REMARKABLE ESCAPE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 May 1943, Page 4

REMARKABLE ESCAPE

OF TWO AMERICAN AIRMEN AFTER CRASH IN HIMALAYAS. FINE EXAMPLE OF RESOLUTION. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) (Received This Day, 12.5 p.m) NEW DELHI, May 27.

One of the war's most remarkable escape stories was told when two Americans, Captains Rosbert, of Seattle, and Hammel, of Philadelphia, reached an Assam air base after having been given up for lost while flying supplies to China. They encountered a storm over the Himalayas and tui lied back when the windshield of their aircraft was coated with five inches of ice. Buffeted by a gale, they flew blind through thick cloud and crashed into a mountainside. The Chinese radio operator was killed outright, Captain Rosbert broke an ankle, and Captain Hammel had an ankle sprained. “We were on top of a snowfield on a 14,000 foot mountain,” said Captain Rosbert, “and for five days sat wrapped in our parachutes until we were well enough to move. It was below zero all the time. On the sixth day, food was running low, so we tore a plank from the plane, worked our way to the edge of the mountain and started to slide down a slope at thirty miles an hour. We reached the tree line and huddled together in a cave for the night. Next clay we hobbled along gorges and over precipitous rocks. We found some dead birds and ate them raw. On the eighth day we came to a mountain hut where a native gave us maize. We lived there for weeks, nursing our injuries. Then the headman told us a British survey party was four days’ journey away. We sent a note to the party and were picked up. For over a fortnight we went with the party, sliding over gorges on cables and negotiating mountain shelves on the backs of natives.” Captains Rosbert and Hammel had been missing for 46 days when they reached an air base.