World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF THE SEAS: The Lovely Dumbos

One of the incredible things about Americans, according to the Japanese, is the great trouble and expense they endure to rescue one man. But to Americans a comrade’s life is more than a unit of supply. To save a life they frequently tie up many valuable ships, daily risk planes and submarines. Some recent examples:

¶ A B-29 left Osaka with two engines severely damaged; the crew bailed out near Sofu Gan, 350 miles off the Japanese coast. Three planes (two PBYs, a B17) which were near by to spot such trouble marked the survivors’ area with smoke bombs. The survivors opened their dye markers, which colored the water green around each man. The B-17 “Dumbo”* dropped a 1½-ton, two-engined Higgins boat by parachute. Two men crawled into the boat, picked up the other survivors. The Dumbo radioed a submarine, which reached the Higgins boat next morning. One man was lost: the flight engineer, whose ‘chute had failed to open.

¶ A fighter pilot radioed that he was going down in a small bay on the Japanese coast. A PBY Dumbo received his message, sighted him, but got hit by several Jap antiaircraft shells. The Dumbo retreated and radioed for fighter cover. While the fighters strafed the Jap gun emplacement, the PBY landed on the water, picked up the pilot.

¶ A P-51 Mustang pilot was rescued less than three miles off Honshu in broad daylight by a surfaced submarine. Jap picket boats dared not venture out: submarine and pilot were protected by a circling Superdumbo.

¶ A B-29 Superdumbo, assigned to keep radio and visual watch for airmen going down, spotted three life rafts in the water. Already in contact with a submarine, the Superdumbo passed the word. But two Jap picket boats headed for the life rafts. The Superdumbo dropped four bombs which missed. Another Superdumbo showed up with two PB4Y (Liberator) Dumbos. They strafed and sank the Japanese craft, then guided the submarine to the survivors.

Not all men shot down in enemy waters can be rescued. One P-51 pilot was caught by Jap PT boats after they had damaged a Dumbo and driven off a submarine. Shore guns killed another fighter pilot only 100 yards off Chichi Jima in a Higgins boat after it had been dropped to him. But, between June 1944 and June 1945, the Navy alone saved 2,100 of its pilots and crewmen.

How It Started. Air-sea rescue had its beginnings before the war, when float planes and flying boats sometimes landed on the water (if it were calm enough) to pick up training pilots or ship-based sailors in distress. The R.A.F. developed the practice of parachuting boats with reinforced bows to airmen who went down near the German-held coast of Europe.

Pacific distances made a greater problem. Not long after Pearl Harbor, submarines occasionally saved Army and Navy flyers. Guadalcanal-based PBYs began picking up pilots from the waters around enemy-held islands in the Solomons. By late 1943 every downed U.S. carrier pilot, no matter how deep in enemy waters, began to count on an increasing chance of rescue. Pilots who were unable to return to their bases always knew where a crash landing or a parachute jump could be made with some hope. Float planes were used where submarines could not go—as in the Truk lagoon early last year, when seven pilots were taxied out by one plane. In Ormoc Bay last year five PBY Dumbos saved 142 men from a torpedoed destroyer, 56 of them in one plane. It took a three-mile run before getting off.

How It Developed. When the carriers and B-29s started striking at Japan, air-sea rescue became even more hazardous— and more necessary. In the early days of flying from the Marianas to Japan, many B-29 crews were lost which might otherwise have been saved: the PBYs lacked the range, the B-29s could not remain in the danger area long enough.

The capture of Iwo Jima last March provided an ideal Dumbo base. Nowadays the rescue planes leave for their assigned areas as regularly as the bombers and fighters take off. The first boat, containing a “Gibson Girl” hand-cranked radio, was dropped May 30 to the crew of a plane shot up over Yokohama. Four crewmen drowned but seven were saved. With Okinawa also in U.S. hands a downed airman has an excellent chance of survival, even on the shores of Japan—unless Jap soldiers or fanatical civilians catch him first.

*Named for Walt Disney’s big-eared flying elephant.