4

ON A WING AND A PRAYER

It didn’t take long for me to move into to the Expediting Department at Lockheed. I got to dress in nice clothes, too. But it was just temporary. With the world at war, I knew America could be drawn in anytime. During lunch, I’d watch one P-38 after another fly in and out of the company airfield. I figured it would be exciting to be up there myself, so I applied to the army air corps.

MY PRIMARY TRAINING started on March 19, 1941, at the Hancock College of Aeronautics in Santa Maria, just south of San Luis Obispo, in California. They’d named the field after Captain G. Allan Hancock, a big oilman who built the Hancock Library of Biology and Oceanography at USC. He also created Hancock Park in Los Angeles, a famous mid-Wilshire neighborhood, on part of the land left to him by his father, Major Henry Hancock.

I drove north with a couple of buddies. The army took pictures of me in my tracksuit, posing in a racer’s starting-line crouch, on an airplane wing. Because of my track career, I was always good for some free publicity, and I was happy to help. After a few weeks of ground studies they finally put me in a training plane. What a shock. I’d flown to New York on commercial planes, but it’s different in a small craft. Some guys loved it. I didn’t. At first I got a little disoriented, twisting and turning, but when they put me through the “spins,” that was it.

I had a better time on the ground. We got weekends off, and most of us went into town to drink. That was fine as long as you didn’t come back drunk. If you did, the MPs would haul you to the infirmary and forcefully inject a 15 percent Argyrol solution straight up your penis. It burned and you’d scream your head off and not sleep well that night. They said it was for our own good, though. The air corps didn’t want anyone to catch VD from the girls in town. I heard more than one recruit protest, “No, I didn’t have any sex with any woman.” But who trusts a drunk?

I didn’t fool around, but one night I came back not walking a straight line, and I knew they wanted to give me the Argyrol. Instead, I jumped the fence and got away with it. The next time, though, I got caught climbing over the fence and was confined to the base for two weekends.

The first weekend Captain Hancock flew his Lockheed Lodestar to our field. Hancock and I had become friends at USC because of my interest in his cello performances, and he was scheduled to play at the base. All military personnel were required to attend, but it was optional for the cadets. I was the only cadet who showed up, and that made us even closer friends.

Later Hancock said, “Louie, I’m flying to Long Beach. You can come and visit your parents in Torrance and I’ll have you back to school by Sunday.” I told him I appreciated the offer but I was confined. “The restriction board at the gate reads, THESE CADETS ARE NOT TO PASS THROUGH THIS GATE. And my name’s on it.”

“We’re not going to pass through the gate,” he said with a laugh. “We’re going to fly over it.” I spent my two restricted weekends at my parents’ house, and no one was the wiser.

I WASHED OUT of flying school, came home, and rented an apartment in Hollywood with two buddies who’d also been let go. We were officially still cadets, waiting for termination papers, but we had nothing to do except go to the beach, the movies, and athletic events. When the discharge orders arrived, I moved back to Torrance, a civilian again—but eligible for the draft.

My letter to report for a physical came while I was working as a movie extra. I made seven dollars a day, and any extra who stayed through the whole shoot got a twenty-five-dollar bonus. I didn’t want to avoid my duty to my country, but I wanted that additional money. I’d heard that during World War I, men who wanted to postpone or get out of their service would put a chunk of tobacco under their armpits to raise their temperature. Or they’d put a cigar up their anus. When they got to the front of the line, they’d be dizzy and sick. I didn’t want to go that far, so I ate lots of candy to induce a high sugar level. I wasn’t sure it would work, but when they tested my urine and told me I’d have to come back, I was happy. I finished the movie and got my bonus, then went back and took my physical again, and passed.

I joined the army on September 29, 1941, and went to Camp Roberts, near Paso Robles, California, for basic training. The army thought I had certain useful qualities, so they made me an acting corporal in charge of fitness. I also went to the NCO school on the base and came out with top grades.

I was at Camp Roberts—actually, out on a weekend pass—when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. A buddy and I were at a movie in town when they stopped the film and the theater manager made the announcement: “All military personnel are to report to their bases immediately. The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor.”

On my way out of the theater I ran into a friend from the local air base. I wasn’t in any hurry to get back to Camp Roberts, and he said, “We could use you at our base.” I had military rifle training, and they had a whole barracksful of guns that nobody knew how to use because their air corps guys never had rifle drills. My commander cleared it, and I spent the day there with the air corps pilots and mechanics and so on. I put them through drills and taught gun nomenclature and how to take a firearm apart and put it together again. When I got through they drove me to Camp Roberts.

I DID WELL in basic training, and the army selected me to go to Officers Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. Then a second set of orders came, the result of my having unthinkingly signed a piece of paper after washing out of Hancock College. The orders directed me instead to bombardier school at Ellington Field in Houston. I met with the Camp Roberts CO, a general, and told him I wanted to stay in the infantry. He said he’d try to help, but there was nothing he could do.

At Ellington Field I found another guy who didn’t want to be there, either. We both put in for transfers. Meanwhile, I went about my studies and did some more publicity for the air corps: pictures in the paper of me racing a bomber down the runway, talking about the Nazi flag incident in radio interviews. Apparently, the air corps didn’t want to lose the extra visibility that having me around brought, so my request for a transfer never went through. I kept asking, “What happened to my transfer? They transferred so-and-so last week…”

Frankly, I hated the air corps until one day when two other cadets and I walked down the street in Houston and a big white convertible Cadillac with two beautiful young women pulled up. We were only cadets, but we still wore wings—and they were looking for men with wings.

“You want to go to a plantation party?” they offered. We hopped in. At the party, food and drink were plentiful and free and dancing with the beautiful Texas girls was a bonus. After a few more get-togethers just like it I decided that maybe being in the air corps wasn’t that bad after all. Then I got elected captain of the cadets and was put in charge of a large drum-and-bugle corps. We performed at the stadium, in front of top brass and Washington officials, to honor those who died at Pearl Harbor.

Next I went to Officers Candidate and bombardier school in Midland, Texas. The curriculum was tough and included math and physics; we had to make sure the bombs went straight after we dropped them. The washout rate was high. By keeping my nose buried in my books, I survived.

However, fun was not out of the question. Before a practice night-bombing mission, my pilot, a sergeant, asked if I could drop my bombs quickly so he could keep a rendezvous with his girlfriend. “Where are you going to pick her up?” I asked. “I’m not meeting her on the ground,” he said. “I promised to fly over the local theater when the movie lets out at nine, and she promised to wave at us.”

We took off with several other AT-11 crews. The sergeant arrived first on the target, and I unloaded my bombs in such a hurry that later my scores were not up to par.

Then he did a wingover and hurried back to Midland. The sergeant buzzed Main Street, barely clearing the power lines. I looked down at the theater and saw people begin to pour out—and look up, puzzled, at our extremely low altitude. By the fourth pass, the sergeant yelled, “Do you see a girl waving a scarf?”

“Yes,” I hollered back. “She’s in the middle of the street with everybody else, wondering what the heck we’re doing!”

He made two more low passes, rocked the wings, revved the motors, and switched the landing lights on and off. His girlfriend continued to wave the scarf. Satisfied, the sergeant headed back to the Midland airfield. Before we arrived, frantic citizens and the police had already flooded the base with calls, all reporting an unidentified aircraft over the city.

Some were certain the enemy had invaded Midland.

They weren’t completely crazy. Only months before, at about 7 P.M. on February 23, 1942, while most people listened to President Roosevelt’s Fireside Chat, a Japanese submarine surfaced twelve miles west of Santa Barbara, California, near the rich oil field on Ellwood Beach. According to one newspaper, “They lobbed sixteen shells into the tidewater field and [the residents] heard strange explosions…but [the Japs’] marksmanship was poor.” Tokyo claimed the raid was a “great military success,” though in reality the damage was no more than five hundred dollars. Nonetheless, this was the first attack on our mainland since the War of 1812—and the last before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.

Back at the Midland airfield the commanding officer ordered all crews to report immediately to headquarters. “Okay,” he barked. “Who was the damn fool who scared the hell out of the good people of Midland?” Knowing the other crews weren’t aware of his revised flight plan, the sergeant kept his mouth shut. So did I. The CO was furious, but since no one else took credit for our asinine adventure, he assumed a crew from another base had caused the mischief.

Mission accomplished, we celebrated.

ON AUGUST 13, 1942, I graduated in the top fifteen of my class. On October 25 the air corps sent me to Hickam Field, on Oahu—which had also been struck in the Pearl Harbor raid—as a second lieutenant with the B-24 bombing unit of the Forty-second Squadron, of the Eleventh Bombardment Group, of the Seventh Air Force. The Eleventh eventually ran more than six thousand sorties to avenge the Pearl Harbor massacre.

My assignment also included working out of Kahuku Air Base on Oahu’s north shore. There I continued my training, learned to speak a little Hawaiian, and ran practice bombing missions at eight thousand feet until my margin of error was about fifty feet. In other words, a virtual bull’s-eye. My reward was a master bombardier classification and the knowledge that, in the words of Major General Eugene Eubanks, “The greatest bombing planes in the world take him [the bombardier] into battle through every opposition, and in thirty seconds over the target he must vindicate the greatest responsibility ever placed on an individual soldier in the line of duty.”

I FLEW IN a B-24 Liberator. Here are its stats:

Type:	Heavy bomber
Crew:	8 to 10
Armament:	Ten .50-caliber machine guns and up to 12,800 pounds of bombs
Length:	66 feet 4 inches (20.22 meters)
Height:	17 feet 11 inches (5.46 meters)
Wingspan:	110 feet (33.53 meters)
Gross weight:	56,000 pounds
Number of engines:	4
Power plant:	Pratt & Whitney R-1830
Horsepower:	1,200 each
Range:	3,200 miles (5152 kph)
Cruise Speed:	175 mph (281 kph)
Max Speed:	303 mph (487 kph)
Ceiling:	28,000 feet (8,534 meters)

My baptismal raid took place just past midnight on Christmas Eve, 1942. Two days earlier we’d fitted our B-24 with bomb-bay fuel tanks, which meant a long hop, but no one knew to where. They just told us to take enough clothes for three days. I got a simple one-dollar bombsight for low altitude work, instead of the expensive model made by Norden. At 10 A.M., twenty-six ships took off from Kahuku. Five minutes later we opened our secret orders. Our mission was first to fly to Midway Island, 1,300 miles northwest of Honolulu. It took eight hours to get there. Each ship received a case of cold Budweiser when we landed. The marines there seemed to know exactly where we were headed next. One guy said he’d expected us for a few weeks. All I expected was a shower, quickly, even if all they had was hot and cold running salt water. I got one.

Afterward there wasn’t much time to see the sights, which was no big disappointment, since Midway’s only natural attraction was the albatross, also known as a gooney bird. Thick-billed with white chest feathers fading into chestnut, they take off into the wind, gathering speed like a plane. If they come in for a landing too high or low, they crack up in the bushes. Sometimes they fly into poles and wires, not seeing them in time to change course. Again, just like a plane. In fact, that’s what they nicknamed the C-47 Skytrain, the military version of the DC-3 cargo ship: Gooney Birds.

At a briefing we learned about the rest of our mission: be the first to bomb Wake Island since the Japanese had occupied it a year earlier.

I was pleased even though I realized the mission would be like running a marathon. All Pacific runs were. In Europe, in most cases, pilots flew only several hundred miles to drop their bombs; some planes could make two or three sorties in one day, loading up in between. Our journey to Wake was five thousand miles, one way. Fully loaded, we could fly almost three thousand miles without refueling; to make it to Wake required modifications, hence the bomb-bay fuel tanks and only six 500-pound bombs—half a load. That day workmen also coated the underside of our wings with lamp black—early stealth technology—so we couldn’t be seen at night.

After a briefing the next day at 14:00, we studied our maps and targets thoroughly. Two hours later we took off, the ships stripped of all excess weight, heading for Wake, another eight hours away. Traveling these unheard-of distances was worth the risk to gain the element of surprise. With little to worry about but passing navy vessels that occasionally shelled Wake, the Japanese there felt secure and complacent. They never expected bombers.

Even though B-24s had the necessary speed and could handle the range, to some the ship will never be as popular as the earlier B-17, a good plane and, with its streamlined side profile, a glamorous bird. However, a plane doesn’t fly sideways, and the B-24 was the real workhorse that won the war. Consolidated Aircraft and other companies manufactured 19,600 of them, a record. Until the B-29 came along, no bomber beat the B-24 for speed, range, or bomb capacity.

Each crew named its own plane and confirmed it with nose art. We christened our B-24 Superman and painted the Man of Steel on the fuselage.

Our pilot, Second Lieutenant Russell Phillips, was a short, easygoing Hoosier, a man who didn’t waste words. We called him Phil. He flew us from Midway to Wake at ten thousand feet with lights on until we were within 150 miles of the target. The lead planes were scheduled to drop their payloads just after midnight.

At 00:05 hours I saw bombs from Colonel Matheny’s plane hit the island. I opened our bomb-bay doors. Intermittent clouds covered Wake, so we dove from eight thousand feet to four thousand feet and pulled up. Because we used dive-bomb tactics, I only had a handheld sight and a few seconds to synchronize and calibrate my instruments as antiaircraft fire and 7.7-millimeter incendiary shells flew like firebirds over our right wing. No one expects a heavy four-engine bomber to do a dive-bombing act, but we had a Davis wing that allowed the plane to cruise with pursuit-plane performance. B-24s were almost fighter-bombers. In fact, General Hap Arnold had set up my group as an experimental unit. At Kahuku we practiced skid bombing with torpedoes: dropping our explosives right above the water. Unfortunately, we encountered complications with them bouncing on the water and popping back up to strike the plane. Thank goodness accidents only happened on simulated runs with practice torpedoes. Eventually, General Arnold decided that skid bombing wasn’t that good an idea for such a heavy ship.

We leveled out to drop our payload. I saw a red light on the tail of a Zero taking off at the south end of the island. I synchronized on the light through a thin layer of clouds and dropped one bomb on the north-south runway just as that craft left the ground. I missed but left a large crater. After waiting two seconds I dropped my five remaining bombs on the bunkers and planes parked near the east-west runway. Then we hung a sharp left turn in a barrage of bullets and watched the fireworks while Mitchell, the navigator, shouted out our heading and we made for home. Despite all the stuff the Japanese threw at us, not a plane was hit. I looked back to see bombs bursting everywhere—the rockets’ red glare, indeed—and the island on fire.

We had smashed Wake and left the Japanese confused. Our dive-bombing made them think the attack was carrier-based. We made only one mistake: using the gasoline in our wing tanks first. When we pulled out of the initial dive the bomb-bay tanks were still full, and the centrifugal force caused them to slip an inch or two, wedging the doors slightly open. That created drag and used up more precious fuel, not to mention caused a draft.

The weather turned stormy and visibility failed, but all twenty-six planes returned safely to Midway. We landed around 8 A.M. This time the marines greeted each crew with a quart of whisky. At 14:00 hours we gathered and heard a radiogram from Admiral Nimitz: “Congratulations on a job well done.” He knew what he was talking about; the navy had hidden two submarines off Wake to get a visual account of the attack. That night they threw a big party, and the next morning we took off for Hawaii. When we arrived at Kahuku, no one was there to cheer us because our raid had not yet been announced publicly. It didn’t matter. I was interested only in a freshwater shower and the Christmas party at the North Shore officers club that night.

ON NEW YEAR’S DAY 1943, my group received the Air Medal, presented by Admiral Nimitz, for our raid on Wake. Afterward, I went to a party with First Lieutenant Nichols, a pilot, and Second Lieutenant Carringer, a bombardier. The only problem we had was returning the forty miles to Kahuku from Honolulu. By the time we arrived at 4:30 A.M., the base was well underwater from a steady rain, and frankly, we were a bit underwater, too.

AFTER WAKE A newspaper reporter asked me if I’d been afraid. I think my answer must have surprised him—it certainly surprised me. “No,” I said. “I’ve been more scared before races against Cunningham and Fenske.” Yet it made sense. The Japanese didn’t hit or challenge us. I also said, “But I never had a greater thrill than when I saw my bombs hit the objective.” My comment still managed to ruffle some feathers among the brass, so from then on I kept my bravado to myself and prayed my luck would hold out as I flew countless reconnaissance and search missions and bombing runs over the Marshall and Gilbert Islands, in weather both violent and sublime.

I’d been called Lucky Louie stateside for years, and now my army buddies said it, too. Standing silently at one funeral after another, I thought maybe I did lead a charmed life, not that I could think of any reason why. To keep up the front, I maintained my devil-may-care composure on the outside, but on the inside I never stopped wondering how long my good fortune would last, how many more times I’d get back in one piece.

Lots of men didn’t, and not always because their plane went down in combat. The B-24 had a few built-in problems, like leaks in the fuel-transfer pump, which shifts gas from one tank to the other in order to keep the plane balanced. For some reason, that pump was lousy. Also, although the fuel cells were self-sealing, the wings often filled with fumes that permeated the plane. I always smelled gasoline while guys around me lit cigarettes.

An electric-motor spark could also set off an explosion. It happened to one bombardier I knew. His plane blew up at five thousand feet. Lucky for him he stood right at the end of the bomb-bay catwalk; the doors were still open and the blast pushed him out. He parachuted to earth and was the only survivor.

It’s no wonder they sometimes called B-24s “Flying Coffins.”

Afterward the bombardier refused to fly any more combat missions. He complained often of a bad back. The doctors couldn’t find any evidence of a soft-tissue injury, but who can argue with a guy with a bad back? When we talked I realized he’d just used that as an excuse to get out of the service. They finally had to send him home because he kept complaining.

Another time a bombardier from a different squadron got sick and they called me to take his place. I had some kind of flu and said, “I can’t do it. I’m in bed.” The third guy they called took the mission, and the plane flew into a mountain.

I recorded those and other unfortunate incidents in my war diary:

January 8, 1943

Reported to Operations for briefing at 8:05 A.M. Received report that Mozonett’s ship went down just after takeoff from Barking Sands on the island of Kauai. We’d gone out together on a rescue mission only a few weeks ago—his first as first pilot. This time, Major Coxwell was at the controls. Lt. Franklin, copilot. Lt. Seymore, navigator. Lt. Carringer, bombardier. Captain Hoyt, S-2 man (intelligence). The plane went into the drink just after takeoff. The rumors were that its fuel was a mixture of kerosene and the usual 100 octane gas. The plane was found submerged 20 yards offshore while we practice-bombed same area from 15,000 feet. All members of the crew dead. They took off for a mock raid on Pearl Harbor, at 25,000 feet. It was dark at the time and the other two ships in the formation—Lt. Nichols’s ship and Lt. Scholar’s ship, carrying Captain Lund—didn’t know about the fatality. Casualties: six officers and five enlisted men.

January 9, 1943

Up at 5:00 A.M. Briefing at 6:30. Took off on search mission at 7:00. Filthy weather out 700 miles and back. Saw nothing. Major Coxwell’s crack up brought the total ships lost to nine since arriving. Personnel lost: 53; 27 officers and 26 enlisted men.

Ship	Cause	Dead
1	4 motors stopped; forced landing	Navigator, bombardier
2	went down crossing Frisco to Oahu	10
3	motor afire, forced down Kahuku 424th	4
4	hit mountain in soup, take off wheeler 372nd	9
5	Blew up midair, 371st. Steel escaped	7
6	Mokoleia, in ditch, fell apart	0
7	Camera ship over Wake Island, hit by AA fire in wing and bomb bay tanks. Ran out gas 2hr short of Midway, went down	10
8	In drink on takeoff—Kerosene; Coxwell, Hoyt, Mozonett, Carringer, Seymore	11
9	nose wheel out	2

Later the full report came in. Unable to contact the tower, Major Coxwell had taken off downwind, only to crash two or three hundred yards after completing his turn. Several crew members got free of the plane, but while trying to swim to safety sharks and barracudas caught and literally ripped them to pieces. Two other ships, also unable to contact the tower, made it back by the skin of their teeth. We found a waterlogged paycheck for 400 dollars, belonging to Mozonett, on shore.

I KNEW THAT one day my crew might also end up in the ocean. Our squadron had already lost so many planes that not considering the possibility was just plain foolish. I had more than once nearly been among the dead.

When the bombardiers scheduled for two missions were unavailable, I volunteered. It wasn’t exactly bravery; after every three missions we’d get a day off, and I always wanted more free time. In each case the bombardier returned at the last minute and I stayed home, sorely disappointed until both planes met with disaster. The first, full of bombs, flew into Oahu’s central mountain ridge and exploded. The second crashed at sea.

I’d see planes crack up on landing and takeoff. Men would be at mess one day and not the next, and we’d never find their remains. Sometimes, when mixed crews—men from different crews put together into a new one after casualties—went on search missions, their unfamiliarity working with one another led to disaster.

Thirty minutes into one mission on Superman, Phil yelled, “Hey, Zamp, come up here! A motor quit. We can’t restart it and Douglass can’t find the problem. The gremlins are at it again. What do you think we should do?”

Gremlins were the imaginary elflike beings that supposedly trouble the crews of warplanes. They were usually associated with mechanical trouble, or failure, much like computer “bugs” are today.

Phil had asked for my help because I always seemed to have a fix. Primarily he was thinking of Lund, the operations officer, who took special delight in raking pilots over the coals for what he considered an improper decision. To put Phil at ease I said, “Go back to Kahuku.” We knew other guys who’d had a motor quit, but they were already at the point of no return so they finished their mission. We’d just started.

Phil said, “Lund will eat our asses out.” Lund was a mean son of a gun, but I could deal with him. “Go back,” I said. “I’ll handle Lund.”

Sure enough, Lund saw us from his office as we landed. He climbed into his jeep and raced out onto the tarmac. “What the hell are you guys doing back here?” he yelled.

I said, “We had a motor quit.”

“Other guys finish missions on one motor,” he insisted.

“Okay, Lund,” I said. “We’ll take off on three motors and finish the mission on three motors—if you’ll go with us.”

That brought him up short. “Well, let’s see now,” he said. “There’s, uh…uh…Okay, you can take ship number nine.”

I’d been bold because, hey, what could he do? It was war. They needed us. Would they lock me up? Send me home? Great—send me home! Bombers blew up, crews got lost at sea. War’s not glamorous. Send me home.

WHEN WE WEREN’T in the air I attended briefings and studied. I recall one lecture on emergency first aid for gunshot wounds, and bleeding control in general. Another covered offensive and defensive attacks against Zeroes. I took a class in meteorology and worked to perfect my instrument and compass skills. We practiced air-raid procedures and tear-gas alarms. I took skeet shooting at least once a week to learn to lead the target. The more I shot, the better chance I had of machine-gunning down a Zero. I also learned how to fly because Phil was promoted to first lieutenant and then let me log time at Superman’s controls to qualify as the third pilot.

Otherwise, I spent my spare time working out, playing tennis, seeing movies at the base theater and in Honolulu, hanging out at the officers’ club, reading every Ellery Queen mystery I could get my hands on, shopping whenever I picked up my paycheck, listening to music or the radio, fooling around with my buddies, going to parties, checking out the nurses, making friends around the islands, and writing home. I missed my family terribly. Fortunately, I hadn’t left a wife or girlfriend behind, so with no emotional strings I figured I should live it up while I could.

I also stayed in top shape and ran along Kahuku Beach. With the pleurisy gone I felt better than ever. On the airfield and at an exhibition meet in Honolulu I ran a 4:12 with ease. If I’d lost ten pounds I could have run even faster. In fact, I ran so well in Hawaii that I got invitations from New York promoters to run against Gunder Haag, the top European miler. However, General Hap Arnold refused to grant me permission. The way he explained it, I was in a special bomb unit. Due to our sometimes secret and experimental missions, I couldn’t leave the island.

IN MID-APRIL 1943, at Kahuku Air Base, we learned we were about to make a big raid Down Under; during the war this referred not to Australia and environs but to southern Pacific islands. On the morning of April 18 I got up early and ran a mile on the beach, then did five 50-yard sprints. I reported with my flight crew to the alert room for a briefing and learned that our next assignment would be one of the longest ever.

Our orders were to fly from Oahu southwest to Canton Island, just below the Equator, refuel, then head southwest again to Funafuti, in the Ellice Islands group (now known as Tuvalu) in the south-central Pacific. Takeoff was at 13:00 hours. We checked the ship from A to Z but never got off the ground. Phil taxied too far on the runway and buried our left wheel in the mud. For two hours we struggled to get free, then had to change ships. Our new plane, number 143, had no radar, no belly turret, and no nose turret.

We bounced through two storms on the way but arrived safely at Canton Island, gassed up, ate, and left for Funafuti, an island maybe eight hundred yards wide surrounded by a series of small islets and completely covered with coconut and other tropical trees. Funafuti is where rescuers brought World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker after his plane went down on an important mission from the States to General MacArthur in the Pacific, and he spent twenty-seven days adrift, fighting the elements. That was a long drift and I’d always been amazed that he’d survived.

Funafuti’s natives were primitive Micronesians who lived as they had for almost five hundred years. They spoke no English but managed to say hello in the usual way: “Halowa.” Girls and boys no older than five smoked cigarettes, reminding me of my youth. Funafuti had a great swimming beach, if you didn’t mind the occasional shark. I was curious to see more and toured the village. My big discovery: girls wore a cloth (a lawa lawa) around their bodies—and that’s all. That night the base theater featured Wives Under Suspicion with Warren William and Gail Patrick. Then a big storm blew in. We filled our canteens with ice water at the Reef and bunked down for the night in tents with dirt floors.

I ate a fair breakfast, then waited for a briefing at 13:00 hours. Meanwhile our own plane arrived, liberated from the mud, and we traded crews. I supervised loading bombs: three 500-pound demolitions and five fragmentation cluster bombs with six 30-pound frags on each.

At the briefing General Hale announced our target: Nauru Island, home to the world’s greatest concentration of phosphate. The Japanese sorely needed phosphate for fertilizer and explosives. Our orders were to fly west toward Guadalcanal, hang a sharp right, and come in on that heading to confuse the Japanese about our base location. Over Nauru the entire flight of twenty-six bombers would drop their payloads from eight thousand feet, at noon. We’d also maintain radio silence.

Some of us questioned the plan, since Nauru was heavily fortified with antiaircraft guns. We believed the flights should vary in altitude. I turned to Phil and said, “That’s a pretty low bomb run. All the Japs have to do is synchronize on the lead flight and we’ll all get hit.”

“Those are the general’s orders,” he said with a casual smile and a shrug. Phil didn’t fight unnecessary battles, but he had convinced me repeatedly on previous flights that he was one of the best pilots in our group. If Phil seemed relaxed, I wanted to relax, too.

The next morning we were up at 03:00 hours, ready and anxious. At 05:00 we took off, but just barely. Between Funafuti’s limited, 3,500-foot airstrip and our plane’s heavy load, bombs and fuel and a crew of ten, it was tough to get off the ground. We flew low, flicked the lagoon with our landing gear, but managed to climb.

Superman was the lead ship of E flight, of the 372nd squadron. Our navigator, Lieutenant Mitchell, gave us an ETA and finally announced the island was twenty minutes away, dead ahead. Then he squeezed into the nose turret, with its twin .50 caliber machine guns, his job now the same as the other gunners’: to ward off enemy fighters and provide the bombardier—me—with an uninterrupted run on the target. With my Norden bombsight wired to the automatic pilot, I assumed control of the plane with each aiming correction. I did my calculations, fed them into the bombsight, and focused on the drop.

Suddenly we entered a cloud of flak and antiaircraft fire. General Hale had, as I’d anticipated, made a mistake by having us all fly in at the same altitude. Puffs of black smoke dotted the sky around us—a dangerous situation. With bombs armed and ready, one hit in a vital spot would blow us to smithereens.

An explosion rocked the plane as antiaircraft fire shattered our right vertical stabilizer. Then below us the fragments of another antiaircraft burst hit the fuselage like hailstones on a tin roof and penetrated the underside. The ship yawed but I got my crosshairs back on target. I managed to drop my payload on the planes, structures, and antiaircraft batteries along the runway. I also had a free-choice target. Spotting a small building at the end of the runway that looked like a radio shack, I dropped my bomb, and much to my surprise and delight I hit the island’s fuel-supply depot. A cloud of smoke and fire billowed skyward. A photo of this was in Life magazine.

I looked out the greenhouse nose window and counted nine Zeroes in the air. Seven were nearby at ten o’clock. Three peeled off and headed our way. The first came dead ahead at one o’clock. He opened fire and Mitchell returned it, simultaneously. I heard a loud crack as a cannon shell from the Zero severed our turret power cables and whizzed past me, missing my face by inches. It continued through the Plexiglas window and lodged into the port wing between the number-one and number-two motors. Fortunately it failed to explode, saving the ship and crew from disintegrating into flaming fragments drifting lazily down into the sea.

But there was no time to speculate about miracles. Mitchell had scored a deadly hit just before the turret power went dead. Luckily, the Japanese pilot slumped forward against the stick and the plane dived beneath us and spun crazily to earth, sprouting a fiery crimson tail. Meanwhile, with no power to the turret, I had to physically extricate Mitchell.

I felt another explosion as Superman shook again. Over the intercom someone called for help. I crawled back to the flight deck and found our radioman, Sergeant Brooks, hanging from the narrow catwalk, over the open bomb-bay doors, with eight thousand feet between him and the ocean. The catwalk is seventeen feet long and only ten inches wide; traversing it in a moving airplane in good conditions is itself a high-wire act. It wasn’t meant to be a trapeze.

I will never forget Brooks’s pleading and bewildered eyes as he stared up at me. I grabbed him by the wrists, and thanks to my weight training and a burst of adrenaline, I soon had him on the flight deck just below the upper turret.

The bomb bay was covered with thick reddish purple oil, meaning that cannon fire had penetrated the area on the starboard side and knocked out our hydraulic system. That’s why the doors wouldn’t shut. I realized then that we wouldn’t be able to raise or lower our flaps or landing gear, either, except by hand. And our brakes wouldn’t work.

I manually shut the bomb-bay doors and attended to Brooks, who babbled incoherently. When I looked at his back I knew why. Shrapnel had penetrated his sheepskin jacket and his head, leaving him bloody to the waist. I gave him a shot of morphine, put an oxygen mask on his face, set it for ten thousand feet, and did what I could to stop the bleeding.

Another crash above me sounded like cannon fire hitting the radio compartment. Then I felt something wet and warm trickle down my neck. I looked up at Sergeant Pillsbury in the upper turret; the shells had crushed his foot and peppered his leg with shrapnel. Twelve inches lower, and the metal fragments would have caught me in the head, had I not been kneeling over Brooks. What was left of Pillsbury’s toes dangled through his shoe. Blood spurted and dripped down on me. But Pillsbury didn’t cry out in pain. Instead, he screamed angrily and swung his gun toward the Zero as it made another pass, then madly triggered his twin .50s. Flames spurted from the Nip’s cowling, and he slumped back. I followed his plunge until he hit the drink.

The Zero pilots were almost like kamikazes, coming in so close. They couldn’t miss us and we couldn’t miss them.

I grabbed a medical kit, gave Pillsbury a shot of morphine in the leg, put a sulfa drug on his foot, and bandaged him. Then another round of fire shook us severely and Phil almost lost control. It took all the strength and expertise he and his and copilot, Lieutenant C.H. Cupernell, had to keep us airborne as shells ripped into the B-24’s waist.

More cries for help arose after the burst that had hit Pillsbury also shot-locked the flight-deck door. I gave it a couple of mule kicks, and it gave way. I hurried down the catwalk, then stepped into the waist section again. I thought I’d seen the worst of our situation, but no. The carnage was stunning. Four airmen—Douglas, Lambert, Glassman, and third pilot Nelsen, were all torn flesh and exposed innards, a blood-spattered scene. Douglas and Glassman, though critically wounded, still manned their guns as a resolute Zero pilot made a very close return pass over the starboard side. Glassman caught him coming in, and Douglas nailed his aft end as he passed over. The Zero went into a long spiral and then straight down as he entered Davy Jones’s locker. Thank God this was the last Zero. One more hit and we’d have joined them.

It seemed to me then that our battle with the three Zeroes had taken an hour, but in reality it probably took less than ten minutes. It was a fast-running game of staying focused on staying alive.

Staying alive…I had too many wounded men to take care of myself. I called Phil on the intercom and said, “This is more than I can handle. I need help.”

“I need Cup here to keep the plane from stalling,” he replied.

“This is important,” I shouted, and described the situation. Phil said he’d use his knees as well as his hands on the yoke to stabilize the plane, and Cupernell came aft. His eyes widened with disbelief as he took in the blood and guts, but he immediately tended to a lieutenant lying on the deck with his stomach ripped open. He was our extra passenger who had asked to come along to “see the fun.”

“Is he dead?” I asked.

“Not yet,” said Cupernell. He worked on Douglas’s leg while I treated Nelsen’s ripped stomach. We stripped clothes off the other wounded and gave morphine and sulfanilamide. Seeing my buddies like that was a shock, but I was well trained. I buried my feelings.

AT THE BRIEFING prior to takeoff, the S-2 officer said that if it looked like we might not make it back, to remember the submarine Drum would be twenty miles from Nauru on our return heading in case we had to ditch. But we were already well beyond the 20-mile mark, with 730 to go. Phil and Cup finally had the plane under control, erratically, but with the Pratt & Whitney motors still humming we decided to make straight for home.

I assessed the damage. The right vertical fin was shattered. The hydraulic system, radio, and nose turret were out. My immediate concern was a hit that severed all but one strand of rudder and elevator control wires on the right side of the plane. Thanks to my limited sailing experience, with the arming wire from the bomb rack I was able to splice the strands together. It was crude, but it did the job.

Mitchell focused solely on getting us back to Funafuti and was oblivious to our situation until he confirmed our ETA. Later, he felt bad about not being able to contribute during our medical emergency.

Witnessing the men who suffered the worst of it, I have never seen such courage. I can’t remember the wounded screaming with pain—and not because the noise of battle was so fierce. They stuck to their guns and simply accepted their bloody wounds. It was as if they were saying, “You can hit me, but you can’t make me cry.” I liked that sentiment; it had always been my own. I believe they took comfort in knowing that our counteroffensive had cost the Zeroes dearly. Looking at each of their sober faces, I said, “You guys got all three Japs, and I confirmed the kills.” They managed satisfied grins.

EVEN IF WE made it back to Funafuti, I didn’t know how we could land. The flaps, wheels, and brakes depended on the now destroyed hydraulic system. As a backup, we were able to hand-crank the flaps and put the wheels down. But the brakes were another matter. It seemed obvious to me that given such a short and narrow runway—less than a mile long—we’d plunge off the strip and into the ocean. This was a serious situation, the six critically injured men aboard notwithstanding.

I pumped the wheels down by hand, hoping they locked, and left the flaps for last because if I cranked them down first, I couldn’t see whether the wheels were locked in place. I also opened the bomb-bay door, hoping the drag might slow us a bit more.

Next I turned my attention to the problem of stopping. For brakes, I rigged up two parachutes, one at each waist window. As we touched down I planned to pull both rip cords together and pray that my jury-rigged air brakes would do the job. I also worked it out so that I could stand in the middle and turn the plane by controlling the left and right chutes. It was makeshift and crazy.

Mitchell gave us twenty minutes to Funafuti. Phil worried aloud about the ship porpoising on a normal descent to touchdown and crashing, so he decided to come in low and flat. Even with extra speed I was sure my parachute brakes would work.

I also tied parachute cords around each airman and a secure part of the plane. Rather than make a knot that would tighten on impact and be next to impossible to untie, I simply looped the cord and gave each man an end. They’d be secure yet could free themselves easily.

Finally, the moment of truth arrived. Our wheels hit the blacktop and the plane grumbled and creaked. Suddenly it ground-looped, spinning us off the runway to the left and right at another B-24 coming our way. After all we’d gone through, would it end with two 4-engine bombers smashing into each other on the tarmac?

Cupernell instinctively hit the right pedal, even though he knew we didn’t have any brakes. There was just enough fluid in the well to cause the wheel to momentarily lock, swinging us ninety degrees to the right. Seems the cannon fire that had narrowly missed my face had also entered the left tire and flattened it, which had caused the ground loop and cleared us of the runway.

We stopped.

HOW EERIE THE sudden silence. I jumped out and gave the cross signal, and the marines raced out to help us. One marine was way out in front of the others, and when we came face to face I shouted, “Art!” and he shouted, “Louie!” It was Art Redding, a USC champion half-miler and pilot. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked. (Later, poor Art crashed off Funafuti and was eaten by a shark.) We hurried to evacuate the injured, but the marines, graciously, would not allow me to help. I went ahead to meet the doctor. He introduced himself as Dr. Roberts, which was an odd coincidence since I’d taken my first advanced first-aid course at USC from another Dr. Roberts.

Wanting to be with my crew, I asked Roberts if I could help. He said, “From what I’m looking at I can use all the help I can get.”

Ambulances hauled seven men to the hospital for emergency operations. Afterward the doctor said, “If it wasn’t for the proper medical care you gave the injured, three would have died. You saved two, and the copilot saved another.”

Later, Phil and Cup attended the briefing where Brigadier General Landon and Major General Hale evaluated the mission’s success. They discussed the tragedies that struck our first flight over the target. They knew we’d encountered fierce opposition. We were in the lead flight because, as in the marines, the best go first. We spearheaded the raid to knock out enemy antiaircraft nests and Zero fighters, thus paving the way for the trailing flights and providing them with uninterrupted bomb runs on the phosphate factories. It was months before they’d be able to resume production. What’s more, the Japanese had been duped into sending out their available fighters against our flight, leaving the coast clear for the rest to shuttle in and out of the target area at will. We heard that there was scant antiaircraft fire to bother the later flights, and only two Zeroes, which, seeing their heavy losses, decided not to mix it up.

Both generals credited Phillips and Cupernell with a miraculous performance in bringing the badly damaged Superman back without a crash, and on April 21 they said so to Charles Arnot, the war correspondent for the Honolulu Advertiser. General Hale then came to the hospital to pin the Palm Leaf on our wounded crew members.

Our B-24 was put on display, the center of attention. The marines and airmen swarmed around counting cannon and bullet holes. General Hale said we had the worst-shot-up B-24 that ever limped back to the base: 4 cannon holes, 2 heavy antiaircraft hits, 500 shrapnel holes, and 150 7.7-millimeter bullet holes. The nose and upper turrets were useless. The right tail was gone. We had truly made it on a wing and prayer.

I went to General Hale to give him a breakdown of our mission. I told him of Phillips’s and Cupernell’s skill and courage. I told him of the gunners who had delayed medical attention to keep on shooting. I recommended a commendation for these men, but the general didn’t seem to be listening, so I stopped talking and went back to the hospital.

Arnot had just returned from checking out the damage to Superman and found me there. He asked how it felt when I was faced with the task of patching up the wounded. I said, “It was the toughest race of my life.”

In the interview I gave Arnot and a marine major, who was also a pilot, a blow-by-blow description of our engagement with the enemy. The major said, “After examining your bomber and from what I saw in the hospital, I would say that besides a batch of Purple Hearts, your crew most certainly earned the Distinguished Flying Cross.”

Like all flyers, I knew the Cross stood for “heroism and extraordinary achievement in aerial flight,” but I said, “Just being able to help is reward enough for me.”

Just then Dr. Roberts came in and said, “Lieutenant Zamperini, your radioman, Brooks, just died.” Sad. Mentally, physically, and now emotionally worn out, I went to my tent and fell asleep.

I SLIPPED INTO my bunk that night not knowing that one of our pilots had panicked during the mission and broken radio silence. He’d called Command to ask, “Should we take the heading back to Guadalcanal?”—which we were supposed to do before cutting over to our real destination—“Or shall we go directly back to Funafuti?”

About one in the morning I awoke to the sound of aircraft overhead. I thought, Well, somebody’s coming in from the States. Wrong. The Japanese had intercepted the pilot’s radio transmission and learned our location. We had no warning because the marines, evidently, had not been fully alert and had not picked up the planes on their radar. Or maybe, like me, they thought they were friendly.

Explosions started at the far end of the island as Sally or Betty bombers, or both, pattern-bombed our installation. The attack continued for ninety minutes and did considerable damage. Every airman in my tent immediately and spontaneously dashed for cover, no matter that it was raining and we were clad only in our briefs. We tumbled into an air-raid shelter dug under a native hut and jammed in like sardines, our hearts pounding. Someone landed on top of me. Just then—boom—a mortar hit and blew my tent and the war correspondents’ tent to kingdom come. Later I found a reporter huddled over his mangled typewriter mourning it as if it were a close friend.

More damage. During the first pass, a frag bomb ripped an army truck to pieces and mangled three men from the 371st to ribbons. On the second pass the church took a direct hit. Fortunately we had evacuated two minutes earlier and also told the natives to hide in foxholes. Three died when they didn’t get inside far enough. On the third pass they killed more soldiers. On the fourth pass we took direct hits on two B-24s, each fully gassed and stocked with bombs. Later we found landing gear and motors four hundred yards away.

The Japanese laid tiny Funafuti to waste and got us good, ruining several planes, demolishing the personnel area, and filling our makeshift hospital with dead and dying. I went to the field hospital again to help Dr. Roberts.

The next day we remained on alert, waiting for the Japanese to return. They didn’t. Eventually the commander ordered incomplete crews and those without ships but fit for combat to fly back to Canton. Those still in good shape flew to Tarawa to retaliate.

The day after that we left Canton for Palmyra, a beautiful island of palm trees and coral eight hundred miles south of Hawaii that served as a navy and marine base. It was gorgeous and almost like another world after what we’d been through. (Years later, former Los Angeles district attorney Vincent Bugliosi would write about a murder that happened there in And the Sea Shall Tell.) I ran into a few fellows from USC, and spent some time at the officers’ club. They also had a swell theater. I saw They Died with Their Boots On, starring Errol Flynn, had a few beers, took a hot shower, and went to sleep glad I was alive and that my boots were under the bed.

FOR SOME REASON, when General Hale submitted his report of our mission to headquarters in Hawaii he wrote that the destruction had been very light. It wasn’t true and it made me mad. Half our planes were hit, ours the worst. And though everyone made it back to Funafuti, we lost ships there on the ground when the Japanese retaliated. I still have pictures that show the total devastation. Few of our B-24s could be salvaged. Caught in their bunkers, they exploded and left holes thirty feet deep and eighty feet across.

Of course, Hale never recommended Distinguished Flying Crosses for Superman’s crew. I credit this omission to a lack of communication between General Hale and myself. I believe the trouble started shortly after I arrived in Hawaii. After any raid, the press would interview the commanding officer; if I was on the mission they’d also talk to me, the famous Olympian. Sometimes our stories didn’t exactly jibe; more often my picture appeared instead of General Hale’s. I’m convinced he resented that, but the press was right. You had to talk to the soldier on the front line to get the story. As General Colin Powell has said, “In battle, to get the real dirt, head for the trenches.” Of course, it’s not the whole story; no one plane or infantryman can see the whole picture. You’re so focused on your job and staying alive that you are usually unaware of what anyone else is doing. That’s why we had debriefings. Every man would tell his story, and the commanding officer and his staff would put the pieces together.

When General Hale put the pieces of the Nauru raid together, he didn’t present all the facts, as far as I’m concerned, and our crew, which to my mind and others’ had more than earned a Distinguished Flying Cross, was passed over. As far as the history of World War II is concerned, I am sure that there were as many discrepancies as with history in general. As Will and Ariel Durant have written, “Most history is guessing, the rest is prejudice.” Still, I got mad and sick to my stomach when I read what General Hale said: “One plane got hit.” My crew just said, “Tell him to shove it. We don’t want any medals. Not when they give them away indiscriminately to some people and then, when people really earn it, they aren’t recognized. It’s a farce. Think of all the guys who should have had medals and didn’t get them. They’re dead.”

I had to agree. In the end a medal doesn’t mean a hill of beans. We all know what we did.

BECAUSE DANGER AND death were all around, I did what I could to distract myself. A time-honored way was to needle crewmates, or get back at them for needling you.

At Kahuku we lived in a barracks with a room on each end. A crew that didn’t return left one unoccupied, so I took it. It came with an icebox that had three shelves. I gave a shelf to Phil and one to Cupernell. Whenever I’d get a ration of beer I’d put it on my shelf. But too often I’d find my beer gone. All of it. At first it was kind of funny, but we only got a small ration of beer and the joke quickly wore off. I decided to get even.

One morning we were supposed to report to our ship to swing the compass. That meant taking off and following various headings to check their accuracy with the navigator. They did not require me on the run, but I showed up before Phil and Cupernell got there. While the ground crew prepped the plane, I walked around the ship, chewing a big mouthful of gum, like I was in the midst of a preflight inspection. Working my way to the nose, I found the two small holes I wanted: drain openings for hoses in the cockpit that connected to the pilot relief tubes; in other words, funnels into which the pilot and copilot peed while flying. The urine ran down the hoses, and the wind sucked it out.

I plugged both holes with gum.

When the crew reported for duty, I got on the ship with everybody else. I went to my post in the bomb bay, and we taxied to the end of the runway for takeoff.

Procedure calls for closing the bomb-bay doors just prior to hitting the gas. Before the doors shut I dropped onto the tarmac and dashed off the runway. It’s a big ship inside and nobody missed me. Phil took off assuming I was onboard. Instead, I headed for Honolulu.

Later the engineer gave me a blow-by-blow description of all the fun I’d missed. When Phil had to urinate he used his funnel. Instead of emptying, it filled to the brim. Phil needed one hand to balance the funnel so it didn’t spill. He couldn’t figure out the problem, so he called the engineer, who decided to pour the excess into the copilot’s funnel. Cupernell didn’t mind, but first he wanted to take his leak. When his funnel filled as well, no one could believe it. Two malfunctions simultaneously?

There they were, balancing their funnels and trying to fly.

The first bit of air turbulence was the coup de grâce.

Phil and Cupernell landed, soaked. The engineer went under the ship, found the gum, and scooped it out. Then they came looking for me, but I was already gone. Phil, who called me Zamp unless he was mad, kept hollering, “Where’s Zamperini?” He figured I had to be nearby, but I stayed in Honolulu for a couple of days.

When I got back they were still uptight. I treated their complaints casually. “Hey, no use getting sore about it,” I said. “After all, I gave you a lesson, a hands-on experiment, in the laws of physics: liquid seeks its own level. Just like my beer.”

They looked at me, puzzled, then half grinned. My punishment was to pay for a few beers, after which they felt much better, and my rations never disappeared again.

I STILL WANTED my revenge for the carpet bombing on Funafuti, and I found it during a raid on Tarawa. Operating out of Canton Island in the South Pacific, we were on a secret two-plane photoreconnaissance and bombing mission covering the Marshall Islands. The squadron commander had two specific targets in mind: Tarawa on the first mission, Makin on the second. Tarawa was covered with broken clouds, which prevented photographs and bombing. We flew in circles, hoping to find an opening, until our engineer reported the fuel supply dangerously low. We had also lost sight of our lead plane. Cupernell said, “I’ll bet that damn colonel headed back without telling us.” Just then a stern voice came over the radio. “I heard that, Cupernell,” the colonel said. “Salvo your bombs and head for home.”

I prepared to dump all six of my 500-pound bombs when I spotted a “necessary” military installation at one end of Tarawa. Just offshore six thatched-roof outhouses on stilts graced the lagoon. The entire crew was behind me: these structures must be laid to waste. As a master bombardier, I coolly commanded the skills of my trade. I peered through my Norden bombsight, lined up the crosshairs, and let go. The result was a direct hit of memorable and messy proportions.

Flush with victory, we made a beeline for Canton. But the engineer had some bad news: we might not make it back. Howland Island, the destination that Amelia Earhart had failed to reach, was nearby, so we had two choices. Plan A: try for a night water landing just off Howland. Plan B: jettison some heavy gear, move the crew forward, throttle back, and take our chances. B-24s were totally vulnerable and not at all graceful during water landings, even on a smooth sea. If we put down and anyone was injured or died, the blood in the water would attract the sharks.

We opted for plan B and trusted our navigator to find Canton, a mere speck in the sea. When we spotted it through the clouds and landed, sputtering, the last of our fuel spent, everyone had smiles and congratulations for Mitchell, who’d gotten us home.

That evening the P-39 marine pilots based on Canton treated us to beer at the “officers’ club”—a Quonset hut covered with coral. Scrawled on the front door—and in all the toilet stalls—was the signature of a character legendary throughout the Pacific theater: KILROY WAS HERE.

Luckily, even in the face of incredible and persistent danger, we were, too.