CHAPTER 9

Five Hundred and Ninety-Four Holes

About twenty-five hundred miles southwest of Hawaii sat a lonely little island called Nauru. The world might have left it alone, were it not for what lay under the feet of the grass-skirted natives: phosphate, a central ingredient in armaments. Japan slammed onto Nauru in 1942, violently enslaving the locals to mine phosphate and build a runway. By spring of 1943, the runway was ready, making Nauru an ideal base from which the Japanese could launch air strikes.

On April 17, Louie’s crew and twenty-two others were ordered to fly to Funafuti Atoll, the launch point for a strike against Nauru. The pre-mission briefing alarmed Louie: they’d bomb from only eight thousand feet. That week, they’d practiced bombing from that altitude, and the potential of ground fire to butcher them had worried them. Stanley Pillsbury was spooked by another piece of news. There were about a dozen Zero fighter planes defending Nauru. Zeros had a deservedly fearsome reputation. The prospect of twelve of them scared Pillsbury to death.

The next morning, the men walked to Super Man. At five a.m., they were airborne.

The planes took six and a half hours to reach Nauru. No one spoke. Super Man led the mass of bombers, flying with a plane on each wing. The sun rose and the planes flew into a clear morning. The Japanese would see them coming.

Navigator Mitchell broke the silence. They’d be over the island in fifteen minutes. In the greenhouse, Louie shivered.

Super Man was the first plane to cross over Nauru. The air was eerily still. Louie’s first target, a collection of planes and buildings, appeared below. Louie began lining up on the gleaming planes.

Then, shattering. The sky became a fury of color, sound, and motion as the Japanese gunned skyward. Metal flew everywhere, streaking up from below and raining down from above.

Something struck the bomber to Super Man’s left. The plane sank as if drowning. Then the plane to the right fell away. Pillsbury could see the men inside, and his mind briefly registered that they were probably about to die. Super Man was alone.

Louie kept his focus below, trying to aim for the parked planes. There was a tremendous bang! and a terrific shudder. A dinner table–sized chunk of Super Man’s right rudder blew off. Louie lost the target. While he tried to find it, the plane rocked as a shell bit a wide hole in the bomb bay.

At last, Louie had his aim, and the first bombs spun into their targets. Then Louie lined up on a barracks and a gun battery and watched the bombs crunch in. He had one bomb left, to use as he chose. He spotted a shack. The bomb fell, and Louie yelled “Bombs away!” and turned the valve to close the bomb doors. There was a pulse of dazzling light. Louie had made a lucky guess and a perfect drop. The shack was a fuel depot, and he’d struck it dead center. A giant orb of fire billowed upward.

Phil and Cuppernell pushed Super Man full-throttle for home. Zeros were suddenly all around, spewing bullets and cannon shells that exploded on contact. They flew at the bombers head-on, cannons firing, slicing between planes, so close Louie could see the pilots’ faces. The Zeros were ravaging Super Man. In every part of the plane, the sea and sky were visible through gashes in the bomber’s skin. Every moment, the holes multiplied. The plane was gravely wounded, trying to fly up and over onto its back. The pilots needed all their strength to hold it level.

In the battle of Nauru, a bomb cloud rises over the fuel depot struck by Louie’s bombs.

In the greenhouse, Louie saw a Zero dive at Super Man’s nose. Nose gunner Mitchell and the Zero pilot fired simultaneously. Louie felt bullets slashing around him, one just missing his face. Then, as the planes sped toward a head-on collision, the Zero pilot jerked. Mitchell had hit him. For a moment, the Zero continued directly at Super Man. Then the stricken pilot collapsed onto the yoke, forcing the Zero down under the bomber before crashing into the ocean.

Super Man trembled on. There were still two Zeros circling it.

In the top turret, facing backward, Pillsbury had twin machine guns that could take down a Zero, but the Zeros were below, where he couldn’t hit them. Feeling a Zero’s rounds thumping into Super Man’s belly, he thought, If he’d just come up, I could knock him down.

He waited. The plane groaned and shook, the gunners fired, and still he waited. Then he heard an earsplitting Ka-bang! Ka-bang! Ka-bang! and felt a sensation of everything tipping and blowing apart, and excruciating pain.

A Zero had sprayed the entire right side of Super Man with cannon shells. The first rounds hit the tail, spinning the plane onto its side. Shrapnel tore into the leg of tail gunner Lambert, who hung on as Super Man rolled. The plane’s twist saved him; a cannon round struck the spot where his head had been an instant earlier, exploding so close his goggles shattered. Ahead, shrapnel dropped Brooks and Douglas at the waist guns and Glassman in the belly turret. Finally, a shell blew out the wall of the top turret, shooting metal into Pillsbury’s leg. Super Man reeled crazily on its side and for a moment spiraled out of control. Phil and Cuppernell wrenched it level.

Clinging to his gun as shrapnel struck his leg and the plane spun, Pillsbury shouted the only word that came to mind.

“Ow!”

Louie heard a scream. When he ran from the nose, the first thing he saw was Harry Brooks, lying on the bomb bay catwalk, his torso bloody. The bomb bay doors were wide open, and Brooks was dangling partway off the catwalk, one hand gripping the catwalk and one leg swinging in the air. He reached toward Louie, a plaintive expression on his face.

Louie grabbed Brooks and pulled him off the catwalk. He could see holes dotting Brooks’s jacket. There was blood in his hair.

Louie dragged Brooks into a corner. Brooks passed out. Louie returned to the bomb bay. He remembered turning the valve to close the doors and couldn’t understand why they were open. Then he saw it: a slash in the wall, purple liquid splattered everywhere. The hydraulic fluid lines, which controlled the doors, had been severed. With the lines broken, Phil would have no hydraulic control of the landing gear or flaps, which he’d need to slow the plane on landing. And without hydraulics, they had no brakes.

Louie cranked the bomb bay doors shut, then looked to the rear. Douglas and Lambert, both bloody, were pawing along the floor, trying to reach their guns.

Louie shouted to the cockpit for help. Phil yelled back that he was losing control of the plane and needed Cuppernell. Louie said it was an emergency. Phil braced himself at the controls, and Cuppernell got up, saw the men in back, and ran to them.

Louie knelt beside Brooks. Feeling through the gunner’s hair, he found two holes in his skull. There were four large wounds in his back. Louie strapped an oxygen mask to Brooks’s face and bandaged his head. He thought about the plane. The gunners were wounded, the plane was shot to hell, and there were still two Zeros near. One more pass, he thought, will put us down.

Louie felt something drip on his shoulder. He glanced up and saw Pillsbury in the top turret, blood streaming from his leg. Looking absolutely livid, he was gripping the gun and sweeping his eyes around the sky. His leg dangled below him, his pants shredded and boot blasted. Next to him was a large, jagged hole in the side of the plane.

Louie tried to doctor Pillsbury’s wounds. Pillsbury ignored him. He knew the Zero that had hit them would return to finish the kill, and he had to find it.

COURTESY OF LOUIS ZAMPERINI

Top turret gunner Stanley Pillsbury, shown here at the waist gun.

Suddenly, there was a whoosh of upward motion, a gray shining plane, a red circle. Pillsbury shouted something unintelligible, and Louie let go of his foot just as Pillsbury whirled his turret around to face the Zero.

The Zero sped directly toward Super Man. Pillsbury was terrified. With a flick of the Zero pilot’s finger on his cannon trigger, Super Man would carry ten men into the Pacific. Pillsbury could see the pilot who would end his life, the sun illuminating his face, a white scarf coiled about his neck. Pillsbury thought: I have to kill this man.

Pillsbury sucked in a sharp breath and fired. He watched the tracers skim away from his gun and punch through the Zero cockpit. The windshield blew apart and the pilot pitched forward. The Zero faltered like a wounded bird and fell from the sky.

The last Zero came up, then dropped. Clarence Douglas, with his thigh, chest, and shoulder torn open, had risen to his gun and brought the plane down.

Pillsbury slid into Louie’s arms. Louie laid him beside Brooks and eased his boot off. Pillsbury screamed in pain. His left big toe was gone. The toe next to it hung by a string of skin, and portions of his other toes were missing. His lower leg bristled with shrapnel. Louie bandaged Pillsbury, gave him morphine, then hurried away to see if they could save the plane.

Super Man was dying. Its control cables were cut, one rudder was ruined, fuel was trickling onto the floor, and hydraulic fluid was sloshing in the bomb bay. Phil couldn’t turn it with the normal controls, and the plane was pulling upward extremely hard, trying to flip. It was on the verge of stalling, and was porpoising up and down.

Phil did what he could. Slowing the engines on one side forced the plane to turn. Pushing the plane to high speed eased the porpoising and reduced the risk of stalling. By putting both feet on the yoke and pushing as hard as he could, he could stop the plane from flipping.

Funafuti was five hours away. If Super Man could carry them that far, they’d have to land without hydraulic control of the landing gear, flaps, or brakes. They could work the gear and flaps with hand pumps, but there was no manual alternative to hydraulic brakes. Brakeless, coming in fast, they might need 10,000 feet to stop. Funafuti’s runway was 6,660 feet long. At its end were rocks and sea.

Super Man’s destroyed rudder after the battle of Nauru.

Louie had an idea. What if they tied parachutes to the plane, pitched them out the windows at touchdown, and pulled the rip cords? No one had ever tried to stop a bomber this way, but it was all they had. They decided to try.

Hours passed. Super Man shook and struggled. Brooks gurgled blood. Pillsbury couldn’t bear the sound. Brooks opened his eyes and whispered. Louie put his ear near Brooks’s lips but couldn’t understand him. Brooks drifted off.

They all knew they’d probably crash on landing, if not before. No one spoke of it.

At last, Funafuti appeared. Phil began dropping the plane. They had to slow down. Someone cranked open the bomb bay doors, and the plane, dragging on the air, began to slow. Douglas went to the landing-gear pump. He needed two hands—one to push a valve and one to work the pump—but had only one working arm. Pillsbury couldn’t stand, but by stretching, he reached the valve. Together, they got the gear down. Mitchell and Louie pumped the flaps down, and Louie and Douglas placed a parachute in each waist window and tied them to the gun mounts. Louie stood between the windows, holding the rip cords.

Super Man sank toward Funafuti. Pillsbury looked at the airspeed gauge. It read 110 miles per hour. For a plane without brakes, it was much too fast.

For a moment, the landing was perfect, the wheels just kissing the runway. Then came a violent gouging sensation. The left tire had been hit and was flat. The plane caught hard and careened left, toward two bombers. More out of habit than hope, Cuppernell stomped on the right brake. There was just enough hydraulic fluid left to save them. Super Man spun around and stopped, barely missing the bombers. Louie was still gripping the parachute cords. He hadn’t had to use them.

In seconds, the plane was swarming with marines, rushing the injured out. Louie jumped down and surveyed his ruined plane. All the bombers had returned, every one shot up, but none as badly as Super Man. Later, ground crewmen would count its holes: 594.

That evening, Pillsbury was lying in a barracks, awaiting treatment, when a doctor came in and asked if he knew Harry Brooks. Pillsbury said yes.

“He didn’t make it,” the doctor said.

Harold Brooks died days before his twenty-third birthday. His fiancée, Jeannette, learned he was gone nine days before the wedding date she and Harry had set before he left for the war.

Harry Brooks.