at Kitty Hawk. For the young I. M. Laddon, fresh out of Montreal’s McGill University by way of New Jersey, the cutting-edge aircraft at the time were models such as Boeing’s CL-4S biplane, whose 100-horsepower engine was capable of just over seventy miles per hour. Quickly, however, Laddon was among the handful of Roaring Twenties engineers—in age and era—pushing the boundaries of what could get off the runway.

  In 1922 he helped design the first all-metal plane. Patents bearing his name marked new steps in aeronautics: enhanced braking systems and more reliable landing gear. Laddon’s improvements continued with the “flying boat” that would evolve into the storied PBY Catalina, a fat-bellied craft that was used in World War II in all-purpose roles, including rescues, reconnaissance, and attacks. In the Atlantic, a Catalina flown by the Royal Air Force reported the location of the German battleship Bismarck before it was sunk the following day. In the Pacific, Catalinas painted the color of airstrip tar conducted nighttime “Black Cat” raids on Japanese ships.

  Just as the Catalina design was getting its final touches, Laddon was working on another project at the San Diego headquarters of the Consolidated Aircraft Corporation, one of the first major industrial-military marriages of the aviation age. Laddon’s team was asked to muscle up a companion for the B-17 Flying Fortress, whose development in the 1930s rewrote the book on aerial warfare. The goal was a new bomber capable of longer range, bigger payloads, higher speed, and more defensive guns bristling out from the nose, center, and tail. Oh, and did we mention that it all needs to get done in a matter of months?

  One breakthrough was already in the bag. It came via the sheer chutzpah of an aeronautical engineer, David R. Davis.

  To anyone who would listen in the late 1930s, Davis was peddling his new wing design. It was basically a longer and more tapered shape that, he boasted, would give less drag and greater lift. But this was still the Depression. Who had the cash, or the gumption, to take a chance on an untested design? The answer, of course, was just about no one. The more Davis faced rejection, the clearer it became what he had to do: somehow finagle a meeting with Consolidated. Its owner, the aviator-turned-tycoon Reuben Fleet, had the right combination of deep pockets and soaring ego to try to get one over on his rivals. After all, he seemed to like a challenge. In 1918 Fleet managed to cobble together the country’s first airmail service between New York and Washington after a series of embarrassing false starts, including planes running out of fuel in midflight and leaking tanks that had to be patched with corks.

  Davis managed to set up a meeting with Laddon and Fleet. It took place in Fleet’s office, which oozed confidence with its hardwoods and leather. Fleet tried hard to embody his signature slogan: “Nothing short of right is right,” which was painted in huge letters outside the company’s Plant No. 1. This was Davis’s moment. He had to sway Fleet and show that his wing design was right.

  Davis made his pitch to incorporate his wing into the Catalina. Fleet’s reply: Interesting, but no thanks. Not so quick, advised Laddon. He was still intrigued. He persuaded Fleet to give the wing a test in the Caltech wind tunnel. It delivered everything Davis promised in a slimmed-down style that was longer in length than the B-17 but with less overall wing space. Laddon was a believer. So was the Army, after reviewing tests on planes refitted with the Davis wing.

  The Army contract with Consolidated was awarded in March 1939. Before the end of the year, the prototype B-24 Liberator made its first flight with the new Davis wing. In between was Germany’s invasion of Poland. The United States was still officially a neutral party in the widening war, but it was not lost on anyone that Washington could be forced, someday soon, to make a choice. The timing was right for a companion to the B-17. Laddon’s plane, though, still had some serious growing pains. The first batches of the B-24, sold to Britain in 1941, were too vulnerable in the flak-filled skies in Europe. The performance of the Davis wing degraded quickly once it started to sustain damage. Also, the B-24 lacked self-sealing fuel tanks. It was like painting a bull’s-eye for the Luftwaffe aces. The Royal Air Force shifted the early B-24s to maritime patrols. Laddon and his team got to work on doctoring the design.

  But there wasn’t much they could do at this point about how the B-24 responded once off the ground. The overall shape of the plane—especially its Davis wing and the rear stabilizers that stuck up like twin billboards—gave added lift. The price was that it simply didn’t cut through the skies as elegantly as the B-17. It took muscle to keep the B-24 Liberators in line. It was said there was an easy way to spot a B-24 pilot: his bulked-up left arm, which got a workout steering the plane while his right arm dealt with throttles and other levers. Aircrews quickly cooked up other colorful jabs for the boxy Lib: the flying brick, the pregnant cow. The nicknames came from both the B-24 crews that liked the slightly underdog image of the new bomber and the B-17 flyboys who wanted nothing to do with it. One quip went that the B-24 pilots had to fly the crates that the B-17s were shipped in.

  Such talk only deepened the loyalty among many B-24 crews. “There were lots of jokes about the B-24,” said a radio operator, Bill Gros, who flew it in combat missions in Europe and as a sub hunter in the Atlantic. “But I had a lot of faith in that airplane.”

  The B-24 also was unmatched on the assembly line. Its success can be expressed in one stunning number: more than eighteen thousand variants of the B-24 were produced from 1941 until September 1945 in San Diego, Willow Run, and plants in Texas and Oklahoma. That’s about 315 a month on average. Or more than 10 a day.

  On that June day in 1994, Beckstead was getting his first look at the B-24 wreckage, but certainly not of a downed plane.

  A plane wreck in the Alaskan wilderness is sadly common. The B-24 is just one of hundreds of mangled airplanes dotting Alaska. Pilots need no additional reminders of the perils of their home skies. But the fallen planes serve as sobering points of reference in the same manner of shipwreck notations that dot mariners’ charts. Some of the crashes even carry a kind of stark beauty. Bush pilots heading north out of Fairbanks often snap photos of a nearly intact Cessna T50 floatplane. Its wooden skin has been weathered away since a forced landing near Fort Yukon in the 1960s. What’s left are its internal frame and struts. From the sky, it resembles a delicate silver fish in a muskeg sea.

  But for Beckstead, whose job was to research the Yukon–Charley Rivers National Preserve, the B-24 was much more than a wartime scrap heap. The wreckage would become a personal mission. It was the biggest crash site within the preserve’s borders and, without doubt, had the best story attached. Beckstead combed military and civilian records. He also began developing his own theories behind the crash. Over the years, he would amass boxes of notes and documents and twenty-five hundred photographs. He once boasted that he got to know every rivet and piece of wrenched metal.

  But before all this, there had to be formal introduction between Beckstead and the wreckage. It took place in 1994 after he escorted archaeologists to the preserve. Beckstead had dropped them off and was flying alone with the pilot. Beckstead had heard of the B-24 crash site, but knew little more. He asked the pilot if he knew the location.

  “Sure,” he said. “Want me to stop?”

  Beckstead, a barrel-ch
ested man with a carefully trimmed beard and wire-rim glasses, wandered amid the shattered B-24 and the jetsam in front for about an hour. He came across some personal items: spoons, a tin can, the rubber sole from a boot that inexplicably escaped the flames.

  As the helicopter lifted off, Beckstead looked down again. He no longer saw just a spray of war-era relics. He was surveying a patch of wilderness he knew would draw him back. What he didn’t know yet was how his obsession would change the lives of a family on the other side of the continent.

  Five

  December 25, 1943

  Charley River

  Hunger can be an unpredictable companion.

  At times, it gripped Crane with angry, clawing need. That usually hit hardest just after he woke, when he pulled away the parachute and felt that first full slap of cold. Small scoops of snow helped a little, but did almost nothing to curb his thirst. Crane had quickly learned one of the monstrous ironies of the Far North. The seemingly inexhaustible supply of water is an illusion. It takes huge amounts of powdered snow—melted or warmed into slush—to satisfy thirst. Even so, Crane didn’t have a pan. He was left to paw at the ring of watery snow on the edge of his fire.

  Only in the most desperate times will Natives of the northern tribes turn to eating snow. Gobbling down too much snow can actually increase thirst by inflaming the mouth’s mucous membrane and irritating the tongue. It can also bring on cramps and accelerate hypothermia. Thirst is wretched, but trying to satisfy it with huge servings of raw snow can make it even worse.

  Crane knew enough to lap at whatever river water seeped through the ice. Still, he found it rather surprising how the hard wiring of the body could be fooled even as he drifted into the first stages of starvation. He would imagine a milkshake, one of his favorite indulgences. Somehow, he could coax his taste buds into the same fantasy. A drop of snow, for just a few seconds anyway, tasted faintly like the shakes back at Ladd.

  Other times, for reasons he couldn’t quite grasp, the hunger faded to almost nothing. Crane, in fact, would feel fine, even weirdly energized. During these surges, he busied himself. He built another SOS in spruce branches on the river—being careful to keep his hands exposed for only seconds at a time—and arranged a more permanent camp under the trees. He thickened his mattress of flattened boughs and replenished his supply of driftwood until it was waist high.

  In biological terms, Crane was experiencing eons of evolution. It’s an acknowledgment of the importance of mind over matter for the human species. Our long-ago ancestors seemed a rather pathetic lot as hunters at first glance. They couldn’t come close to matching the speed or stealth of most of their prey or competitors for food. What they did have on their side was ingenuity. Basically, they developed the ability to outwit the wilds. So when the flow of calories stops, a distinctive survival mechanism kicks in. It puts the brain near the front of the line for the body’s glucose reserves and proteins while, at the same time, shifting the gray matter into energy-saving mode. The formula seeks to keep a person’s mental state as sharp as possible for as long as possible. A starving person’s best tool, nature is saying, is their head.

  Still, the clock was ticking for Crane.

  An American study conducted in the early 1960s on the effect of semistarvation was not pretty. The tests were, in fact, very similar to Crane’s predicament stranded near a river: ample water, but no food. Participants shed a daily average of nearly three pounds at the beginning. Blood volume decreased. So did blood plasma, red blood cells, and serum electrolytes, which influence a range of processes, including blood acidity and muscle function. Before a week is out without food, the body is typically breaking down muscle protein to keep vital organs going. Cramps begin as body salt levels drop. By the tenth day of the study, the researchers described a group of healthy men leveled to “very poor condition.” The most troubling signs were that their minds were moving toward surrender. Memory became spotty. There was a general apathy toward any kind of taxing mental or physical acts. The men were thrown into a sort of hunger-induced stupor.

  And this was in a lab setting. Calorie burn is increased by cold weather and, obviously, by activity. Crane had the natural energy of a fit young man. But a bit of pudginess could have helped him about now. Fat is the main calorie source when food intake stops. Crane likely didn’t know it, but his slim physique—an advantage in most settings—was a liability here.

  Time, too, started to toy with Crane. The scant daylight hours seemed to fly by. Just taking fifteen minutes to scan the skies for a rescue plane was a considerable chunk of the winter day. The nights, on the other hand, felt endless and bled together in ways that already made it difficult for Crane to keep track of how long since the crash.

  He counted each dawn. Was it four? Yes, that’s right. Well, that made today Christmas.

  The holiday passed without too much special notice at home when he was a boy. His parents held tight to the Jewish traditions of the Old World even as they embraced nearly everything else about American life. Christmas, they told Leon and his siblings, was for the Christians. Let them have it. We have our own holidays. The cycle of the Judaic calendar—Hanukkah, Purim, Rosh Hashanah, and so on—was observed fully in the Crane household. Keeping the connection was important to Crane’s parents, even if they gave some slack with Yiddish, allowing their children to get by with just a smattering. The kids didn’t resist their parents’ wishes. Yet they also couldn’t ignore the overwhelming salesmanship of yuletide in the land where they were born. Like many of his Jewish friends, Leon didn’t advertise his religious roots. It didn’t seem necessary to try to carve out a separate identity in West Philadelphia. The neighborhood itself was their touchstone. You didn’t just live in West Philly. You were from West Philly. Besides, Crane liked to look forward, not back. The equations and physics in an engineering textbook held far more interest than the parables of the Torah. One neighbor didn’t even know Crane’s family was Jewish. He was puzzled why the Cranes would go to church on Saturday.

  The first night of Hanukkah was Crane’s first night alone in the wilderness. At Ladd Field, a small menorah was lit in a corner of the chapel. Crews were still building a multidenominational center. It was intended for all faiths, but nevertheless looked a lot like a chapel at home overlooking a classic New England common. Some Jewish soldiers at Ladd headed into Fairbanks to join Hanukkah events at the home of Robert Bloom, a Lithuanian shopkeeper who reached Fairbanks via Ireland. Bloom, along with his wife, Jessie, became an anchor of the town’s Jewish community. But Crane had been more involved in the preparations for the turkey and trimmings that would be served for Christmas. He had helped fly in some of the birds on runs to Anchorage.

  The Thanksgiving menu at Ladd was lavish. Christmas might just beat it. A diary entry from a Ladd airman described a Thanksgiving feast in loving detail: olives, vegetable salad, Thousand Island dressing, celery hearts, mixed sweet pickles, shrimp cocktail, chicken soup, roast turkey, giblet gravy, chestnut stuffing, mashed potatoes, peas, yams, cauliflower in cream, corn on the cob, rolls, hot mince pie, pumpkin pie with whipped cream, plum pudding with brandy sauce, fruit cake, grapes, apples, oranges, salted nuts, mints, coffee, tea.

  Crane knew he must figure out, and very soon, how to find something to eat. He couldn’t undertake any kind of serious expedition along the river with just its water to sustain him. A tough overland hike can burn six thousand calories a day. Walking in the snow, in deadly cold, would demand more. A few days of that and he would simply collapse.

  The rub was that he wouldn’t know whether someone was near unless he set off to look.

  He had no map, no firm idea where he was, and only a guess on the name of the river. He assumed it was the Charley, based on their flight time from Big Delta and the fact that the river ran north. Many other rivers carved through the hills, but not all ran northward. On the western side of the uplands, they flowed back toward the Tanana. To
the east, others wandered off in that direction to meet the Yukon on the Canadian portion of its long run. So if this was the Charley, Crane knew just one certainty: he was somewhere south of the Yukon River.

  Don’t get sidetracked, he told himself. Keep sharp. Stay on the problems you can address. There has to be a key to surviving here. He ran though the list. Fishing was impossible in winter. Hunting was doubtful. What could he bring down with only a pen knife? Okay, anything else? The military manuals gave this advice: you can consume anything green that animals eat as long as it doesn’t have an intensely bitter taste.

  He’d seen plenty of red squirrels, one of the few animals that do not migrate or retreat into hibernation during the interior Alaskan winter. But Crane couldn’t be sure whether the little squirrels were foraging for new food or eating whatever they gathered before the freeze. There were clumps of moss poking out from under the snow. This was worth a shot. Crane hacked away with a branch until he reached the frozen ground. He ripped up a cold, spongy handful. Just prying it loose felt like needles piercing his frozen fingertips. He jammed a wad into this mouth. The taste wasn’t awful, at least. In fact, it had almost no taste at all. It just sat in a soggy lump no matter how much he chewed, something like an earthy paste. He managed to swallow a little, but it stuck in his throat. He gagged and tried to wash it down with snow. Clearly, this was not the answer.

  He thought again about the squirrels.

  They were a constant presence. The animals were fearless. Crane might well have been the first human they had come across. They flitted down the spruce branches to investigate the fire and gaze with their black-marble eyes. Their curiosity could be my meal ticket, Crane reasoned. A plan began to hatch. He turned to inspect the driftwood. He picked out a sturdy arm-size piece that made a nice club. Crane walked beneath the trees and waited for the snowy branches to stir.