by Lynn Vincent
“Roger that.”
Atteberry knew the rules against such an operation. An open-sea landing was little more than a controlled crash into the backside of a wave. A Dumbo was designed with sufficient buoyancy to remain on the surface, but it had no pontoons or floats on which to land. Instead, the plane landed in the water on its belly. This model weighed fifteen tons, and initial contact with the water was always violent, usually popping rivets, or worse, opening seams in the hull. At stall speed and with near-zero lift, the pilot had little control of the aircraft after first impact. Sometimes it took the strength of both pilots to hold the cockpit control column fully back in order to keep the plane from pitching over nose first and diving toward the bottom.
But like Marks’s crew, Atteberry had seen the plight of the men in the water. He also knew that no ships would arrive until at least midnight. He could see that there were many survivors who wouldn’t last that long. Atteberry agreed to orbit above Marks and help him find a spot to land where his crew could help the most survivors.
Circling in the Dumbo, Marks and Lefkowitz assessed the conditions: The wind was due north, with swells a dozen feet high. Marks transmitted the news to Peleliu:
WILL ATTEMPT OPEN-SEA LANDING. P.V. CIRCLING THE AREA.
This time, the message arrowed straight to his squadron skipper, who, without benefit of Marks’s previous message, blustered and raved, wanting to know what sort of fool stunt Marks thought he was up to. Everyone in the Dumbo squadrons viewed an attempt to land on the open sea as an event that merited equal measures of cursing and prayer. The word “attempt,” though, was to Adrian Marks an almost foreign concept. There was little he had tried in life that he had not achieved. It did not matter to him that open-sea landings were against regulations, nor that he had never even practiced one. Men in the water were dying, and he was in a position to save them. He dared the ocean to defy him.
In the belly of the Dumbo, Marks’s crew strapped themselves in tight. This was going to be dicey.
Just after 5 p.m., against a lowering sun, Marks drew on everything he knew and every ounce of courage he had. He executed a power stall into the wind and slammed his airplane belly first into the back of a huge swell. The Dumbo’s hull screeched in fury, emitting all the sounds of an accident. The crew pitched forward, safety harnesses crushing their chests. The ocean rejected the plane, batting it fifteen feet back into the air. Marks and Lefkowitz rocked aft, heads whiplashed against their seatbacks. The propellers roared in protest, and for a moment the plane hung suspended over the whitecaps.
Fighting physics, Marks gripped the control column with both hands. The Dumbo’s belly smashed into the wave and it bounced again—but not as high this time. Marks wrestled the controls, willing the plane to obey. Finally, the Dumbo breached the swell’s shining skin. Blue water sprayed up over the cockpit windshield and slid away again as the sea gave way grudgingly, as though surrendering to an invasion. Playmate 2 settled into the ocean, rivets popping from her hull. In the rear of the plane, the crew looked at each other and exhaled. They were still alive.
The sun dipped lower, painting the water with fire. No one wasted time. Marks’s navigator, Ensign Hensley, assessed the damage. Seawater squirted into the cabin through open seams and showered down through cracks in the overhead hatches. Inverted showers spouted up through the rivet holes and seams below. Hensley worked with the plane captain to stuff pencils and cotton into the voids. Water streamed into the radio compartment at a slow but steady rate. They couldn’t stop the leak, so Hensley set up a bailing rotation that would ultimately produce about a dozen buckets per hour.
Lefkowitz went aft to organize the rescue party while Marks remained in the cockpit, the Dumbo undulating underneath him like a pelican riding swells. Over the radio, he and Atteberry talked out a plan. They agreed that the men in groups, even those with only life jackets, stood a better chance of surviving the night than those who were floating alone. They decided that Marks should water-taxi near the lone swimmers and pull them aboard. They did not know that every man in the water had been there for more than four days.
Since Marks could not see over the twelve-foot swells, Atteberry circled overhead to guide him. The operation was halting at first. Hensley stood in the open hatch on the starboard side of the plane, with the boarding ladder lowered. When Marks taxied near a survivor, Hensley threw out a life ring with a line attached to it. But the men in the water were so weak that few could hold on to the ring as the taxiing plane dragged it by. When they did manage to hold on, they could not climb the ladder by themselves.
Hensley was not a big man, but he had wrestled in college and rippled with muscle. He hoisted each man aboard using brute strength. The first man he pulled aboard was James Smith, a seaman second who had been serving his time in the brig—with five days’ bread and water—up until a few short hours before the ship sank. Hungry, tired, and sick of what he’d witnessed over the past four and a half days, he pushed his way toward the plane and made sure Marks didn’t pass him by. But once aboard, the crew didn’t have time to find out who he was or what ship had sunk before Smith passed out.
• • •
John Woolston saw the plane in the water, shed his leaden life jacket, stretched out his arms, and swam toward his future. When the plane was just a few yards away, he saw a life ring sail from an open door and hit the water nearby. Woolston reached out to grab it, but missed and the ring floated away. He had overestimated his strength. Now, without the jacket, he was barely staying afloat. If he couldn’t make the plane, he was finished. Weakly, Woolston treaded water, and the next thing he knew, he was airborne. Hensley had reached down from the open hatch, scooped Woolston from the drink, and pitched him over his head into the cargo bay like a sack of flour.
As the rescue proceeded, the airmen were shocked at the condition of the survivors: They were emaciated and blistered, broken-limbed and burned to the bone, some missing whole sections of skin. Many screamed in agony when Hensley grabbed their arms to haul them aboard. Marks wagered that many of them would not have survived another night.
He was astonished when some of the survivors said they were from USS Indianapolis, and that they’d been sunk just after midnight on July 30. This was August 2. How was it possible that no one had known Indianapolis was missing?
Marks was still in contact with Doyle, but he didn’t dare blurt out over the radio that Indianapolis had been sunk. He also did not have time to code a message about the survivors’ identity. There were still too many men in the water, and too many sharks. Instead, he urged Claytor on the radio to make his best possible speed.
“There may be enemy submarines in the area,” Marks warned. “Use caution.”
Marks kept up his taxi. In an effort to save the singles, he passed knots of astonishingly skeletal men who called out, “Water!” and “Save us!” Then, when Marks taxied past, their cries changed to “Wait!” and “Don’t go!”
Their angry, desperate pleas tore at his mind. Who was he to pick and choose lives to save? Who was he to play God?
One of the men yelling was Lyle Umenhoffer. Wearing a pneumatic life belt himself, he had a man on each side of him and was holding their heads out of the water so that their sodden vests didn’t pull them under. When he saw the big Dumbo heading toward his little group, Umenhoffer’s heart soared—and then the plane taxied right by.
“Hey!” he shouted. “How about us?”
Hensley stood in the open hatch on the starboard side of the plane and yelled in reply, “We’ll be back to get you!”
At that, Umenhoffer felt the fight return to his limbs. They’d been identified! They were going to be saved. There was no way he would let go of his buddies now.
• • •
Late in the afternoon, the McVay group spotted yet another plane. But this one, well to the south, was behaving differently, circling. Then other planes joined in. For the next few hours, the McVay group watched the aircraft orbit.
&nb
sp; “There must be other survivors,” someone said.
Apparently it was just their small group that had drifted this far north, McVay said. What he did not say was that this meant they were in a terrible fix. The circling plane had moved steadily farther south. If it kept moving south and his group kept moving north, it looked as though they would not be found.
• • •
Charles McKissick swam to the Dumbo and climbed in, then directed Marks back to Harrell. The Dumbo’s massive wing towered over the Marine like a great, sheltering roof, and its throaty engines blocked all other sound. Hensley pulled Harrell aboard and the aircrew stacked him against a bulkhead where other survivors were wedged in like cordwood.
Harrell stared at the other men, oil-drenched and skeletal, until a series of metallic bangs caught his attention. It was a survivor whacking a can of green beans on a deck bolt to try to open it. The man’s pounding appeared all the more desperate because his eyes were a pair of bulging red sores.
Harrell’s heart flipped in his chest. It was Spooner!
Spooner managed to punch a hole in the can, and began sipping from it.
“Hey, Marine,” Harrell said. “How about sharing some of that with me?”
“Leave me alone!”
“Spooner, it’s me! Harrell!”
Beneath his tortured eyes, Spooner’s face split in a grin, and he nearly leapt into Harrell’s lap. Overjoyed, Harrell thanked God for letting him keep his promise to his brother Marine. Then the two men shared the best drink either one of them would ever have: warm green bean juice from a can.
• • •
As darkness descended on Doyle, Graham Claytor laid on speed. Marks had been right. Claytor did receive a secret dispatch ordering all available fleet units to the scene of some awful disaster. Doyle’s radiomen received the message an hour after Claytor headed that way on his own.
Claytor, a summa cum laude graduate of Harvard Law 1936, had never cottoned to the status quo. After Harvard, he’d had his pick of lucrative Wall Street law firms but chose instead to clerk for U.S. Appeals Court Justice Learned Hand and then for Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in D.C. With war looming in 1941, he tried to join the Navy, but was rejected as too old. Then an enterprising recruiter found a special program for overage volunteers with seagoing experience.
Did Claytor have seagoing experience, the recruiter wanted to know?
Yes, Claytor said. He had sailed the Chesapeake Bay in his own boat.
That was all the recruiter needed. Now, at thirty-three, Claytor had two seagoing command tours under his belt. His long, serious face reminded people a little of the actor Humphrey Bogart, and like Bogart, Claytor’s eyes were susceptible to a twinkle.
Claytor still did not know which ship had sunk. At 4:33 p.m., a dispatch from Peleliu had indicated that two more rescue vessels were steaming to the scene, USS Madison and USS Ralph Talbot. At 6:30 p.m., he received a new dispatch with updated information from both Peleliu and the planes, including corrected positions. Claytor adjusted course accordingly.
Over scratchy airwaves, he had maintained constant contact with Marks and Atteberry since early afternoon. He monitored Marks’s open-sea landing, and Atteberry’s overhead vectors. He knew about the sharks, and about the men being pulled onto Marks’s plane.
Doyle’s chief engineer called the bridge from the engine room, wanting to know how long Claytor intended to keep up flank speed. Some of the ship’s line bearings were getting hot and he’d changed the oil on them several times, the engineer said. “We can’t keep this speed up or we’re going to blow the engines.”
“If they blow, they blow,” Claytor replied, surprising his crew. “We’ve got men in the water.”
16
* * *
IN THE WATER, THE dead outnumbered the living. Men continued to expire so quickly that it became almost impossible to move around without having to shoulder through shoals of corpses.
Floating among the dead, Aviation Machinist’s Mate Jim Jarvis yearned to be on that rescue plane. Even though only a few hundred yards separated him from safety, he just didn’t have it in him to swim. Ensign Thomas Brophy, however, felt differently. The twenty-one-year-old officer was among those in Redmayne’s group who had chosen not to reveal their rank. In fact, Harlan Twible hadn’t even realized Brophy was in his group until the ensign broke away swimming for the Dumbo.
“Come back!” Twible yelled. “Come back!”
Watching Brophy’s weak strokes, Twible didn’t think he would make it. But Brophy kept swimming.
Twible tried again. “Come back, Ensign, that’s an order!”
Brophy made it only halfway to the plane. His strength faltered and he slipped below the waves, one of many who spent their last strength swimming for the refuge of Marks’s plane and drowning instead.
• • •
Dusk fell, siphoning precious light from the rescue scene. There were now thirty survivors aboard Marks’s Dumbo. In addition to James Smith, Harrell, Spooner, McKissick, and Woolston, Marks had scooped up quartermaster Bob Gause and coxswain Louis Erwin. Marks also circled back for Umenhoffer and his buddies. A number of men were also hauled from a raft, but it was too late for twenty-one-year-old radarman Art Leenerman. The Dumbo was getting crowded, and Hensley wanted to reserve the space aboard for living survivors. The aircrew left Leenerman’s lifeless body in the raft and attached it by a line to the plane. At least they could return his body to his family.
Now, Marks peered aft. His aircraft had become a trauma ward so packed with wounded, starving, dehydrated sailors that it was nearly impossible for his crew to navigate in the cabin without stepping on survivors. Still, the Dumbo was the only island of refuge for almost three hundred miles. After some discussion, Marks and Lefkowitz agreed that the plane’s sprawling wing could hold more survivors. There were fifteen hundred square feet of room up there, more than the floor space in many a house. But to save any more men, they would have to hurry. Night came suddenly this close to the equator. Even Marks’s strength of will couldn’t change that.
He turned and addressed the survivors. “You men up front, crawl out on the wing.”
Umenhoffer realized what the lieutenant was trying to do. While open saltwater ulcers covered Umenhoffer’s legs, he was better off than some. With help from below, he hoisted himself through an overhead hatch and squeezed through the engineer’s crawl space out onto the broad surface of the wing. Soon, others began to follow.
A bold violet glow clung to the western sky. Stars winked awake in the east. The Dumbo pitched and rolled, rising and falling with the swells. It quickly became apparent that those on the wing were in danger of sliding right back into the water again, perhaps never to be found. Marks’s crew pulled out lengths of parachute cord and lashed the men down. Working by Thursday’s last light, Hensley and the crew were able to bring aboard two dozen more men, bringing the number of rescued to fifty-three.
Just before night fell, another Dumbo arrived on-scene and landed in the water. But the pilot, R. C. Alcorn, had time to rescue only one man. Over the objections of his crew, Alcorn refused to water-taxi for fear he would run down survivors in the dark.
• • •
The Dumbo operations were far outside the McVay group’s field of view, but the captain and his men saw another plane. It was a big one, and excitement rippled across the rafts. Yeoman Havins thought the plane was definitely moving closer, but the sun was sinking fast. The men took turns standing on the edge of one of the rafts and waving a piece of canvas like a surrender flag, their legs held fast by the others. Careless of the circling sharks, each man eagerly took a turn. The plane drew closer. Hope and joy sparked across the flotilla like electric current. They were going home!
Then, suddenly, the sun dropped away. The purple twilight meshed with the surface of the sea, and the plane faded away to the south. The men slumped down in their rafts, heartbroken. Pulling the rafts close, they reviewed their situation. They had
not lost hope, they agreed, and were certain the pilot would return the next day.
• • •
Marks’s Dumbo rode the swells enveloped in darkness that was remarkably complete. There was no moon. Thick clouds scudded in to blot out the stars. In the plane’s belly, men lolled against the bulkheads. Some moaned in pain. Others, out of their heads, babbled wild stories. The day after the sinking, one said, a landing craft had picked up thirty men and sailed away, leaving everyone else to die. Another man said a seaplane had landed on the water, picked up several survivors, and abandoned the rest.
Streaming a sea anchor from the bow to slow the plane’s drift, Marks let the Dumbo bob up and down in the hulking sea. He had hoped to use his landing lights and an Aldis lamp, a handheld light used to send Morse code, to continue looking for survivors. But the height of the swells made that impractical, and like the other Dumbo pilot who had picked up just one man, he feared running over men in the water.
In the rear of the plane, the crew thought they had run out of fresh water until a thorough search turned up a partially full water breaker in the radio compartment. Someone poured the water into a kettle and passed it up top, where a crew member picked his way carefully down the wing, rationing the precious liquid to four or five men at a time. The kettle was then passed below, refilled, and the process begun again. As the crewman on the wing took the last of the water down the line of men in the dark, he worried that he wouldn’t be able to figure out where in the line he had left off. He was surprised when, despite their misery, voice after voice in the darkness said the same thing: “I’ve had mine.”
Their honesty moved Marks deeply. Conduct like that is not indoctrinated through military training, he thought. It is learned at an early age, in Sunday school and in a home where honesty is a way of life.
Marks could hardly believe all that he had witnessed so far. Life rafts and flotsam attached to his plane, every container of supplies broken open, water and oil on the bulkheads inside and out, men strapped to the wing with parachute cord like so much vacation luggage on an automobile. It was a hell of a mess.
