“Sure! Pete Crawford, our radio man, pulled the levers to release the life boats just before he jumped. You know, they inflate as they go down. Vernon Goodwin, our top gunner, had filled them with water, food supplies and navigation instruments.”
“Did you find one of them when you jumped?”
“We were lucky. Pete and I came down close together and reached one of the boats. We might have made it somewhere with the provisions we had, if those Japs hadn’t picked us up before dark.”
“Did You See Tommy Jump?” Nancy Asked Bruce
“If you saw Tommy still in the air after you got into the boat he must have been too far away to swim to any of the other boats after he hit the water.”
“I’ve worried a lot about that,” Bruce told her. “But it looked to me as though the plane was turned back in our direction. There was a wooded island on the horizon, and pretty soon our ship was so low we lost sight of it behind those trees.”
“An island!” exclaimed Nancy. “Do you think Tommy might have swum to it?”