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

Even with an empty bomb bay and all four engines going, it was only just able to stay airborne. It tended to fly with its tail dragging below its nose, something the airmen called “mushing,” a reference to the mushy feel of the controls of a faltering plane. Engineers went over the bomber, but found no explanation. All of the airmen were wary of Green Hornet. The bomber was relegated to errands, and the ground crewmen began prying parts off it for use on other planes. Louie went up in it for a short hop, came away referring to it as “the craziest plane,” and hoped he’d never have to fly in it again.

On May 26, Louie packed up his belongings and caught a ride to his new Kualoa digs, a private cottage thirty feet from the ocean. Louie, Phil, Mitchell, and Cuppernell would have the place all to themselves. That afternoon, Louie stayed in, transforming the garage into his private room. Phil went to a squadron meeting, where he met a rookie pilot, George “Smitty” Smith, by coincidence a close friend of Cecy’s. After the meeting, Phil lingered late with Smitty, talking about Cecy. At the cottage, Louie turned in. The next day, he, Phil, and Cuppernell were going to go to Honolulu to take another crack at P. Y. Chong’s steaks.

Across the island at Hickam Field, nine crewmen and one passenger climbed aboard a B-24. The crew, piloted by a Tennessean named Clarence Corpening, had just come from San Francisco and was on its way to Canton, then Australia. As men on the ground watched, the plane lifted off, banked south, and flew out of sight.

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Lambert eventually returned to duty with another crew and amassed an astounding record, completing at least ninety-five missions.

Eleven

“Nobody’s Going to Live Through This”

ON THURSDAY, MAY 27, 1943, LOUIE ROSE AT FIVE A.M. Everyone else in the cottage was asleep. He tiptoed out and hiked up the hill behind the cottage to rouse himself, then walked back, pulled on his workout clothes, and started for the runway. On his way, he found a sergeant and asked him to pace him in a jeep. The sergeant agreed, and Louie jogged off with the jeep beside him. He turned a mile in 4:12, a dazzling time given that he was running in sand. He was in the best shape of his life.

He walked back to the cottage, cleaned himself up, and dressed, donning a pair of tropical-weight khaki pants, a T-shirt, and a muslin top shirt that he’d bought in Honolulu. After breakfast and some time spent fixing up his new room, he wrote a letter to Payton Jordan, tucked the letter into his shirt pocket, climbed into a borrowed car with Phil and Cuppernell, and headed for Honolulu.

At the base gate, they were flagged down by the despised lieutenant who had ordered them to fly Super Man on three engines. The lieutenant was on urgent business. Clarence Corpening’s B-24, which had left for Canton the day before, had never landed. The lieutenant, who was under the impression that the plane was a B-25 instead of a much larger B-24, was looking for volunteers to hunt for it. Phil told him that they had no plane. The lieutenant said they could take Green Hornet. When Phil said that the plane wasn’t airworthy, the lieutenant replied that it had passed inspection. Both Louie and Phil knew that though the word “volunteer” was used, this was an order. Phil volunteered. The lieutenant woke pilot Joe Deasy and talked him into volunteering as well. Deasy and his crew would take the B-24 Daisy Mae.

Phil, Louie, and Cuppernell turned back to round up their crew. Stopping at the cottage, Louie grabbed a pair of binoculars that he had bought at the Olympics. He flipped open his diary and jotted down a few words on what he was about to do. “There was only one ship, ‘The Green Hornet,’ a ‘musher,’ ” he wrote. “We were very reluctant, but Phillips finally gave in for rescue mission.”

Just before he left, Louie scribbled a note and left it on his footlocker, in which he kept his liquor-filled condiment jars. If we’re not back in a week, it read, help yourself to the booze.

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The lieutenant met the crews at Green Hornet. He unrolled a map. He believed that Corpening had gone down two hundred miles north of Palmyra. His reason for believing this is unclear; the official report of the downing states that the plane wasn’t seen or heard from after takeoff, so it could have been anywhere. Whatever his reason, he told Phil to follow a heading of 208 and search to a point parallel to Palmyra. He gave Deasy roughly the same instruction but directed him to a slightly different area. Both crews were told to search all day, land at Palmyra, then resume searching the next day, if necessary.

As they prepared for takeoff, everyone on Phil’s crew worried about Green Hornet. Louie tried to reassure himself that without bombs or ammunition aboard, the plane should have enough power to stay airborne. Phil was concerned that he’d never been in this plane and didn’t know its quirks. He knew that it had been cannibalized, and he hoped that critical parts weren’t missing. The crew reviewed crash procedures and made a special inspection to be sure that the survival equipment was aboard. There was a provisions box in the plane, and retrieving this was the tail gunner’s responsibility. There was also an extra raft, stored in a yellow bag on the flight deck. This raft was Louie’s responsibility, and he checked to be sure it was there. He put on his Mae West, as did some other crewmen. Phil left his off, perhaps because it was difficult to fly with it on.

At the last moment, an enlisted man ran to the plane and asked if he could hitch a ride to Palmyra. There were no objections, and the man found a seat in the back. With the addition of the enlisted man, there were eleven on board.

Green Hornet. Courtesy of Louis Zamperini

As Phil and Cuppernell turned the plane up the taxiway, Louie remembered his letter to Payton Jordan. He fished it from his pocket, leaned from the waist window, and tossed it to a ground crewman, who said he’d mail it for him.

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Daisy Mae lifted off at almost the same time as Green Hornet, and the planes flew side by side. On Green Hornet, other than the four Super Man veterans, the crewmen were strangers and had little to say to one another. Louie passed the time on the flight deck, chatting with Phil and Cuppernell.

Green Hornet, true to form, flew with its tail well below its nose, and couldn’t keep up with Daisy Mae. After about two hundred miles, Phil radioed to Deasy to go on without him. The crews lost sight of each other.

Sometime around two P.M., Green Hornet reached the search area, about 225 miles north of Palmyra. Clouds pressed around the plane, and no one could see the water. Phil dropped the plane under the clouds, leveling off at eight hundred feet. Louie took out his binoculars, descended to the greenhouse, and