81 Days Below Zero

by Brian Murphy

  The cloud ceiling was low and dense. Crane looked for any breaks. They wanted relatively cloud-free air for the prop tests to avoid skewing the equipment readings. They also wanted to give the prop specialist, Sibert, the ability to see the blades. But the concept of clear-air turbulence was not yet fully understood. Many pilots at the time were caught by surprise by rapid downdrafts and other violent winds in skies they believed to be clear and, to their mind, calm.

  Hoskin moved the plane higher, to near ten thousand feet.

  “Oxygen, guys,” Crane said through his throat mike that was pressed tightly just below his jaw line, which was rough with stubble. He’d had no time to shave that morning.

  They each slipped on the masks, breathing in the garden-hose smell of the rubber. Putting on the masks at ten thousand feet was a bit early, but Hoskin wanted them to be ready in case he needed to punch the plane higher through a break in the clouds.

  At 10:03 a.m., Wenz radioed their position back to Ladd: forty miles southeast of base. Hoskin got on the intercom to check on prop expert Sibert.

  Hoskin to Sibert: Do you read?

  Sibert replied in his squeaky soprano that was an endless source of ribbing: “Okay, Harold.”

  It was 10:30. Wenz sent a quick all-good message back to Ladd. Wenz was already an experienced hand in the fickle Alaskan skies. Before the war, he came north from Wyoming and worked mail flights for a few years. He’d seen far more dicey flying conditions than today. He knew, though, that the winter cloud cover can be thick for hundreds of miles in every direction. If they couldn’t find a break in the ceiling soon, Wenz figured his next transmission to Ladd would be to say they were coming home.

  Just over fifteen thousand feet, the plane bounced through curtains of ragged clouds. The craft began to buck. There was no worry as equipment rattled about. The B-24 had its quirks—including being considered more temperamental in flight than its venerable older cousin, the B-17 Flying Fortress—but it could handle far worse than these castoff clouds known as scud, which are pulled away from bigger formations by wind drafts. The wash from the big propellers twisted the scud like cotton candy.

  They were over Big Delta. Wenz got back on the radio at 11:08 a.m. At about sixty-five miles from Ladd, the radio was near the edge of its range.

  “Ladd, this is four-zero-niner-one-zero. Over,” he said

  “Roger that, niner-one-zero. Over,” the reply came.

  “About ten miles east of Big Delta. Looking for a break in the clouds for prop tests. Over.”

  “Roger. Good luck. Over.”

  Hoskin steered the plane east in big sweeps through the clouds, looking for some clear air. It was approaching noon and near the time to call it quits. Sunset came at 2:41 p.m.

  Take a look, Hos, Crane said. The clouds were brightening ahead.

  As they got closer, the sky opened up. It was a clear column that rose to what looked like twenty-five thousand feet. Maybe higher. Perfect for the three-stage prop tests if the clouds behaved. They had to make observations at fifteen thousand, twenty thousand, and, finally, twenty-five thousand feet. This would be a chance to knock off the higher-altitude tests first.

  Hoskin put the plane into a corkscrew climb. He wanted to stay inside the shaft of open air. Crane checked the gauges. The copilot’s seat faced most of the diagnostics and dials monitoring the plane, a behemoth more than 67 feet long, a wingspan of 110 feet, and a skin that looked reptilian, with hundreds of thousands of rivet bumps. In front of Hoskin, one of the circular gauges showed the “free air” temperature outside. It was nearly minus seventy. Above that was the altimeter, which was ticking off their ascent.

  The weak Arctic sun cast gauzy shadows through the cockpit canopy.

  At twenty thousand feet, they ran the feathering tests. All looked good. The gauges acted up for a moment, but they could still see the ground through the section of clear air. The plane felt good, despite the momentary glitches with the dials and diagnostics. They decided to keep climbing.

  “Let’s give it a try at twenty-five thousand,” Hoskin said. Crane nodded.

  The starboard wing rose as the plane went back to a spiral climb. It gave the cockpit a blinking effect of bright and dark as the plane swept past the clouds, brightened by the low-hanging sun on each turn. Then the sun’s honeyed shimmer started to fade.

  Looks likes our hole is closing up, Crane said, as they passed twenty-three thousand feet and the clouds moved in.

  Crane opened his notebook. He began logging the altitude and airspeed.

  A second later, Crane’s notebook was dragged from his hands. G-forces, strong as a roller-coaster plunge, slammed Crane and Hoskin. They lurched at the controls.

  The ship was in a spin, ripping through walls of choppy, gray clouds. The only thing that made sense was that somehow the plane had stalled, which happens at speeds somewhere below 135 miles per hour depending on the plane’s weight and flap settings. Almost nothing else can cause a sudden spin like this.

  Wind screamed over the cockpit glass. The airspeed gauge snapped past the maximum cruising speed of about 300 miles per hour and was redlining. The B-24 was built to go faster in a brief, controlled dive. This was anything but controlled. At least one engine had failed. But why was the rudder fighting back their commands to get the plane level? Hoskin and Crane tore off their oxygen masks and struggled against the spin. The plane wasn’t responding.

  Keep pulling, Hos yelled.

  The flight instruments were blinking out. The electrical system was somehow compromised, too. They broke through the clouds. Below, the horizon was spinning wildly: snow, mountain ridge, trees, more snow. Over and over. Finally, Hoskin and Crane began to gain some control over the plane. The spin slowed.

  Hold on, Hos shouted over the whine of the runaway engines and wind. I think we got her. Hold on.

  The plane leveled off, still shaking and drifting, but at least out of the spin. There was no way to tell how fast they were moving.

  The instruments were dark or locked up in total malfunction. But the airspeed was definitely too high. Hoskin tried to move the nose a bit higher to slow the plane and reclaim control. A second later, the plane fell off in a spin in the opposite direction. They were pointing almost straight down. Crane and Hoskin pulled hard to try to level off.

  Then something like a pistol shot came from the tail. Cracking sounds followed, echoing through the plane. The elevator controls were out. The situation just went from dire to disaster. Elevator systems control the pitch of the plane, basically its ability to stay parallel with the ground. Now, the plane bounced wildly. Its nose reared up for a moment and then dropped suddenly like a breaching whale. Without the elevators, the plane was effectively an unguided missile with only a few rudder options to try to bring it level again.

  They were going to crash.

  “Open bomb bays,” Crane shouted over his shoulder to Pompeo, who had moved to a spot in the rear of the cockpit for just this contingency. Pompeo reached onto the center console and pulled the bomb-bay levers. The wide aluminum hatches rolled up into the plane. The temperature inside plunged, as minus seventy-degree air poured in.

  Just then, Crane’s throat mike ripped away. The ship was back in another spin, dropping fast toward the wilderness of the Alaskan Yukon. There was nothing left to do.

  Bail out, Hoskin yelled. Crane slammed down the crash alarm switch. Bells jangled through the craft like a fire drill.

  Forget the controls, Crane said, tugging on Hoskin’s flight suit. We’re going down. Let’s go. Now!

  Crane didn’t think it was worth mentioning Hoskin’s pregnant wife as motivation to bail. Who else would be on his mind? It was jump and maybe, just maybe, survive. Or stay and certainly die. They all knew it.

  Crane screamed: Hos, now!

  Crane yanked off his mittens to secure his chute. It took huge effort just to
close off the chest buckles. The pack hung from his backside, flapping against his legs. He struggled out of the cockpit. The forces from the spin made every step feel as if he were draped in lead weights. He ducked under the fittings for the topside turret. The radio operator’s space was to his left. Light streamed in from a small window above the metal desk.

  Where the devil was the radioman, Wenz? He should be at his dials, but the station was empty. Did he stumble back to the rear of the ship for some reason? Normally, the G-forces would pin the radio operator to his spot.

  There was no time to ask. Pompeo was rigged up to jump with a chest chute, but was hesitating. Crane noticed that Pompeo wasn’t wearing his down-filled gear and instead had only a light-blue plug-in suit—a multipiece outfit whose inner layers operated like an electric blanket. These were nice and toasty when hooked up to the rheostat, but offered little more than modest protection when disengaged. It was the equivalent of wearing a windbreaker into a hurricane. Frostbite cases were common if a plug-in suit stopped working during a mission. Pompeo had brought a “barracks bag” aboard with his down parka and other clothes, but either didn’t have time to fish it out or the bag was flung away in the spin.

  “Should I bail?” Pompeo asked Crane.

  “Christ almighty, yes! Get out!”

  Pompeo crawled ahead onto the metal catwalk, about the width of a legal pad. Crews often complained about the narrow catwalk and the general rattle-box feel in the heart of the plane. The flying boxcar, some called it. Another darker name was the flying coffin, since the only exits—if the bomb bays were sealed or blocked—were out hatches deeper into the fuselage.

  Pompeo slipped off the catwalk. Spiky frost was forming on any bit of moisture on the olive-drab walls, showing up like veins inside some kind of leviathan’s belly. Pompeo dove through the bomb bay. Crane looked back. Hoskin was near the radio station, still messing with his parachute harness.

  Crane took two steps more. He looked back to see Hoskin fumbling.

  Damn it, Hos, he yelled. What are you waiting for? Now!

  And then Crane was falling.

  Crane’s lips instantly froze and cracked like old plastic. The wind chill was well below minus 100. He didn’t notice. He was too struck by the split-second change from the groaning plane and the breath-sucking G-forces to the near silence of free fall. It felt oddly like floating, he thought. There was no immediate sensation of slicing through the air. Maybe this type of unearthly cold doesn’t register right away, he thought. Like how an unexpected slap takes a second to sting.

  Crane felt for the rip cord. The chute poured out. He swayed beneath it, rocking like a pendulum. The last moments of the Iceberg Inez played out before him.

  He watched another chute drift behind a ridge at least a mile away. Was that Pompeo? Or could that be Hoskin? Did he make it out?

  The plane was off to his left. It rocked and spun like a sheet of cardboard caught in the wind. Flames spilled off the fuselage. It spiraled a few more times and then slammed into a slope of spruce and loose rock. A fireball rose. No one could survive that, Crane thought in horror. Winds carried the black smoke over the valley. They also pulled Crane.

  He thudded into the snow. It was light and powdery. Crane stumbled onto his back. The snow sprinkled over his face, melting on his cheeks. His chute billowed over like a shroud.

  The wreckage burned on the slope about two miles away. The gas on board would probably keep the blaze going a while, Crane thought. At least that sad fact might be good for the rescue mission. He knew search teams would be mobilized after they failed to return. But the fire also meant that the weapons and supplies on board were lost. The provisions included sleeping bags, signaling flares, and an ax. A pistol and ammo also hung at the entrance to the bomb compartment. Crane didn’t remember seeing them there. Maybe Pompeo grabbed them before he bailed.

  But where was he?

  Crane shouted out their names.

  Pompeo. That carried some hope. He at least got it out.

  Hoskin. Maybe he slipped through the bomb bay just after Crane.

  Wenz. Sibert. Crane was almost certain they went down with the plane, but Wenz wasn’t at his station. Did he jump before Pompeo?

  Crane listened for any hint he was not alone.

  Nothing.

  As Crane cupped his hands around his mouth to shout again, he came to a crushing discovery. He had left his mittens on board in the rush to secure his chute. He knew how quickly the cold could freeze fingers. The medics and commanders at Ladd drilled that into the personnel from the moment they stepped off the transport plane. Crane tucked his hands under his armpits and tried to take stock.

  Forgetting his mittens was a huge blow. But he had the silk parachute, which he could at least wrap around his hands and use as a makeshift sleeping bag. The rest of his flight suit was intact. He had three pairs of wool socks under his heavy mukluks, the Army’s canvas version of the traditional soft boot of caribou or sealskin used by natives. Crane’s were lined with felt and layers of burlap. He also had his flight helmet. And the luckiest bit of all: the matches he grabbed for Hoskin.

  He had his Boy Scout knife, too. He always carried it. He liked the memories attached, such as a weekend camping trip at Valley Forge with other Scouts. Sadly, though, that was the sum total of his outdoor experience.

  The sky was turning gray-blue. Nightfall was coming. There was no chance to reach the crash site in that time—if at all. Crane had taken a few stumbling steps. He realized immediately that the snow was atop a jumble of rocks that made walking near impossible. A broken ankle would be a certain death sentence.

  Farther down the valley, Crane could see the outline of a frozen river. On the banks were piles of driftwood among the spruce groves. That gave him an idea. He spent the next hour cutting boughs to make an SOS in ten-foot letters in the snow. He added an arrow pointing in the direction of the wreckage. He figured that if the crash was spotted, the search mission would widen for any crew members who managed to bail out.

  He thought back to the last radio contact with Ladd. This was not good at all. The call was at least an hour before the plane fell from the sky. That means the search area could be a radius of more than two hundred miles from their last known position.

  And Crane wasn’t really sure where he was. Somewhere east of Big Delta, for sure. But that meant nothing. Crane had only a vague notion of the area. The main point of reference for him was the great Yukon River, which begins in Canada and carves through the center of Alaska. He knew the names of some of the feeder systems. One of them is the Charley River valley. This could be the Charley, he thought. But it could just as easily be any of the other waterways spilling toward the Yukon.

  Crane’s hands were now covered in cuts from hacking at the spruce. Think, he told himself. You have no medical supplies and no mittens.

  Prioritize. There was nothing more urgent than a fire.

  It was clear that he had to get a blaze going, or he may not last the night. It was minus twenty and could easily slip past forty below before dawn. There was driftwood poking through the snow at the river’s edge, left there from one spring flood after the other. Quickly, Crane gathered enough wood, made tinder-dry by the extreme cold and low winter humidity. With luck, he could have the fire burning through the long night.

  He set out a bed of spruce and arranged a small cone of driftwood. His fingers were numb. Rubbing them and stuffing them into his jacket did almost nothing. He had little time. Precious minutes were spent just trying to pry off a match. His fingers seemed to be working in slow motion. Crane managed to strike the match, but the little flame wasn’t enough to catch the spruce needles and shavings. Four matches—10 percent of his supply—did nothing but singe his fingertips.

  Attempting to burn part of his parachute would accomplish little. Silk will catch fire, but not keep the flame once the source is take
n away.

  Wait. The letter, Crane thought. My dad’s letter! He still had it in his parka. Crane unfolded the paper and fed it into a stack of spruce trimmings and flakes of driftwood. The fifth match worked. The fire rose among the spruce needles, sputtered for a second, and then caught.

  Crane let the flames thaw his fingers before wrapping them in his parachute. Then he rolled himself in the chute.

  During the night, two fires were the only things cutting the darkness: Crane’s small blaze and the orange flames from whatever was left to burn on the B-24.

  The clouds never broke. Crane lay back. As he listened to the fire, he thought about what would happen if rescue never came.

  How long, he wondered, would it take to die?

  Two

  December 22, 1943

  Charley River

  By the time the sky began to brighten on his first morning alone, Crane’s driftwood fire was down to orange embers.

  He squatted close, trying to warm his hands yet mindful not to scorch his parachute. Mercifully, there was almost no wind. Even the high, thin fingers at the tips of the spruce were still. Cold and dry air can carry sounds well over long distances. But there was nothing to be heard. This was a deeper silence than anything Crane had known.

  He became aware of his own internal hum. He could make out the soft, steady static of his inner ear. The sound reminded him of the shells he pressed to his ears during boyhood trips to the Jersey shore. It was reassuring, a sound of life and memory. He made it through the night. That alone seemed an accomplishment. There was something else, however, embedded within the awesome quiet. It somehow had its own special gravity, a force he hadn’t really encountered before. The silence pressed on him, humbled him. It draws out honesty better than any truth serum.