Devil at My Heels - Louis Zamperini [40]
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.
5
PREPARE TO CRASH
May 27, 1943
Been fixing up our new living quarters, a house only 80 feet from the beach. Stove, icebox, even a private bathroom. Moving in not a moment too soon: a quart was stolen from under my pillow last night.
Got a call from operations that a B-25 has gone down in the ocean 200 miles north of Palmyra. We’re the only crew left on the base, but Superman is in for repair. Phil went ahead and volunteered us for the rescue mission anyway.
The only available ship was a “musher” called the Green Hornet. A musher flies with her tail down and can’t get off the ground with a bomb load. Our engineers had checked it from nose to stern more than once and promised it was exactly like all our other B-24s: it should fly right; it just didn’t. No matter. We’d stripped many of its parts to use on other planes, so we mostly flew the Green Hornet on the cabbage run, meaning we’d take it to the main island of Hawaii to pick up lettuce, fresh vegetables, steaks, and stuff like that. Very occasionally it went on search missions.
Our crew of ten, after the Nauru raid injuries, was Russell A. Phillips, Otto Anderson, Leslie Deane, Frank Glassman, Jay Hansen, Francis McNamara, Michael Walsh, C. H. Cupernell, Robert Mitchell, and me. We were