SURVIVAL IN THE SOUTH SEAS

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 10, 22 May 1944, Page 28

SURVIVAL IN THE SOUTH SEAS

The Story of a Naval Aviator’s Twenty Days on a Raft By Lt. (jg) George H. Smith, in the February Information Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Naval Personnel

On July 14 my flight took off from Guadalcanal at 1330 for a routine combat patrol over Rendova and Munda. We were flying Grumman Wildcats. En route to Munda we encountered a series of thunderheads that were so well developed that we could neither go over nor under them. We were, however, able to circle the storm to the south, and arrived on station one hour late.

Though our mission was combat patrol, we found it necessary to start home almost immediately, for we had barely enough gas to get us home by skirting the storm to the south as we had done coming in. We decided that it would be best to fly “on the water,” following

the coast of New Georgia as far as possible, then go “on instruments.” Flying through the clouds on instruments, we hoped to break out by the time we got to the Russell Islands.

My compass, unfortunately was not working, so my only hope was to fly wing on someone whose instruments were all intact. Shortly after entering the clouds at the eastern end of New Georgia, our formation dispersed and every man was on his own. It would have been foolish for me to continue on instruments with a compass I couldn’t depend on, so I returned to Rendova. I decided to try to go around the storm to the south and possibly get close to the Russell Islands before running out of fuel and facing a landing in the water. I followed that plan, but the storm had moved farther south, and when I came down in the water at 1900, I was between 50 to 70 miles south of the Russell Islands. Landing a Wildcat on the ocean is like dropping a pebble on the water. The water impedes its progress, but it continues to go down. After the belly of my plane hit the water, the plane

went forward 15 ft. to 20 ft., then nosed down for Davy Jones’s locker.

Fortunately, I was prepared. I had the hood locked open, and I had an extra canteen and an extra emergency kit on my parachute harness. My shoulder straps and safety belt were drawn as tight as I could get them. When the plane stopped its forward motion, I disengaged the safety harness, kept my parachute buckled on me, gave a hard push with my legs and went about 5 feet up to the surface. My rubber raft was of the small, one-man, seat-pack type that is an integral part of the seat-type parachute. Once in the water, it took about five

minutes to unpack and inflate the raft. It was dark when I landed on the water, but, despite that fact, I finally succeeded in removing and inflating the raft. I dumped my heavy, water-soaked parachute pack into the raft and

painstakingly worked myself aboard, being careful all the while not to capsize the raft and run the risk of losing it in the dark. Completely exhausted, I lay athwartships for almost five minutes, vomiting up the sea-water I had swallowed during the struggle in the water. When I was sufficiently rested, I worked myself farther into the raft and assumed the ' sitting position from which, but for a very few exceptions, I was not to stir for twenty days. The night air blowing through my water-soaked clothes gave me a chill, but I shivered for nearly two hours before I finally weakened and decided to unpack my parachute for a blanket. Once unpacked, the chute was so big and clumsy that there was not room in the raft for all of it. I therefore cut off half the shroud lines and stowed them in the raft against possible future need, and cut off the top half of the

canopy to use as a blanket. The rest I tied in a bundle, secured to the raft with an eight-inch length of shroud line, and, along with the pack and harness, threw them overboard. By this time, the moon was well above the horizon. It was a friendly, full moon, which I was destined to observe through one complete phase before it should finally disappear and leave me lost and lonely amidst endless black nights. I decided to try to get a little sleep. Unable to lie down in the little raft, I devised a method of sleeping in the sitting position. I tucked my parachute silk under my feet, pulled it back over my knees and over my head, then tucked it in behind me. The silk would then support my head, throwing the weight against my feet. Even with that device, I was unable to get more than two or three hours of sleep each night. The waves and swells were consistently 10 ft. to 20 ft. high. As soon as I would doze off, a wave would break over the boat and wake me up. Then I would bale out the water, doze again, another wave, and so on into the night.

The days were hot, the nights were cold, and the wind and waves were merciless. To combat the heat of the day, I kept my flight suit, helmet, shoes, sun glasses, and even my gloves on. I made a mask out of parachute silk for my face. As a result I suffered very little from sunburn. My light brown hair bleached to a pale yellow despite my helmet’s protection. The wind and waves presented a much more difficult problem than the sun. I kept my sea anchor out so the raft would ride “ bow-into-the-waves.” At night my parachute silk reduced the shock of being hit by breaking waves, but it‘did not keep me dry. The constant pounding of the waves was nerveracking. I soon started cussing at them. The cussing gave way to screaming, and then I got hold of myself. I stopped and prayed for strength to withstand the merciless pounding. I carried morphine syrettes in my emergency kit for relief from severe pain. When my nerves seemed near the breaking-point, I used the morphine

to give me relaxation. When I was under the influence of the dope, the pounding of the waves ceased to irritate me. I resorted to it on three different occasions, all at night. The three weeks that I spent adrift in the Coral Sea were not without their exciting moments. I had always wanted to see a whale, and during the first week that wish was fulfilled six times.

On July 20 I saw the first of many Japanese planes that I was to see before being rescued. I drifted on course of about 300 degrees deep into enemy waters. A few enemy planes passed directly over me as low as 500 ft., but failed to see me. I saw an average of one plane a day from then on, some friendly, some enemy, and others too far away to be recognized. I signalled some with tracer ammunition from my •45, with a mirror that I flashed in the sun, and with sea-marker dye. But not a one was to see my signals until August 1. On July 24 I saw the first shark.

Ordinarily the sea anchor held the bow of the raft into the waves, but around 1330 on this day I noticed that I was riding sideways up the waves. A fish-line which I had secured near the centre of the starboard side of the raft was taut and drawn out at a 90degree angle to the side of the raft. Suddenly the fish-line snapped, the raft swung back to its usual position, and a shark’s fin broke the surface of the water. He swam under the raft and with his dorsal fin cut a fish-line that I had secured to the port side. Thinking a dead shark would float, I tried to shoot him. The bullet struck home. The shark jumped from the water, then floundered and sank. The same thing happened when I tried to shoot a mackerel, so I decided not to waste ammunition on fish. When I landed on the sea, I had two days’ emergency rations with me. These included six small cans of pemmican, three chocolate bars, a small jar of malted-milk tablets, some multiple vitamin tablets, some vitamin Bi tablets and about three pints of water. 1 didn’t eat a thing the first day. The second day I decided to ration my food to make it last at least twelve days.

I allowed myself, therefore, four mouthfuls of water each day, half a chocolate 'bar, which I alternated every other day with one can of pemmican, two maltedmilk tablets, one multiple vitamin tablet, and one vitamin Bi tablet. On the fourth morning I found an eight-inch fish in my sea anchor. I didn’t know how it had gotten there, but that didn’t worry me. I took it out and ate it raw. All attempts to wring moisture out of the flesh failed. I tried to cut the meat into small squares and wring it out in parachute silk. The silk became oily, but it wasn’t enough even to moisten my tongue. Then I tried wringing it out in gauze with the same lack of results.' I took some of the flesh and put it between the rounded sides of two canteens, squeezing and rolling to get a wringer action, but this, too, was ineffective. On several occasions I speared fish with my sheath knife, for that was the only way I could catch them. They refused to take the baited hooks I hung on lines on the side of the raft. Tiny minnows appeared under the raft during the first few days and stayed there until I was rescued. I made a seine out of mosquito netting, caught some of the minnows and swallowed them alive. I had always ridiculed the college boys who gained notoriety by swallowing live gold fish, but I guess now they must have been hungry —because it can be done if a fellow is hungry enough. I shot many birds during the twenty days, most of them “ brown boobies,” goose-like birds with a five-foot wing span. I ate the liver and drank the blood. The rest of the meat was not as palatable as the liver, but I cut it into very small pieces, chewed them and swallowed t them whole. I had to force it down, but I knew in my mind that my body was getting nourishment. When I shot the birds late in the afternoon, after they had been fishing all day, they had fish in their throats. These fish were predigested to some extent. The stomach juices had started to work on them and the meat was tender. I could pull it away from the bones, chew it and swallow it. It tasted

as though it had been partially cooked. It was perhaps the best thing I had to eat outside of my regular rations. Before I ran out of fresh water, I decided to experiment with drinking sea-water. I tried to rig a distilling apparatus out of two canteens, but it was unsuccessful. I tried iodine in the water, but that, of course, did not work. I didn't expect it to, but I had nothing to lose by trying. I even tried putting sulfanilamide in the water. Not being a chemist, I thought by some miracle that it might precipitate the salt. It did not. My malted-milk tablets were in a small jar with a metal cap of the “ screw-on ” type. I rigged a valve on the cap that would open under pressure. Securing the bottle to my fish-line, I lowered it into the water. The valve opened at about a 40-foot depth and admitted water. I had two reasons for doing this. First of all I thought that the water at that depth, being under terrific pressure, might not have as much salt in the solution as the water at the surface and I might be able to drink it. Secondly, I thought that it might be colder than the water at the surface and that the bottle might sweat in the sun, like a pitcher of ice water, allowing me to lick the sweat off the bottle. Both assumptions were false and the experiment was entirely unsuccessful. One day I saw a “ booby bird ” land on the water, dip its long neck under the surface and take a drink. It made me angry. I couldn’t understand why the bird, which was only flesh and blood like myself, could drink sea-water which I could riot. I shot the bird, retrieved him quickly and cut him open to trace the course of the water through his digestive system. There wasn’t a thing unusual about it. The water just went in his mouth, down his throat and into his stomach. Around the intestines of the “ booby birds ” I found a handful of fat, which I used for greasing my gun. One day the thought occurred to me that I might grease my mouth with the fat and get sea-water into my stomach without tasting the salt. I did that. I greased

my mouth, swallowed some to grease my throat, esophagus and stomach, and drank sea-water until the grease was washed away. For five days I drank a pint of water each day without ill effects. One night, when my raft capsized, I swallowed enough salt water to become nauseated. When I got back on the raft, I felt like vomiting. I got out some of the bird’s fat and swallowed it, and my stomach was settled immediately. On the night of July 29 it rained continuously all night. I laboriously filled my canteens. I caught the rainwater in my sea anchor, but couldn’t put it into the canteen because of the rough sea. I finally solved the problem by putting the water in my mouth, then filling the canteen like a mother robin feeding its young. When the canteen was full, it was still raining and I caught another cup of water. I didn’t want to waste it, so I drank the rain-water, thus ending the sea-water experiment. On August 1 at 0900, after I had seen nothing but Japanese planes for several days, a New Zealand land-based Lockheed Hudson passed very close to me. The tail gunner saw my sea-marker dye spread on the water. The plane turned, made a wide circle and flew down close to the raft. For the first time in my life, and I hope the last, I cried for joy. The New-Zealanders circled for about one hour. I was afraid they would check my position and leave without dropping supplies, and, frankly, I was getting pretty hungry and thirsty by this time. I put on my rubber paddles, leaned back in the raft, and signalled in semaphore the letters E-A-T. They made another wide circle, and then dropped an inflated life jacket with supplies attached. The bundle hit the water about 30 ft. from my raft. I paddled to it and found Army-type emergency rations, a canteen of water, a map marking my position, ammunition for my -45, a waterproof flashlight, firstaid equipment, a Very pistol and star shells, and other useful items. I was hungry, but I ate sparingly, not knowing how soon I would be rescued. The New-Zealanders flew by once more, wobbled their wings, and headed for home.

I watched for a rescue plane the rest of that morning and all that afternoon, but none appeared. I watched, waited, hoped and prayed all day of August 2, but there was no rescue in sight. August 3 was a dreary day. Mist and thunderstorms were all around me. I didn’t expect rescue. I was convinced that I had drifted so far out of position that the rescue planes couldn’t find me. I was therefore a surprised and happy man when, at 1100, I spotted three Navy Catalina flying-boats approaching me. Two passed within half a mile but failed to see me. The third passed directly overhead and saw the sea-marker dye I had spread on the water. He dropped a smoke-bomb to mark my position and called the other planes back, and all three circled the raft. The waves and swells were 10 ft. high. It would have been a rough sea for any craft, let alone a flying boat. Two of the planes lowered their retractable wing floats and made an attempt to land. Both pilots decided, upon closer observation of the waves, not to risk setting down on such a choppy sea. About that time I drifted into a rain squall and the rescue planes lost sight of me completely. The third pilot was a little more adventuresome than the others. Although he could not see me, he decided that, if one of them did not land on the water in that vicinity, they would probably never find me again. He dropped his depth charges and about 800 gallons of gasoline to lighten the plane and made a power-stall landing on the water. His starboard wing float hit a swell as he was landing and started to spin the plane to that side. Quick as a cat, the pilot hit the throttle on the starboard engine, and kicked the rudder and stick to port. The lumbering Catalina straightened out and dropped into the sea. A wave broke over her and smashed the port gun blister, filling the after compartment with water. The plane remained afloat, however, and the crew bailed out the water as it taxied into the rain squall where I had disappeared. After taxying about two miles, they found me, gorging myself on the

last of the rations that had been dropped to me on August 1. Despite the Catalina’s precarious position on a heavy sea in enemy waters, I for one was in the lap of luxury. I stretched out on a dry bunk, pulled a warm blanket over me, drank some fresh water and smoked a cigarette while •one of the crewmen fixed me two tumblers ■of grapefruit-juice, a couple cups of coffee, two big steaks, and a large dish of peas. The sea was so rough that the pilot decided not to risk a take-off at that time. He asked me if the water ever got any smoother out there, but I couldn’t offer him much encouragement. Although the waves were running at least 10 ft. high, it was my smoothest sea since July 14. We stayed on the water all that afternoon and all that night. I was indescribably grateful for companionship, and the courageous crewmen kept up a continual conversation with me despite seasickness. At dawn of August 4 the navigator reported that we were 100 miles due south of the enemy air base at Kahili on Bougainville. The waves were still 10 ft. high, but the pilot decided to attempt a take-off nonetheless.

The take-off .was successful! The cumbersome plane bounced off the top of one swell and spanked on to another, knocking some rivets out of the hull. It bounced into the air about io knots slower than it should have been to be air-borne, but again the pilot’s skill saved out lives. No one but an expert pilot could have held that plane in the air without spinning. Ohrs was an expert, and we remained air-borne. Before taking off, the crew had lightened the ship by • throwing every bit of loose gear overboard, saving just a very few rounds of ammunition for an emergency. After we had been air-borne about ten minutes, three more Catalinas appeared and escorted us home. They had come out to search for their lost plane. I was taken to a field hospital on Florida Island. Though my rations were meagre, I had been able to keep my body in fairly good condition. I lost 20 lb. during the twenty days and suffered somewhat from pressure sores that developed on my elbows, back, and buttocks. On the raft, my feet were wrinkled and white from constant immersion in salt water. After I was rescued my hands, feet, and ankles began swelling.