The Waterbury Democrat., 1944-02-12

O1lc ! IdIl-kAIlISTlChIl Chinese National Airways Corpora tion, the line that since the start of the war has made a record of es- caping the Jap zeros by flying only in bad weather.
 On their last flight from India, they took off in a pea soup fog, which, at 12,000 feet was lake of water and at 18,00O feet was six inches of ice on the wings and win- dows. All this obscurity made them safe from zeros. Another 1000 feet, another 20 minutes and they'd be over the hump. Hosbert pressed his hand against the window to melt the ice and did make a hole through which he squinted-to see peak rise dead ahead. He grabbed the controls, banked the plane, missed the cliff by inches, but then the bot tom of the cabin scraped the side of the mountain and the plane crashed. PLANE BURIED IN SNOW
 The Chinese radio operator was instantly killed, his neck broken. HoSbert had a broken left ankle HammePs face was cut and his right ankle was sprained so that the high altitude, in the below-zero cold, it took him nearly an hour to move the 25-foot length of the cabin to get parachutes for blankets and the six tins of emergency rations.
 By morning the plane was buried under two feet of snow, beyond pos sible recognition by rescuers. They crawled out in dazzling sunlight and, five miles away, 5000 feet below, saw the timberline. But they had no idea where they were.
 The next day they made sleds out of floor boards, splinted their legs with strips of parachute cloth and tied themselves to the sleds. The SledS upset and sent them Spilling, rolling in the snow, down the moun- tain. That way they made progress, rolling Just before nightfall they reached timberline, and running water-a stream they could follow to civilization.
 For eight days they hobbled down the mountain, subsisting on one bite of food, morning and evening, to end at series of steep falls over sheer cliffs. Then Hammel spotted a vine climbing-rope that led to a trail, clearly blazed by notched sap lings. They followed that trail for three days.
 REACH REFUGE
 On the 18th day they came to a clearing in which were the burned ruins of hut, and that night came to another hut in which were two old blind women and six naked chil- dren. By sign language they tried to put oyer the idea they were flyers who had crashed in the mountains. The children brought them gourds. from which they were to dip boiled cracked corn, peppers and spices in 8 hot kettle which one of the old women took from the fire and pass ed to them, holding it in her bare hands.
 With food in their stomachs, they slept for IS hours on the hard bam- boo floor, to be cheWed awake by hundreds of wood ticks. At the end fo the third day, one of the children disappeared, to return later with three men right out of the stone age, who squatted before them, smiled, jabbered, touched the flyers clothes. explored the zippers on their jackets, marveled at flashlights, watches, pencils and flying boots.
 The men took them to another hut and there they stayed for two weeks, until, one evening, an old Tibetan trader appeared. Hosbert and Ham, mel could not leave with them, but three days later, to his son, they gave a note: We are two American pilots. We crashed into the noun tain. We will come to your camp in five days"
 It took 16 more days of hiking to get out of these mountains where, actually, no white man had ever been before. From the time of their crash to their return to civilization had been over six weeks.
 They had covered 150 miles. It was 45 minutes flying time.