Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Louie yelled “Bombs away!” and turned the valve to close the bomb bay doors. In the cockpit, the bomb-release light flicked on, and Phil took control of the plane. As he did, behind and below the plane, there was a pulse of white light and an orb of fire. Louie had made a lucky guess and a perfect drop. The shack was a fuel depot, and he had struck it dead center. In the top turret, Pillsbury pivoted backward and watched a vast cloud of smoke billow upward.

The air battle over Nauru.

There was no time for celebration: Zeros were suddenly all around. Louie counted nine of them, slashing around the bombers, machine guns blazing. The boldness and skill of the Japanese pilots astounded the bomber crews. The Zeros flew at the bombers head-on, cannons firing, slicing between planes that were just feet apart. They passed so close that Louie could see the faces of the pilots. Firing furiously, the bomber gunners tried to take out the Zeros. The shooting was all point-blank, and bullets were flying everywhere. One bomber sustained seventeen hits from friendly planes, or possibly from its own waist guns.

Stricken bombers began slipping behind, and the Zeros pounced. One bomber was hounded by four Zeros and a biplane. Its gunners shot down one Zero before their pilot found a cloud to hide in, scattering his pursuers. Below, Lieutenant Jacobs, Phil’s lost wingman, was still airborne, his plane laboring along on three engines and no right rudder in a circle of Zeros. His gunners sent one Zero down. Thor Hamrin, pilot of the B-24 Jab in the Ass, saw Jacobs struggling. Circling back and speeding down, he opened up on the Zeros with all of his guns. The Zeros backed off, and Jacobs flew on with Hamrin on his wing.

The first bombers, pursued by Zeros, headed out to sea. With its fighters gone and many of its guns destroyed, the Japanese base was left exposed. The trailing B-24s swept in, crossing through rivers of smoke to rain bombs on the phosphate plant. In the last plane over the island, a reporter raised his binoculars. He saw “a volcano-like mass of smoke and fire,” a burning Japanese bomber, a few bursts of antiaircraft fire, and not a single moving person.

——

Phil and Cuppernell pushed Super Man full-throttle for home. The plane was gravely wounded, trying to fly up and over onto its back. It wanted to stall and wouldn’t turn, and the pilots needed all their strength to hold it level. Three Zeros orbited it, spewing streams of bullets and cannon shells. The gunners, engulfed in scalding-hot spent cartridges, fired back: Mitchell in the nose, Pillsbury in the top turret, Glassman in the belly, Lambert in the tail, and Brooks and Douglas standing exposed at the broad, open waist windows. Louie, still in the greenhouse, saw rounds ripping through the Zeros’ fuselages and wings, but the planes were relentless. Bullets streaked through Super Man from every direction. In every part of the plane, the sea and sky were visible through gashes in the bomber’s skin. Every moment, the holes multiplied.

Just as Louie turned to leave the greenhouse, he saw a Zero dive straight for Super Man’s nose. Mitchell and the Zero pilot fired simultaneously. Louie and Mitchell felt bullets cutting the air around them, one passing near Mitchell’s arm, the other just missing Louie’s face. One round sizzled past and struck the turret’s power line, and the turret went dead. At the same instant, Louie saw the Zero pilot jerk. Mitchell had hit him. For a moment, the Zero continued to speed directly at the nose of Super Man. Then the weight of the stricken pilot on the yoke forced the Zero down, ducking under the bomber. The fighter powered down and splashed into the ocean just short of the beach.

Louie rotated the dead turret by hand and Mitchell climbed out. The gunners kept firing, and Super Man trembled on. There were still two Zeros circling it.

——

In the top turret, facing backward, Stanley Pillsbury had fearsome weapons, twin .50-caliber machine guns. Each gun could fire eight hundred rounds per minute, the bullets traveling about three thousand feet per second. Pillsbury’s guns could kill a man from four miles away, and they could take out a Zero if given the chance. But the Zeros were staying below, where Pillsbury couldn’t hit them. He could feel their rounds thumping into Super Man’s belly, but all he could see were his plane’s wings. Fixated on the nearest Zero, Pillsbury thought, If he’d just come up, I can knock him down.

He waited. The plane groaned and shook, the gunners fired, the Zeros pounded them from below, and still Pillsbury waited. Then Louie saw a Zero swoop up on the right. Pillsbury never saw it. The first he knew of it was an earsplitting ka-bang! ka-bang! ka-bang!, a sensation of everything tipping and blowing apart, and excruciating pain.

The Zero had sprayed the entire right side of Super Man with cannon shells. The first rounds hit near the tail, spinning the plane hard on its side. Shrapnel tore into the hip and left leg of tail gunner Ray Lambert, who hung on sideways as Super Man rolled. The plane’s twist saved him; a cannon round struck exactly where his head had been an instant earlier, hitting so close to him that his goggles shattered. Ahead, shrapnel dropped Brooks and Douglas at the waist guns. In the belly turret, two hunks of shrapnel penetrated the back of Glassman, who was so adrenalized that he felt nothing. Another round hit the passenger, Nelson. Finally, a shell blew out the wall of the top turret, disintegrating on impact and shooting metal into Pillsbury’s leg from foot to knee. Half of the crew, and all of the working gunners, had been hit. Super Man reeled crazily on its side, and for a moment it felt about to spiral out of control. Phil and Cuppernell wrenched it level.

Clinging to his gun as the shrapnel struck his leg and the plane’s spin nearly flung him from his seat, Pillsbury shouted the only word that came to mind.

“Ow!”

——

Louie heard someone scream. When the plane was righted, Phil yelled to him to find out how bad the damage was. Louie climbed from the nose turret. The first thing he saw was Harry Brooks, in the bomb bay, lying on the catwalk. The bomb bay doors were wide open, and Brooks was dangling partway off the catwalk, one hand gripping the catwalk and one leg swinging in the air, with nothing but air and ocean below him. His eyes bulged, and his upper body was wet with blood. He lifted one arm toward Louie, a plaintive expression on his face.

Louie grabbed Brooks by the wrists and pulled him into a seated position. Brooks slumped forward, and Louie could see holes dotting the back of his jacket. There was blood in his hair.

Louie dragged Brooks to the flight deck and pulled him into a corner. Brooks passed out. Louie found a cushion and slid it under him, then returned to the bomb bay. He remembered having turned the valve to close the doors, and couldn’t understand why they were open. Then he saw: There was a slash in the wall, and purple fluid was splattered everywhere. The hydraulic lines, which controlled the doors, had been severed. With these lines broken, Phil would have no hydraulic control of the landing gear or the flaps, which they would need to slow the plane on landing. And without hydraulics, they had no brakes.