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

time that Louie had known Mac, the tail gunner had struck him as a decent, friendly guy, although a bit of a reveler, confident to the point of flippancy. The crash had undone him. Louie knew that they couldn’t survive for long without food, but he quelled the thought. A rescue search was surely under way. They’d be on Palmyra later today, maybe tomorrow, and the loss of the chocolate wouldn’t matter. Curbing his irritation, Louie told Mac that he was disappointed in him. Understanding that Mac had acted in panic, he reassured him that they’d soon be rescued. Mac said nothing.
    The chill of the night gave way to a sweltering day. Louie watchedthe sky. Phil, weak from blood loss, slept. Mac, a shade short of being a redhead, burned in the sun. He remained in a dreamy, distant place. All three men were hungry, but they could do nothing about it. The fishhooks and line were useless. There was no bait.
    As the men lay in silence, a purring sound began drifting gently between their thoughts. Then all three realized that they were hearing a plane. Searching the sky, they saw a B-25, high up and well to the east. Flying much too high to be a search plane, it was probably on its way to Palmyra.
    Louie lunged for the raft pocket, retrieved the flare gun, and loaded a flare cartridge. He couldn’t stand in the soft-bottomed raft, so he tipped up onto his knees and raised the gun. He squeezed the trigger, the gun bucked in his hand, and the flare, roaring red, streaked up. As it shot overhead, Louie dug out a dye pack and shook it hurriedly into the water, and a pool of vivid greenish yellow bloomed over the ocean.
    With the flare arcing over them, Louie, Phil, and Mac watched the bomber, willing the men aboard to see them. Slowly, the flare sputtered out. The bomber kept going, and then it was gone. The circle of color around the rafts faded away.
    The sighting left the castaways with one important piece of information. They had known that they were drifting, but without points of reference, they hadn’t known in which direction, or how fast. Since planes on the north-south passage from Hawaii followed a flight lane that ran close to
Green Hornet
’s crash site, the appearance of a B-25 far to the east almost certainly meant that the rafts were drifting west, away from the view of friendly planes. Their chances of rescue were already dimming.
    That evening, the search planes turned back for their bases. No one had seen anything. They would be back in the air at first light.
    Over the rafts, the daylight died. The men took sips of water, bailed seawater around themselves, and lay down. The sharks came to the rafts again to rub their backs on the undersides.
    ——

    Phil slept for most of the next day. Louie sipped water and thought about food. Mac continued to hunker down, speaking little. For another day, rescue did not come.
    It was sometime early the next morning, May 30, when Louie, Mac, and Phil heard a broad, deep rumble of B-24 engines, the sound of home. Then there it was, low and right overhead, a blunt-faced whaleof a plane, heading southeast, plowing through the clouds, disappearing and reappearing. It was a search plane. It was so near the rafts that Louie thought he recognized the insignia of their squadron, the 42nd, on the plane’s tail.
    Louie grabbed the flare gun, loaded it, and fired. The flare shot straight at the bomber; for a moment, the men thought that it would hit the plane. But the flare missed, passing alongside the plane, making a fountain of red that looked huge from the raft. Louie reloaded and fired again. The plane turned sharply right. Louie fired two more flares, past the tail.
    The plane was
Daisy Mae
. Its crewmen were straining their eyes at the ocean, passing a pair of binoculars between them. Searching was difficult that day, with loaves of clouds closing and parting, offering the men only brief glimpses of the sea. Everyone felt a particular urgency; the missing men were their squadron mates and friends. “If we ever looked for something on a mission,” remembered Scearce, “that day we were looking.”
    The flares spent themselves, and
Daisy Mae
flew on. No one aboard saw anything. The plane’s pivot had only been a routine turn. Louie, Phil, and Mac watched
Daisy Mae
’s twin tails grow smaller in the distance, then disappear.
    For a moment, Louie felt furious with the airmen who had passed so close to them, yet had not seen them. But his anger soon cooled. From his