Rickenbacker Safe

When the big Army bomber which was taking Captain Edward Vernon ("Eddie") Rickenbacker on a special mission for the Secretary of War ran out of gas in the Southwest Pacific (TIME, Nov. 2), the U.S. press sadly hauled out Eddie's obituaries. Eddie was 52, still lame from a plane crash in 1941. He had cheated death numberless times as an auto racing driver and as top U.S. flying ace in World War I. There seemed little hope this time.

But the Navy's big Catalina flying boats crossed and recrossed the vast area where he might have gone down. After 23 endless days they spotted a raft: on it was the bomber's pilot, Captain William T. Cherry Jr. The Navy searched even harder. Next day the good news came: Rickenbacker and two of his crew were found floating in the vast Pacific some 600 miles north of Samoa. Three other crew members were on a tiny island. One, Sergeant Alexander Kaczmarczyk of Torrington, Conn., had died and been buried at sea.

The Navy merely said that Rickenbacker's condition was good, rushed him and all others to a base hospital. The story of the 24-day drift at sea, cheating death under the rains and blistering sun, the Navy left for Hero Rickenbacker to tell himself.

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