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“Adrift at sea

One of Rickenbacker's most famous near-death experiences occurred during the service of the United States war effort. In October 1942, he was sent on a tour of the Pacific theater to review conditions and operations, and to personally deliver a secret message to General Douglas MacArthur. After visiting bases in Hawaii, the B-17D, 40-3089, in which he was flying went off course hundreds of miles from its first scheduled stop at Canton Island. (The navigation failure was due to an out-of-true octant, which introduced bias in the navigation calculations. The octant had suffered a severe shock in a pre-takeoff incident.) This accident spurred the development of improved navigation tools and survival gear for aircraft. The pilots ditched the plane in the Pacific Ocean, dangerously close to Japanese-held enemy territory.

For 24 days, Rickenbacker, his friend and business partner, and the crew drifted at sea without food or water aside from an occasional fish and rain. Rickenbacker still suffered from the airline crash, his friend Hans Adamson sustained serious injuries in the water landing, and others in the crew were hurt to varying degrees. The crew's food supply ran out after three days. On Day 8, a seagull landed on Rickenbacker's head. He painstakingly captured it, and the survivors meticulously divided it equally and used some for fishing bait. They lived on sporadic rain water and similar food "miracles." Rickenbacker assumed a role of leadership, encouragement, and browbeating to help the others survive, and encouraged them to turn to Christianity for solace using Psalm 46. According to Rickenbacker, each person on the rafts converted to Christianity after the experience. The U.S. Army Air Forces, unable to find them, intended to abandon the search for the lost crew after searching unsuccessfully for more than two weeks, but Rickenbacker's wife convinced them to extend the search another week. Once again, the press reported that Rickenbacker had died.

Navy pilots rescued the surviving members of the crew on November 13, 1942, off the coast of Nukufetau near Samoa. The survivors were suffering from exposure, dehydration, and starvation. One serviceman had died and was buried at sea. Rickenbacker completed his assignment and delivered MacArthur's secret message. No one ever made the message public.

It should be noted that Rickenbacker initially thought that he had been lost for 21 days, and wrote a book about the experience titled "Seven Came Through" published by Doubleday, Doran. It was not until later that he recalculated and corrected the error in his 1967 autobiography.”

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