Unbroken

This chapter includes the story of the attack on Nauru, a small island in the Pacific controlled by the Japanese and mined for phosphate. For the Japanese, it was an “ideal base for air strikes” (93). During the battle, the Japanese Zeros were “relentless” during battle; bullets flew everywhere. Superman’s hydraulic lines were severed so the brakes and landing gear could not be used. Practically everyone on Superman’s crew had been severely wounded, except Louie, Phil and Cuppernell. At one point, Phil thought, “one more pass [...] will put us down” (99). Pillsbury shot at the last pilot; it was later revealed that not one Japanese Zero bomber made it back to Nauru.

Superman escaped the air battle, but the plane was badly damaged. Because the landing gear could not be used, crashing was a huge risk. Louie prepared the injured airmen with modified parachutes and used the remaining parachutes by attaching them to the end of the plane. They had just enough hydraulic fluid for the brakes to work. 

In four passes, the Japanese attacked the American air base of Funafuti. All of the men on the island were still nervous as they recovered from the attack on Nauru, but they managed to scramble for any kind of shelter. B-24s were bombed; the bombs discharged their ammunition. The amount of dead was not numbered.

The next day Louie and his fellow air crewmen surveyed the damage on Superman. It had lived up to its name; despite the damage, it miraculously brought them all safely home, and “[Louie] would think of it as a dear friend” (111).

At that point, the members of the Superman crew were sent in different directions. Louie, Phil and a few other Superman veterans were transferred to the “42nd squadron of the 11th Bomb Group” (112) stationed on Oahu, and six new men replaced the Superman flight crew.

Louie, Phil, and nine others took the unreliable Green Hornet on a rescue mission, despite Phil’s serious reticence to fly the plane. They flew out with another crew, who were operating the Daisy Mae, and the Green Hornet lagged behind. The Daisy Mae went on without them, so when engine problems caused the two left engines of the Green Hornet to die, the plane dropped to the water without any witnesses. Louie thought that the situation was hopeless and that no one would survive the plane crash, but after hitting the water, Louie realized that he was trapped in the plane, tangled by lines, and alive. After he fell unconscious from a lack of oxygen, he revived, and “inexplicably, the wires were gone” (120). He managed to wrench himself free from the plane, inflated his life vest, and returned to the surface. Phil also survived the crash.