In this chapter of "Preparing Boys for Battle," read by William Brown, we are warned of the dangers of prejudging different situations and circumstances. It is often very easy to over-interpret situations and come out with the wrong conclusions. Having the wrong conclusions of a situation cannot only mislead you but also other people as well. Therefore, fathers ought to warn their children of the negative effects of prejudging a certain situation.
"The heart of the righteous studies how to answer, but the mouth of the wicked pours forth evil." - Proverbs 15:28 (NKJV).
Chapter 11, Black Friday. Pre-judging disasters is something boys should learn to avoid. When difficult circumstances strike, our tendency is to over-interpret them, and we often come to wrong conclusions and become subject to the wrong feelings they generate. This can lead one to all manner of misinterpretation, which can further cause him to mislead himself, as well as others. The reality is that the presumptuous often experience significant angst at the beginning, but are often later pleasantly surprised that the disaster turned out to be the gateways for the blessings of the Lord.
The worst Pacific War disaster of the 7th Air Force happened June 1, 1945, when 25 P-51 Mustangs from the 15th Fighter Group took off from Iwo Jima and 24 of them never came back. 23 of the 25 pilots were killed. No one knows exactly why this happened. The most likely culprit was Typhoon Nana. It was probably that a powerful wind from the typhoon caught 23 pilots by surprise.
The storm took their flying formation and mangled them together, sending them to their deaths. Their calamity came as they were on a massive bombing offensive against Osaka with all three fighter commands in the air. One hundred seventy Mustangs on escort, two hundred and fifty miles from Iwo Jima, this gigantic force passed over the leading edge of clouds that reached over the horizon. They assumed that the storm had been properly analyzed and judged safe. The communication was unclear, and in the wake of the tragedy there were heated accusations and debates among the Air Corps brass.
Only two men from the 15th Fighter Group came back from that mission. They were my father's friends and fellow squadron pilots Eddie Bates and Second Lieutenant Arthur Burry. Both came home from the war and lived long lives. I had the pleasure of getting to know them when they were in their 80s. While the other 23 planes were lost in the midst of the gigantic storm, Eddie and Art were the only survivors of that mission because of engine trouble.
If their engines had performed well, they most likely would have been thrown to their deaths with the other men. Eddie Bates' plane was malfunctioning, so he broke away from the group and headed back to Ewoa before everything came unglued. He made it back safely without any further mishap. Arthur Burry's airplane started malfunctioning also so he pulled away from the group and headed back toward Iwo Jima alone. Unfortunately, Burry's engine quit about halfway between Japan and Iwo.
He was flying the P-51 he had dubbed the Betty Ellen. Burry was engaged to a girl named Betty back home. The other fellow who flew the plane was married to Ellen, hence the name of the plane Betty Ellen. When Arthur Bury realized that Betty Ellen was destined for the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, he made preparations to bail out. At about 2, 000 feet he crawled out of the cockpit and down the side to the wing and slipped off into the air, missing the tail, as other pilots were sometimes not so fortunate to do.
His parachute opened and if he had any illusions that he was floating to safety, they were dashed soon enough. He was dropping into a section of the Pacific Ocean that was about to be hammered by a massive typhoon, Typhoon Nana. The congressional record would contain these words, his survival is one of the miracles of the war. It was fairly calm when he plunged into the Pacific Ocean that day, but the weather was turning fast and this one-man rubber raft, Arthur Burry, would soon be riding 50-foot waves and be blasted by winds in excess of 100 miles per hour and he was 275 miles from the mainland of Japan in a raft not much bigger than the lower half of his body. For the entire six days he spent in the raft, he would drink only about a half a quart of water and eat a handful of pemmican.
This privation would nearly kill him. Typhoons strike fear into the hearts of all seafarers who have ever had to ride them out. Each year they roll through the Pacific Islands causing all to remember how small we are in the midst of powers that can be absolutely devastating. While Burry was bobbing in the 50-foot waves and his one-man rubber raft Typhoon Nana was wrecking some of the largest ships in Admiral Halsey's fleet. The heavy cruiser USS Pittsburgh lost its bow and two other cruisers suffered frame damage.
Several aircraft carriers sustained flight deck damage. The USS Bella Wood had her elevator destroyed. The destroyer USS Samuel N. Moore suffered major superstructure damage. Escort carriers USS Windom Bay and USS Salamao had part of their flight decks blown off.
The tanker USS Milikoma OMA suffered substantial topside damage. Furthermore, Nana destroyed 43 planes and swept 33 overboard. The contrast was our stark. While these large ships were getting their decks ripped off, their bows broken in half, and their frames mangled, Arthur Burry was bobbing in his little rubber life-raft. In training, my dad and Burry were taught to tie themselves to their rafts.
To do this, you had to save some of the parachute shroud line before letting the chute go. The chute must be released or it will drag you all over the ocean. Fortunately, Burry tied himself to the raft, keeping the raft close by as the waves crashed over him again and again. The congressional record reads Pacific Fleet Headquarters Guam forced down in Japanese waters a Mustang fighter pilot, 2nd Lieutenant Arthur A. Burry of Davenport Iowa rode out the full fury of a typhoon in his frail one-man rubber raft.
His survival is one of the miracles of this war. Bury, a husky lad of 21, had been on this tiny bobbing raft for hours as the typhoon howled with unabated force. He clung desperately to his raft. Several times, he doesn't remember how many, he was washed off by the impact of the towering waves which swallowed his craft, bouncing him around like a rubber ball. But each time, Burry managed to crawl back aboard.
How he does not know. One day a seagull landed on the raft, but Burry was afraid to shoot it with his 45 because he thought he might hit his foot. Near the end of the six days he was incoherently babbling about his impending rescue by his flier comrades. He knew those comrades would come. He could hear them overhead.
He called out to them, and he could hear them. They were just over the horizon now, and he could hear them laughing and talking and singing. They seemed to be having a party. I knew I could hear them just as plainly as I hear you, young Burry insisted stoutly to his rescuers later. They seemed to be having a good time, and I remember I got mad because they didn't invite me to the party.
But I was never really worried. I knew the boys would come and take me out of there. Hosking says that Burry's body was covered with swords. His skin was badly lacerated, apparently from constant rubbing against the rubber fabric of the raft. He also was extremely sunburned.
He was delirious. Day one, he landed in the water at 11 o'clock. Later in the day, he saw B-29s returning from strike and used five tracers, one dye marker, and one star flare to attract their attention. Day two, weather closed in to the deck. The water was a little choppy.
Day three, Lieutenant Burry saw B-29s en route to Japan, so he put out a day marker and set up one flare which was not seen. He ate nothing and drank a little more water. Day four, it started raining. He did not catch any water as he had used only a half can of water so far. He ate one fourth can of pemmican.
He put up the sail just for something to do. After an hour, he took it down. Day five, the typhoon's strength increased and waves dumped him five times. He had tied the backpack to the handle of the raft, but it became untied, and he lost it, losing his food. Day six.
The sun came out and it was calm, except for the big swells. He began to have delusions. He was at a party on the ocean in a barn with other pilots from his squadron. He kept asking for a drink and his friends would offer him one. As he grabbed for it, the drink would vanish.
At the party he met a friend of a friend who said he worked in the control tower and promised to send a destroyer for him. Day seven he started hearing music and distant voices of people singing songs. As he heard the music he started to whistle and call to attract attention of the singers. He distinctly heard voices of other men in this squadron, including my father's voice. Soon the voices grew louder and louder, closer and closer.
Then the submarine Trotta appeared while on rescue duty. Rescue duty meant that the sub would leave Guam, pass by Iwo, and head toward Japan looking for downed fliers. The Trotto was seeking refuge from the storm by going deep to escape the turbulent waters above. Usually it was calm at 200 feet but not on this day. It was unusually rough and murky tossing the submarine around even at the depths of 200 feet, all because of nano.
The Truddah decided to come up to see if it might be better on the surface. Even though the waves were still at 50 feet, the captain ordered two men to get up in the conning tower to look for down airmen with their binoculars. It just so happened that at the same time the submarine was on the crest of a 50 foot wave, Burry's raft was on the crest of another wave at just the right moment for the men to see it. The sub immediately started for the place they last saw, the rubber raft. When men from the Trotter first approached his raft and threw him a rope, Burry threw it back and told him that his men were sending a destroyer for him.
He did this twice, so the third time they just grabbed him. He was picked up 300 miles north of Iwo on a direct line to Osaka. The Truddah crew members welcomed him in the sub gaining another family member forming a bond between him and the crew not to be broken in the coming decades of his life. The Truddah never sank any ships or found herself in the right place at the right time for heroism. Burry's rescue may have been one of the most important things that crew members did during the war and they celebrated every year the rescue of Arthur Burry.
This should not be forgotten. It speaks so clearly of the miracle working hand of God in time of storm. The odds of survival were almost nil, but God had a different plan for Burry. No matter how bad it gets, there are greater powers at work and God is the governor of those powers. He will, by the force of His own perfect and unstoppable will, bring glory to himself even when things look the darkest.
Not only did the Trutta save Arthur Burry's life, but a newspaper clipping about the incident would have remarkable effect years later. Immediately after Arthur Burry was rescued by the submarine Truddah, the Davenport, Iowa Democrat newspaper ran a story on the rescue. The front page headline reads, "'Davenporter Adrift at Sea Six Days Off Japan, tells of his struggle to survive. The article contained a picture of Arthur Burry as well as a detailed story of his experience in the typhoon. This newspaper clipping would start a chain of events that would reunite Burry with his long-lost family.
When Burry was a boy of two and a half years old, His mother died in an automobile accident and the family fell on hard times. His father was not able to provide for his family so under the advice of friends and counsel of professionals he determined that the best thing for the children was to put all eight of them into an orphanage. So the eight children from nine months to 16 years old were placed in an orphanage in Davenport, Iowa. A year later Arthur, age three, and his two youngest sisters left the orphanage adopted in the good homes. The remaining five children stayed in the orphanage until they graduated from high school and then moved to different places around the country.
In the spring of 1948, two years after the end of the war, one of Arthur's long-lost sisters, who was 32 years old at the time, was cleaning out her attic. She picked up a stack of old newspapers, took it to the trash, and went back upstairs to get another load. Back in the attic, she looked down and saw the picture on the front page of the Davenport Democrat. The article was about a pilot's rescue by a submarine during the war. She looked at the picture and thought to herself, that officer looks a lot like my brother Hank.
I wonder if that could be my long-lost brother Arthur. Hank was one of her other brothers whom she had seen in uniform. She thought that the man in the newspaper looked enough like Hank to find out if it was indeed Arthur. She quickly contacted the newspaper to see if there were any leads. After following up on those contacts, she learned as the other family members had moved out of town.
Continuing to follow the leads, she found Arthur's address and sent a letter to him in Los Angeles saying that she wondered if he could be her brother. She was right. The rescued pilot in the Democrat story was her younger brother. She gave him contact information for some of the other siblings and through these connections the family was reunited. This was the unintended consequence of the failure of Burry's plane and six days riding out the worst typhoon of the Pacific War.
The kind providences of God often come in the form of some failure or disaster that sends us on an altogether different course than the one on which we were traveling. In this case engine failures saved two men's lives and started the series of events that would bring long scattered siblings together. Stories like these remind us that we should reserve judgment about our trials and tribulations for another time. God knows what He is doing through all our sufferings. Buried six days at sea in a one-man raft is a good example of how blessings are often cleverly disguised as difficulties.
Often we interpret events wrongly by prematurely declaring them disastrous. Later on we see that God was working a better plan. He orders our steps so that His glory will be revealed even when we think we're in a time of disaster. John 9, 1-3, Now as Jesus passed by, he saw a man who was blind from birth, and his disciples asked him, saying, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.
John 9 1 to 3. A father must, number one, recognize and teach that God's plans are best plans. A father must not be overly presumptuous himself. He may be tempted to weigh in on a matter that he should leave to the judgment of God. That judgment may or may not come in this lifetime for God is working across a wide range of lives and circumstances and some things need to be left in the hands of God to discern.
Presuming to know why is a study in futility. Ecclesiastes 7 7. Surely oppression destroys a wise man's reason and a bribe debases the heart. The end of a thing is better than its beginning. The patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.
Do not hasten in your spirit to be angry for anger rests in the bosom of fools. Do not say why were the former days better than these for you do not inquire wisely concerning this. 60 years after the end of the war I asked lieutenant Burry what is the lesson from the life raft. He quickly replied be thankful. He says that he was always thankful to be rescued but when his engine quit he never dreamed just how thankful he would be for all the things that happened as a result of that famous typhoon and that submarine rescue.
He sent from above. He took me. He drew me out of many waters. He delivered me from my strong enemy, from those who hated me, for they were too strong for me. They confronted me in the day of my calamity, but the Lord was my support.
He also brought me out into a broad place. He delivered me because he delighted in me. Psalm 18 16 through 19. Son, don't judge disaster.