One pilot. One slow, unarmed flying boat. And a harbor full of Japanese guns waiting for him to land.
On February 15, 1944, a Fifth Air Force bombing raid on Kavieng Harbor went wrong. American planes started falling from the sky. Crews were ditching into eighteen-foot swells, six hundred yards from enemy shore batteries. No fighter cover. No warships nearby. Just one PBY Catalina circling overhead — and a twenty-seven-year-old pilot who had to decide whether to go down there.
He went down. And then he went down again. And again.
What happened inside that harbor — how many times he landed, what his crew did to keep the aircraft from breaking apart, and how they made it home — is one of the most extraordinary rescue missions of the entire Pacific War. There's a reason the Navy gave him their highest honor.
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