The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 96: The Pilot and the Passenger

Episode Date: April 3, 2018

No movie has been made about this heroic tale, but over a hundred movies have been made because of it.  

This is the way I heard it. The fighter pilot looked with some skepticism at the private who wished to board his plane. He was a towering kid, six-four at least, and big-boned. I really got to get back to Fort Ord, the private said. Can I hitch a ride with you down to Oakland? The year was 1951, and the 21-year-old private was trying to return to base after an exhausting weekend of R&R in Seattle. The fighter pilot, a lieutenant in the Air Force, was willing to be able to. but not before offering his passenger a brief disclaimer.

You're welcome to ride along, Private, but this is a dive bomber. It wasn't built for guys your size. The Private smiled and shrugged. I don't care if it's a hot air balloon, sir. I got to get back. All right, said the pilot. Hop in. The lieutenant escorted his passenger to the rear of the Douglas A.D. Skyrater.

Opened the door to a tiny compartment in the tail of the plane and watched with mild bemusement as the private folded his lanky frame into a space about half the size of a refrigerator box. This was where the radar operator usually sat, and it was about as far from first class as you could get. Tower says it's going to be a rough ride, said the pilot. Keep your headphones on at all times. It's the only way we can talk. The pilot closed and latched the rear door, walked to the front, and climbed up a ladder, and into the single-seat cockpit.

Over the intercom, he asked the passenger if he was ready. The passenger considered the myriad of loose cables at his feet and the oxygen mask dangling in front of him. Ready as I'll ever be, he said. As the Sky Rader

accelerated down the raggedy runway, the passenger felt the first twinge of claustrophobia. Every bump felt like a pothole ten inches deep. At 2,000 feet, the bumping was no better than it was on the ground. At 5,000 feet, the passenger realized the plane was neither heated nor pressurized. At 10,000 feet, things smoothed out, but other problems arose. Hey, Lieutenant, there's something

wrong with my oxygen mask. I can't breathe back here. Well, that sucks, says the pilot. Lower where we fly, the rougher it gets. Sorry, sir, but the higher we go, the faster I die. It's also freezing back here. The pilot descended to five feet. thousand feet, where the passenger could breathe and the temperature rose to a balmy 30 degrees. But then the back door blew open, and things got very sporty indeed. What the hell was that? yelled the pilot over the intercom. That was my door, said the passenger. Damn thing just blew open. Well, close it, private. This thing's hard enough to fly as it is. The passenger unbuckled his harness, leaned out into

mid-air, and pulled the door closed. But the latch wasn't working properly. and the door refused to shut all the way. He tried to secure it with a loose cable, but that didn't work, so he just held it shut with his bare hands. The situation worsened over Medford, Oregon, when the turbulence knocked out the intercom system. Now, the unlucky passenger was not only trying to keep a broken door from snapping off its hinges in a 300-mile-an-hour breeze,

he was unable to communicate with the pilot. All he could do was listen through his headphones, headphones to the back and forth between the lieutenant and the tower and wonder how much worse things could possibly get. Well, he wouldn't have to wonder for long. Somewhere over Eureka, the passenger listened with alarm as the pilot informed the tower that his plane's navigational system was completely inoperative. A half hour later, his alarm deepened when the pilot reported to the tower a catastrophic

electronic failure in the cockpit. A few miles from the Golden Gate Bridge, his alarm turned to panic when the pilot informed the tower that his plane was out of gas and flying blind. And then his panic morphed into whatever comes after panic when the tower advised the lieutenant to point his aircraft over the open ocean and hit the eject button.

It was perhaps the single, The single most terrifying exchange a passenger has ever overheard between a pilot and the control tower. In a few seconds, the pilot would eject and parachute to safety, leaving his passenger trapped in the back of a plane that was doomed to run out of gas and crash into the ocean. What other choice was there? The passenger knew that water landings were incredibly risky, especially in these conditions. The plane would very probably flip over, trapping both he and the pilot inside. ditching the plane over the open ocean was the best way to protect civilians on the ground and save the life of the pilot.

The passenger was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the cockpit, the pilot pointed his plane over the Pacific as ordered, but he didn't eject. He thought instead about the big-boned kid jammed into the back of his plane, helpless. So, with no visit, he didn't eject. ability, no electronics, and no functioning instruments. The fighter pilot slowly descended, trying to stay level, waiting for the water to rush up and meet them, which it eventually did three miles off the coast of point rays. Miraculously, both men survived the impact, as well as the battering that followed as the broken bomber bounced violently across the choppy surface

before coming to a stop. Somehow, the pilot kept his bomb. bomber from flipping, allowing both men to climb out seconds before the plane sank to the bottom of the ocean. It was, by any measure, a spectacular landing under impossible conditions, but there was no time to celebrate. Darkness was falling. The shark-infested waters were cold, and the tide was against them. So the men began the long and treacherous swim toward shore. They tried to stay together, but the kelp beds and the relentless current made that impossible. It was each man for himself, and soon both men were alone in the inky blackness of a California night, swimming hard for the beach.

The pilot and the passenger would never meet again. Sixty years later, at a White House dinner honoring America's greatest aviation heroes, a former fighter pilot was recounting the details of his incredible water landing to a captivated audience. Among those in the audience was Harrison Ford, who encouraged the pilot to get his story onto the big screen. Trust me, said Harrison Ford, your life is a movie. Yeah, how can I be sure Hollywood won't screw it up? Harrison Ford grinned a familiar grin, because I know a guy who won't let that happen. The next day, Harrison Ford arranged a meeting between this former fighter pilot and a producer named Frank Marshall.

the man responsible for making Raiders of the Lost Ark. Frank Marshall was already familiar with the pilot's legendary landing and understood his trepidation about trusting Hollywood to tell his story properly. What do you need to feel comfortable? asked Frank. A director I can trust, said the pilot. I want people to hear exactly what was said between the tower and me. Word for word, nothing manufactured, nothing fake. I want people to know exactly what.

it was like to be inside the cockpit on that day. I get it, said Frank. You want a director who knows how to fly. Or, said the pilot, a director who knows how to crash. Frank Marshall nodded and reached for the phone. I know just the guy. And so, a few years later, on September 6th, 2016, this former fighter pilot found himself at the Manhattan premiere

of a major motion picture. a movie that portrayed the defining moment of his life precisely as it had unfolded on that fateful day over the water. Overall, he was pleased with the film, no overwrought dialogue, no unnecessary melodrama, just a few really good actors bringing to life the actual transcripts between the tower and the cockpit as 155 terrified and helpless passengers prayed that the man up front could somehow land an airbus. bus 320 in the middle of the Hudson River. You probably know the former fighter pilot who was honored that day at the White House back in 2011. Maybe you've seen the film in which his heroics were brought to life by a very convincing performance, not from Harrison Ford, by the way, who was

unavailable for the part, but from Tom Hanks, who was honored to accept the role. But I doubt you're familiar with the performance of another fighter pilot way back in 1951. The lesser-known aviator remembered today only as a lieutenant named Anderson, the anonymous fighter pilot who ignored a direct order to eject from his Douglas A.D. Sky Rader, choosing instead to land his doomed bomber in the choppy shark-infested waters off point rays, risking his life so that his only passenger had a shot at survival, a passenger who somehow made it back to shore and went on to become a pretty good actor, the very same actor who 65 years later was hired to direct a movie called Sully. The true story of a legendary pilot named Chesley Sullenberger, directed by a

legendary passenger who knew what it felt like to crash. A passenger named Clint Eastwood. Anyway, that's the way I heard it. When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Granger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Granger offers millions of products in fast-dependable delivery.

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