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Lieutenant Adrian Marks reached the scene of the survivors at 3:20 P.M., and what he found astounded him. Lieutenant Atteberry informed Marks that there were a great many people scattered over a wide area. He said not to drop any lifesaving equipment until he had made a full tour, which Marks quickly did. Both pilots then decided (as had Gwinn earlier) to steer away from the people clinging to rafts and to concentrate on those held up solely by vests. Thirty minutes after he arrived, Marks began bombing the boys with his provisions. 

At about the same time, the destroyers Ralph Talbot (DD 390) and Madison (DD 425) received orders to cut short their patrols near the island of Ulithi and head directly to the rescue site. Their ETA: twelve hours from the present; sometime early Friday morning. 

Marks knew the situation was dire. From his recon altitude of a mere 25 feet, he had a clear view to the deep green sea and the hundreds of sharks circling the men. Night, which he knew was the sharks' normal feeding period, was approaching. One of Marks's crewmen watched as a shark attacked one of the men and dragged him under. As Marks himself witnessed more attacks, his anxiety grew. It looked to him as if the survivors were so weak they couldn't even begin to fight back. 

Speed was clearly of the essence. Marks skipped the usual communication protocol, sending an uncoded message back to Peleliu: BETWEEN 100 AND 200 SURVIVORS AT POSITION REPORTED X NEED ALL SURVIVAL EQUIPMENT AVAILABLE DAYLIGHT HOLDS X SURVIVORS MANY WITHOUT RAFTS . . . . 

In the same message, Marks announced a bold decision: WILL ATTEMPT OPEN SEA LANDING. He had never tried to land in open sea before; all previous attempts by members of squadron had ended in disaster. In fact, his squadron was now under standing orders that prohibited making them. A few minutes later, he yelled into his crew's headsets, checking to make sure they agreed with his decision to attempt a landing. They gave him the thumbs-up. The team was going in. He cut throttle, dramatically lifting the nose of the lumbering Catalina and setting her down in a power stall. Hitting the top of one wave the Playmate 2 was knocked back skyward fifteen feet, Then it came down even harder. At any moment, the plane could blow apart. On the third huge blow she settled down like a hen over an egg, her seams and rivets popping and seawater streaming in. Marks's crew shoved cotton and pencils into the holes in the metal skin of the plane. The radio compartment, located midplane, was taking on water, and the radioman began bailing immediately, starting a pace that would keep all the crew busy at a rate of ten to twelve buckets an hour. The propellers were still spinnng, and it was essential that they didn't dig into the sea, or they would flip the plane. 

Marks's copilot, Ensign Irving Lefkovitz, moved to the side hatch and began preparing for rescue. Marks himself had no idea where to steer the plane; the whole craft pitched up and down as if on a carnival ride surrounded by rising and falling walls of water. Circling above, Atteberry became Marks's eyes in the fading twilight. The race was on to collect as many of the survivors as possible before total darkness consumed them all. 

Marks had landed among the group led by Dr. Haynes. Their numbers had dwindled from the previous day's 110 to about 95, the group having lost at least 5 more boys this afternoon. All of them were yelling at the plane, beckoning the pilot to come closer. Marks gunned the twin engines throbbing atop the high wings and powered the Dumbo through the seas, searching out those near death. It was tricky. The normal taxiing speed of the Playmate 2 was thirty-five miles per hour, too fast to pick up any men. Marks hit upon a solution: as he gunned the motors, another crew member raised and lowered the landing gear, using them as brakes. It worked. 

Earlier in the day, upon learning of Gwinn's position coordinates, Captain Granum, back in Tolosa, had kicked the rescue effort into high gear. He had confirmed the Indy's departure from Guam and concluded that the latitude and longitude reading corresponded to ones she had probably passed over on her trip to Leyte. That she was almost certainly the missing ship in question was becoming clearer by the minute. With the approval of Commodore Gillette, Granum issued urgent orders dispatching several patrol vessels and planes to the rescue area. He was now coordinating the rescue operation with the efforts of the Peleliu search and recon command, from which Gwinn, Atteberry, and Marks had flown. 

At the same time, the commander of the nearby western Carolines, under the jurisdiction of Vice Admiral Murray on Guam, ordered all ships and planes in the vicinity to come to the rescuers' aid. 

Shortly before Marks landed in the late afternoon, two B-17 Flying Fortresses from the Third Emergency Rescue Squadron of the Army Air Forces in Peleliu had arrived at the rescue site. The crew aboard these long-range bombers, who had heard Gwinn's earlier messages, unloaded seventeen life rafts, twenty-six-foot wooden lifeboats, numerous life vests, and dozen five-man rubber life rafts to clusters of boys in Haynes's group. 

Around 7:15 Pm. another PBY, the Playmate 1, also landed. This plane was piloted by Lieutenant Richard Alcorn of the U.S. Army Air Forces. He set down two miles north of Marks immediately began cruising through the surf, passing dead bodies and floating debris, the ship's detritus that had borne along with the boys. To aid his search in the dusk, Alcorn turned on his plane's light. Mistaking it for survival flares, other planes arriving on-scene began dropping supplies on him.  Despite the mishap, Alcorn was actually able to pick up one survivor before he realized that he could do no good in the dark; he had landed too far afield from most of the survivors anyway. Alcorn quickly realized, however, that he could be of use by operating his plane's lights as beacons to guide circling aircraft and rescue ships to the scene. He would spend a tow of more than fifty-one hours in the area, returning to Peleliu only to refuel. 

Haynes, exasperated that his boys were still dying with; rescue so imminent, knew he had to do something. After Marks had dropped his rafts, Haynes paddled over to one of them, but found himself too weak to pull the toggle that would self-inflate the craft. In the end, it had taken three boys to release the cord. They elected Haynes to be the first to board the safe, dry refuge, an honor he at first refused, but they were insistent. After agreeing, he had to remove his bulky life vest, a torturous process. Free from the thing for the first time in nearly four days, his shoulders rubbed raw and bleeding, he was hoisted up by the boys and flopped over the rail. Immediately, he started looking for water on board -- he had to find water. But he found none. 

He managed to help lift ten more boys into the raft, and a remaining twenty had to hang on to the lifelines around it. Soon, however, the afternoon heat grew unbearable and the boys in the raft jumped back into the cooler sea. Their core body temperatures were now dipping below eighty-five degrees, at which point most major motor functions stumble and cease. That they were functioning at all was a miracle, but looking at them, Haynes thought they all looked like cadavers. The condition of the men was so acute, he knew that they couldn't wait much longer for water. 

His suffering now seemed natural. He felt close to God, as if he were about to be lifted up, pinched between two massive, invisible fingers reaching down from the sky. With great mental strain, he tried to operate a desalinating pump stored in the raft but found he had trouble even reading the directions. Yet he didn't give up. For several long hours he pumped what he thought was potable water, only to discover that each batch was poisoned with the tang of the sea. He cursed his increasing stupidity until, in a fit of despair that had been steadily building, he pitched the pump overboard. For the first time since the sinking, he fell to pieces.

He started weeping. He wept angrily over his failure to find water for his boys, over his inability to keep so many from dying. He felt ashamed that he couldn't do more for them, but he knew he was doing the best he could. And that was all he could ask of himself anymore. 

*    *    *

Circling overhead, Lieutenant Commander Atteberry began directing Marks toward microgroups of hard-struggling survivors. The two planes were in constant radio contact as Marks taxied the plane through the swells. Often all he could see were walls of water and then a glimpse of the next wave. 

The Playmate 2's side hatch was open, and a Jacob's ladder (a series of steps strung on rope) hung from its lip. A crewman stood on the rungs as Marks handled the plane. 

"Okay, Dumbo, come right," radioed Atteberry. "Steady as you go . . . left, a little bit."

"Okay, we see him!" Marks radioed back. Fearing he might run over a survivor, Marks cut the engines. The crewman on the ladder reached down and grabbed hold of a boy who was floating face down, gripping his arms and yanking. What he pulled from the sea nauseated him: it was only the upper half of a body. They repeated the taxing process; often, when the crewmen grabbed hold of the swimmer, they found the boy was too weak to hang on. 

Adrian Marks was asking who these men were. He pulled aboard one boy, a petty officer, who told him they were from the Indianapolis. 

Marks now had the information that for the past five hours had eluded the command back in Peleliu and Guam. But he was too busy to code a message communicating the ship's identity to the outside world. He aimed the plane toward the next cluster of men. The world could wait for the news; he had work to do.

Copyright © 2001 by Reed City Productions, LLC.