Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

after takeoff, so it could have been anywhere. Whatever his reason, he told Phil to follow a heading of 208 and search to a point parallel to Palmyra. He gave Deasy roughly the same instruction but directed him to a slightly different area. Both crews were told to search all day, land at Palmyra, then resume searching the next day, if necessary.
    As they prepared for takeoff, everyone on Phil’s crew worried about
Green Hornet
. Louie tried to reassure himself that without bombs or ammunition aboard, the plane should have enough power to stay airborne. Phil was concerned that he’d never been in this plane and didn’t know its quirks. He knew that it had been cannibalized, and he hoped that critical parts weren’t missing. The crew reviewed crash procedures and made a special inspection to be sure that the survival equipment was aboard. There was a provisions box in the plane, and retrieving this was the tail gunner’s responsibility. There was also an extra raft, stored in a yellow bag on the flight deck. This raft was Louie’s responsibility, and he checked to be sure it was there. He put on his Mae West, as did some other crewmen. Phil left his off, perhaps because it was difficult to fly with it on.
    At the last moment, an enlisted man ran to the plane and asked if he could hitch a ride to Palmyra. There were no objections, and the man found a seat in the back. With the addition of the enlisted man, there were eleven on board.

    Green Hornet. Courtesy of Louis Zamperini

    As Phil and Cuppernell turned the plane up the taxiway, Louie remembered his letter to Payton Jordan. He fished it from his pocket, leaned from the waist window, and tossed it to a ground crewman, who said he’d mail it for him.
    ——

    Daisy Mae
lifted off at almost the same time as
Green Hornet
, and the planes flew side by side. On
Green Hornet
, other than the four
Super Man
veterans, the crewmen were strangers and had little to say to one another. Louie passed the time on the flight deck, chatting with Phil and Cuppernell.
    Green Hornet
, true to form, flew with its tail well below its nose, and couldn’t keep up with
Daisy Mae
. After about two hundred miles, Phil radioed to Deasy to go on without him. The crews lost sight of each other.
    Sometime around two P.M. ,
Green Hornet
reached the search area,about 225 miles north of Palmyra. Clouds pressed around the plane, and no one could see the water. Phil dropped the plane under the clouds, leveling off at eight hundred feet. Louie took out his binoculars, descended to the greenhouse, and began scanning. Phil’s voice soon crackled over the interphone, asking him to come up and pass the binoculars around. Louie did as told, then remained on the flight deck, just behind Phil and Cuppernell.
    While they searched the ocean, Cuppernell asked Phil if he could switch seats with him, taking over the first pilot’s duties. This was a common practice, enabling copilots to gain experience to qualify as first pilots. Phil assented. The enormous Cuppernell squeezed around Phil and into the left seat as Phil moved to the right. Cuppernell began steering the plane.
    A few minutes later, someone noticed that the engines on one side were burning more fuel than those on the other, making one side progressively lighter. They began transferring fuel across the wings to even out the load.
    Suddenly, there was a shudder. Louie looked at the tachometer and saw that the RPMs on engine No. 1—on the far left—were falling. He looked out the window. The engine was shaking violently. Then it stopped. The bomber tipped left and began dropping rapidly toward the ocean.
    Phil and Cuppernell had only seconds to save the plane. They began working rapidly, but Louie had the sense that they were disoriented by their seat swap. To minimize drag from the dead No. 1 engine, they needed to “feather” it—turn the dead propeller blades parallel to the wind and stop the propeller’s rotation. Normally, this was Cuppernell’s job, but now he was in the pilot’s seat. As he worked, Cuppernell shouted to the new engineer to come to the cockpit to feather the engine. It is unknown if he or anyone else specified which engine needed feathering. It was a critical piece of information; because a dead engine’s propeller continues turning in the wind, it can look just like a running engine.
    On the control panel, there were four feathering buttons, one foreach engine, covered by a plastic shield. Leaning between