Evening star., 1942-07-25
By b. ]. McOUAID.

BY B. J. McQUAID,
War Correspondent of The Star and
Chicago Daily News.
KODIAK, Alaska.-The pilot was
known to his shipmates as Lucky,
which may have had something to
do with it. Nevertheless, the oper-
alton was at least 80 per cent scien-
tif1c. For that reason it should, and
no doubt will, go into the record
books as an object lesson in lost
plane procedure in the open sea.
Lucky got lost through no fault
of his, or ours. He'd been up on q
routine search flight, from which
he'd returned, swift and sure, to
his appointed rendezvous with our
warship. But when he got there we
were swallowed up in a great bank
of fog-the kind of thing that makes
the sea and air operations in these
northern waters business of end
less hazard and treachery.
We got him back aboard after
he'd been lost nearly three hours
We did it at night, under the same
Zero-Zero conditions that led to his
getting lost in the first place.
To appreciate this achievement IL
Is necessary to understand that the
Pacific is large ocean, and a scout
seaplane small object.
When we finally broke radio
silence and discovered Lucky
sprung him." in the seagoing air.
mans idiom-he was a good 20 miles
astern. Darkness was gathering and
the fog, which had been alternately
lifting and lowering, had settled
down for the night. Pea SOUP
gives you no idea. From the bridge
we could barely make out our for
ward gun turrets.
5000 Feet of Solid Overcast. r.
The problem was to bring the
plane In on course, guide it down
through 5000 feet of solid overcast,
and set it on the sea at a point
close enough to the ship to make
searching for it something more
than gesture. All we had was our
radio communication with the plane
and certain other apparatus, not pri-
marlly intended for such use, which
enabled us to give Lucky a fairly
good notion of the ships position
relative to his own. AS for coming
down through the soup and landing
In the darkness on moderately
rough water under zero-zero condi-
tionS-that was Lucky's personal
problem. We could not help him
there.
But we got him over the ship.
eve heard his motor. faintly.) And
we sent him on down, an estimated
five miles or so ahead. We told him
to ride it out, for a bit, and we'd
be along and pick him up.
Our needle was now out OF the
haystack. All we had left to do was
to thread it.
Somewhere out ahead, imprisoned
by the alabaster wall of fog, Lucky
and his radioman sat bobbing on
the restless sea. We knew about
what their position must have been
a few seconds before the landing
impact. We knew Lucky would head
into the wind and run his motor
enough to hold against the drift,
though this would be largely guess
work on his part.
Beams Bounce Back,
The rub was that if he got as
much as a couple of hundred feet
off our course we might 60 clean
on past without ever seeing him.
Even the powerful beams of our
searchlights bounced back off the
solid fogbank few yards from the
ship.
We moved on in what we took to
be the direction OF the plane. So
many minutes at such and such a
speed, then a drop to or 5 knots.
We should be on the mark in 20
minutes.
There had been excitement enough
on the bridge-of tense and sup
pressed kind-during the earlier
stages of this operation. AS, for
example, after we had lifted radio
silence and begun communicating to
Lucky our improviSed notions of how
to get him back. After each set OF
instructions Lucky's voice would
come cracking tersely back through
the loudspeaker: Lucky to COZ
okay." or Lucky to COZ, righto,
brimming with staccato confidence
that filled us with sudden surprised
awareness: This lean and modest
young North Dakotan, SO casually
accepted as the partner of ward
room joys and grievances. was a
man of courageous greatness and
nobility of spirit.
This we should have known al
ready, as Lucky's fellow pilots knew
it. But it is hard for the layman, or
non-pilot, to get the flyers point OF
view His fellow airmen knew what
it had cost Lucky to maintain radio
hopelessly lost, and before we had
decided to spring him."
They knew how he had been tor
; tured as he made his decision to
stay at sea, and try to get back to
the ship, rather than head for
nearest land. CHe might have made
| it, or he might have fallen into the