Superhero Series: Newscaster Eric Sevareid – Part 3

By DAVID KITTREDGE
Renaissance Redneck
As Eric Sevareid boarded the C-46 twin engine transport plane on Aug. 2, 1943, he did so with with a twinge of hesitancy; he knew this plane had a history, but promptly ignored the feeling as we all have often done. He was among group of 21 military passengers and flight crew, bound for Kunming, China. The plane had been loaded to the maximum capacity with goods and passengers, for expediency, as is oftentimes the norm then with military thinking and planning. Remember that the plane’s license to carry passengers had been revoked.

The pilot, 21-year-old Warrant Officer Harry Neveu, pushed the throttle of the C-46 Commando forward and coaxed the nearly overburdened aircraft into the air. Thirty minutes into the flight the plane was over Burma — modern day Myanmar — passing over the foothills of the Himalayas. They were also nearing Japanese-held territory and had to be on the lookout for Japanese fighter planes known as Zeros, that were formidable warbirds. Approximately one year before this fateful day the Japanese military government had proclaimed that any enemy aviators caught flying into their territories would be executed or severely punished through torture, regardless of the rules of war laid out by the Geneva Convention.

One hour into the flight and 200 miles west of Chabua, the needle of the left engine’s oil pressure gauge began to fluctuate wildly and the pilots hoped that it was a faulty instrument. Moments later, the temperature gauge for the port side engine began to climb and the pilots agreed to shut down the engine lest it seize up and tear itself from the wing of the plane and hurtle them into a mountainside. With the one engine shut down the plane was able to maintain flight but was slowly loosing altitude and would continue to do so. The pilots immediately turned the plane around to fly back in the direction of Chabua, their home base not so much with the hope of reaching home but to fly as far from Japanese held territory as possible. The order to throw the cargo overboard was also given to lighten the aircraft’s load.  

The pilots gave the order to bail out of the plane, but with the cargo door open it was nearly impossible to hear due to the buffeting wind. A few of the men were paralyzed with fear, including Sevareid, who rationalized that it did not make sense to jump out an airplane while it was still flying. Finally one of the pilots, Harry Neveu, and the radio operator Sgt. Walter Oswalt left the cabin in search of parachutes, leaving Second Lt. Charles Felix at the controls. At this point passenger William Stanton, a banker, yelled at some men lingering in front of the open cargo door to get out of the way if they weren’t going to jump so he could. The plane started to roll and this motion threw some of the befuddled men out of the plane and gave impetus to the remainder to jump, Sevareid included, who claimed when he finally jumped that the plane was only 500 feet above the jungle floor, which was the bare minimum height for the parachute to have the time to open safely.

After jumping, Sevareid managed to pull his ripcord and as his chute deployed he spun in mid-air to see the aircraft hurtle into a mountainside and explode into a ball of fire that engulfed the jungle around it. He had jumped so late that he landed very close to the inferno caused by the downed plane. But he landed safely and slid down an embankment until his dragging parachute became snarled in the underbrush and stopped his downhill slide. 

As Sevareid lay on the side hill suspended by his chute he noticed above him across the valley and atop a hill were grass and bamboo huts, a village. He and the other passengers and crewmen were now among the headhunters. These were the feared Naga warriors who had warred with the British just seven years earlier using mere spears against colonial forces using rifles. The British had attacked the indigenous Naga in 1936 because of their headhunting tactics, which was a form of sport for them, like playing baseball or soccer for us.

Sevareid soon met up with a small group of other passengers one of whom had a broken leg, the radio operator, Sgt. Oswalt. Sevareid managed to apply a splint to Oswalt’s leg and bound it with a piece of the silk parachute cloth, to stabilize it. They needed now to find the other crew members. 

 

To be continued….