Lost in the Pacific 1942

In this chapter, Olson delves into the background of the plane crash. The B-17 is not a fighter plane. It is an air transport plane that delivers shipments, including other planes. Most of the crew were told that they were going to deliver a B-24 plane from Hawaii—where they are currently stationed—to San Francisco. After the delivery, they would get some time off. DeAngelis and Reynolds were looking forward to spending their vacation time with their fiancées. However, when the men reach Hawaii’s Hickam Field—which is the air base where their plane is supposed to take off—they are told that they will not be flying to San Francisco but “back into the Pacific” (17).

Deeply disappointed that they will not get time off, the men console themselves with the fact that they will still have the privilege of transporting Eddie Rickenbacker, who is a hero to all of them. Immediately after their plane takes off, its brakes seize up. To safely land the plane, Cherry flies in tight circles to expend excess energy, “like a high speed amusement park ride” (19). After landing, the men transfer to another B-17. Eager to begin their mission as soon as possible, Rickenbacker rushes safety protocols during the transfer, which concerns the crew.

This chapter takes place not long after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Olson notes that there were still many signs of the bombing’s destruction when the crew left Hickam Field: “Bullet holes pockmarked the airplane hangars. A giant crane towered over the harbor, preparing to haul the crippled battleship Oklahoma upright again” (13). 

Told from Rickenbacker’s point of view, the chapter opening delves into the top-secret mission United States Secretary of Defense Henry Stimson gave to Rickenbacker: to maintain some of the United States’ control over the Pacific, which is, at the time, mostly controlled by Japan. To do this, Rickenbacker will visit air bases in the volatile Pacific zone, beginning with the Guadalcanal runway, which was just seized by the United States Marines. 

On their way to the first base, Rickenbacker and his right-hand man, Colonel Hans Adamson, try to sleep on cots in the plane. However, Rickenbacker is too worried to sleep. He believes the soldiers who have been selected for the mission lack experience and are unfit for the task:

Why, Rickenbacker wondered, had they given him a copilot in his forties [Lieutenant Jim Whittaker]? And the pilot, Cherry, seemed like a hick, with his cowboy boots and his goatee […] As for the rest of them, they were green (24).

Eventually, Rickenbacker gives up on sleep and goes to the cockpit to keep Whittaker and Cherry company. He chats with them about the difference between their B-17 transport plane and the planes he flew as a World War I pilot, which had wooden frames: “The B-17, with his aluminum shell, felt solid by contrast” (29).

As they continue to talk to stay awake, they realize that the plane has flown off course for two reasons. First, the plane’s navigating antennae is broken. Second, the octant—an instrument that the navigator, DeAngelis, uses to orient the plane on longitudinal and latitudinal lines—was damaged during their turbulent takeoff in Hawaii. They only have four hours of fuel left, and they are not far from Gilbert Island, which is under Japanese control.

The men try different navigation tricks to find their way back to Canton Island, which is their refueling destination. They try “boxing the compass” by flying for forty-five minutes in all directions; doing so allows “the crew to scan as wide an area as possible in a limited amount of time” (31). They also try a strategy that Rickenbacker remembers from his own piloting days: “Reynolds instructed Canton to fire their antiaircraft guns […] Cherry nosed the B-17 up to 10, 000 feet, where they looked for the telltale bursts of smoke” (32).

As each navigation trick fails, it dawns on them that the plane is destined to crash. Rickenbacker starts to worry about the repercussions of becoming a Japanese prisoner of war. If he’s captured, the Japanese could discover his current mission as well as another top-secret United States mission he knows about—an invasion of North Africa, where the Germans and the British have been fighting. He realizes that “[i]f the information fell into Japanese hands, the results could be disastrous” (34).