Lost at Sea by John Wukovits

Author:John Wukovits [Wukovits, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-05-16T00:00:00+00:00

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On the ocean surface below, the seven men had just swallowed their evening ration for November 7. After another scorching day, they sat silently in their rafts, waiting for another tedious evening that preluded a long, shivering night. Suddenly Captain Cherry stood up, scanned the horizon, and shouted, “I hear an engine! I hear an engine! Hear it?”[1]

The men squinted into the distance, hoping that the captain was not hallucinating, and heard a deep roar. Within seconds, Rickenbacker and Cherry spotted a single-engine pontoon scout plane, similar to a Navy Kingfisher, silhouetted five miles out against a low cloud bank to the west. They could not determine whether it was American or Japanese, but by this stage, survival, not the nationality of the pilot who rescued them, mattered more. However, they realized that if American aircraft plucked them from the ocean, their worries would end, but if the rescuers were Japanese, the seven men would simply replace their oceanic penitentiary for a prisoner of war camp.

The seven survivors madly wave and shout at the scout plane that flew in the distance. When the aircraft continued on without sighting the group, Eddie Rickenbacker chastised the demoralized men and told them that if one plane had come along, others would, too.

Drawing courtesy of Dutton

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