Eddie Rickenbacker and Six Other People Survive a B-17 Crash and Three Weeks Lost in the Pacific Ocean

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The last two oranges by then had begun to deteriorate because of the salt water, so the men had the third one on the fifth day and the last one a day later. Soon after the last of the fruit was gone, the men’s mood became deeply somber. At that point it seemed they would need a miracle to save them. They held prayer meetings and sang hymns to keep their spirits up. On the eighth day, events took a dramatic turn. After the afternoon prayer service, Rickenbacker was lying on his back with his hat pulled down over his face when something landed on it — a sea gull. Rickenbacker slowly reached up, clamped his fingers around the gull’s legs and held on tight, then wrung its neck and stripped its feathers. He carved it up, divided the meat into equal shares and kept the intestines for bait. It did not matter to the men that the meat was raw and tough and tasted fishy. They ate all of it, including the bones.

When Cherry used the bait on a hook, a small mackerel grabbed on almost immediately. Rickenbacker then hooked a small sea bass. They ate one of the fish that afternoon and the other the next day. That cool, wet meat helped abate the men’s water craving. Spirits soared, and they began to believe they might manage to survive indefinitely with the abundance of fish, which had suddenly become easy prey.

Late that same afternoon the sky turned cloudy, the wind took on a different feel, and for the first time the prospects for rain looked promising. The men tried to remain awake after dark so they would be ready. It became so dark they could hardly keep track of the rafts. About 3 a.m. raindrops fell for a few minutes, and they spotted a squall not far away. They paddled toward it, praying they could get in its path. There was already a plan in place for such an occasion: They would catch rain on handkerchiefs, shirts and socks spread out over the rafts — Adamson even removed his shorts. The squall turned into a driving rainstorm, and all hands did what they could to collect water. Rickenbacker was designated his raft’s wringer; as the clothing became soaked, he twisted the water into a bucket.

After the storm subsided, the men agreed to ration the water sparingly: a half-jigger per day per man. It was the sweetest water they had ever tasted. The rain had also drenched their bodies and sores, cleansing much of the salt brine that had collected. However, Kaczmarczyk’s condition continued to deteriorate. Adamson, too, was suffering more and more, and Reynolds began to fade.

The winds suddenly grew much stronger, tossing the rafts around like so many corks and causing them to bump into each other, frequently drenching the men with the cold water. Rickenbacker asked Bartek to change boats with Kaczmarczyk so that Rickenbacker could hold the sergeant tight to help keep him warm. It seemed to help; Kaczmarczyk stopped shivering and began to sleep.

A couple of days later, Kaczmarczyk asked to rejoin De Angelis. Several men assisted in the transfer, realizing that the end was near for the young man. During the early morning hours of the 13th day he heaved a long sigh — his last breath. Upon Rickenbacker’s insistence, the group waited until daylight before making a final decision, to be absolutely certain he was gone. They removed Kaczmarczyk’s wallet and identification tag and then rolled his body over the side. It disappeared after a few minutes.

When all the drinking water was gone, their thirst became more and more intense. The men even experimented with saving their urine, hoping the heat and air would somehow distill it enough so that they could drink it. That did not work. It had been three days by then since they had finished off the fish. Sharks were always present in large numbers, swimming so close that they were continually bumping into the boats. Cherry caught a baby shark, stabbed it, cut it into small pieces and passed it around to the men. But the meat turned out to be tough and too smelly to eat. They tried curing it in the sun and everything else they could think of, but nothing worked. Even starving men had limits on what they would eat. The seawater, meanwhile, continued to take its toll. All the men suffered from salt sores that began with a rash affecting their legs, thighs and bottoms. Watches stopped working, the compass needle froze. Rickenbacker’s secret orders from Stimson faded out, and his map stuck together at the folds. Most of the items were of little use, however, because no one knew where they were, and time seemed irrelevant.

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