Early planes they were flying were spinning off their oil, which was castor oil if you can imagine. A gallon to two gallons per hour was six tooted by the whirling rotary plain, most of it back in their face. So the wonderful scars that makes them look so dashing or wiping their goggles off. The real and hailing the stuff that made therein its. They would often take black berry brandy up to settle their stomach. Now these are just some of the problems. They also didnt wear parachutes because the higherups, the powers that be thought that parachutes which were invented with the defeated and had the first hint of any problem jump out of the airplane. Im sorry, no airplane. The stick of Eddie Rickenbacker something terrible. You also have to realize in warfare they were in the something new that nobody had ever come across. That they were flying what in essence was a pioneer. The inside of the airplane was all would. It had canvas in a heavy shellacking. It was entirely a single spark could set that bb aflame. If you imagine you are three miles up in your airplane catches fire, either through a spark from your engine or from an incendiary bullets from somebody trying to shoot you down in your plane is on fire and the windows during a 10 minute they could be a fair sitting on a platform that is thought and just burning terribly. So these poor young guys talked among themselves and i found these great letters of reference is to this. But what they do if this has been quite with a jump, what they take matters into their own hands or what they tried to write it down, put the fire out, or to death in aconite for the third option was a lot of them took their service revolvers to and had a third option. So anyway, the courage to these guys had when they win up in this rudimentary technology is released in thing to behold. I wish i could say in the 30 years after world war i, all of those problems john minchin had resolved by the time they get onto there be 24. Unfortunately to be 24 liberator retained a lot of those issues. It was not made a foot, but he was known to catch on fire. Easily at the first incoming round. The wings had a tendency to fold up off the plane, which made it awfully difficult to fly. The guys getting on board i is little more protection from the wind, but the cracks and gaps whistles as cold air coming through in a dehydrated very quickly in the cabin was not yet pressurized. But there was this same issue of low oxygen content as they flew. To be 24 remains the most producible d. Aircraft in his dream. Over the course of three of four years of heavy use in world war ii, thousands and thousands and thousands of these planes were taking off in the skies are getting on board these long flights. The plane was designed specifically to cross extraordinary distances. Sometimes they would go over 1000 miles one way to get to their target. They are spending hours and hours of these conditions and by they time they arrived about the enemy say to make contact and hopefully take us some of the infrastructure with their bomb load, they were pretty tired and they were pretty beat up. So what you find among these guys is they send of family forms on the screws. They Stay Together for long periods of time. Not only in the air, but over the course of months they fly again and again and again. When i began working on this book i thought of it as a story about a different kind of family, the families left behind when one of these planes goes missing and nobody knows what happened to it. There were 73,000 mias still missing from world war ii in half with them vanished over the pacific and a lot of times it was on these lands that went down and nobody quite knew where. But i also found as i reported on the men who were on those planes that there is another kind of family that formed for them in the air and on the ground in the south in very shabby the senate during the Island Hopping campaign. They had to sort of crutch to get their under the starry night and find a way to boost their own morale again before the morning mission. So i think theres a tremendous amount of courage that these guys exhibited and also in a way learned. They had to find a way to bring forth their courage in an environment that nobody had ever quite very before. We think about landings by the heroic marines on some of these islands which maybe has been in common with the landing at normandy coming onto the speeches are meant speeches from amphibious vehicles and knowing there would be intent incoming fire and having to surge forward and be among the few hearses ive. Thanks. So these airmen often starting their day into the rear part of the allied territory, but on how to cross again and again and again from the day day after day into the explosive ordinance coming down on none and then returning back and having to hit reset somehow in their campsite, having to prepare them of psychologically for that reversal for months on end is a different kind of courage and one that we maybe have been a lot of time thinking about, but i hope we can in the future continue what weve seen in the last few years, which is a greater attention both on the air war in world war ii and on the pacific theater. Its a fascinating place with a lot of differences from what we think of as world war ii because we so often think about the world warfront. At segue. I want to explore the notions of courage in the display such determination both of your book show. I wonder if you want to tell a little bit about Eddie Rickenbacker in the story of his with him thereafter in the Second World War when he was sent on a mission. As one of the most hairraising stories in american history. Eddie rickenbacker was the ace of aces in world war i. Scott is stripped that there are no second acts in america. And he reinvented himself after that he went on to found Eastern Airlines. Woodward to wilson on anything this early 50s in the military wants to get it back into uniform. He says no. He goes around the country, around the world, talks to American Government is unexcited unfocused. Then the president is very irritated with General Macarthur in the south since it. General macarthur has been mouthing off about the press and in president. They need to send somebody to calm him down a little bit. Who somebody like Eddie Rickenbacker could go down quite so he takes secret orders sound on a b17 with seven others and they fly from hawaii to the specific and may miss their refueling stop in the middle of the Central Pacific ocean. They are basically 2000 miles from many major landform. They are adrift in three rats. The rats are about the size of this table, or that a bathtub size. Three guys in each one. They mostly they ditched most of their clothes because they thought they were going to be sending when the sun comes out and its just a terrible, terrible, awful thing. They start sun burning. The salt water comes over, terrible salt water source. Theres no food and water on that yet. I would change after this year theres no food or water. They begin to hallucinate. There are sharks running right under a clip in the row with her tales. They eat ideas sitting there quietly with his fedora on his head and a seagull lands on his head. Out of the blue he recalls watching all these other guys. Guys just open mic this. He reaches up any snags the bird and made [laughter] he beats and theyre able to fill that pushes them out of her in the finished our job enough and it is really bad. Another week later, one guy jumps in the side to commit suicide. He cant do it anymore. The pain was too bad. He grabs him by the arm paul back in. A guy stuck his hand. They are closer than we are right now. He says i dont order thinking. And then he says youre a coward and excoriate Timothy Mcveigh cant say. About what a coward he was and then from any moment theron, when anybody started praying for to commit suicide or death or something to take them away, he would jump down their throats and start all kinds of awful words until they started hating him. They were going to throw him over the side. They were going to do everything. They wanted to get rid of this guy. What had he done . Time and again he got them to hate him. Most of them had hated him more than death. Years later all of these guys still heated eddie, but they also said without him they wouldnt have gotten through. So, 23 days later they come out and is on the front of life magazine in all the newspapers. What eddie did and he went on to macarthur, in hed gone from 180pound to 120 pounds. He kept on this trip. He showed america a very tough time when they were really struggling with taking on the japanese out of these violent strongholds. He showed america that he had what it takes to keep persevering and that we were survivors. Its quite a story. Eddie rickenbacker and what he had done. Anyway, terrific story. I wonder if you could talk about and the scan and what he went through trying to find he was looking for. A lot of my book deals with a guy who has no connection or had no official connection to the pacific of world war ii or to any particular bomber. Yet somehow found himself on a vacation of sorts in the Pacific Islands scuba diving and came upon the wing of the b. 24. He described the sensation he felt to not moment as coldness that crept from his aunt holds to his scalp and he knew would not moment that he needed to find out where the rest of the american aircraft was and just as importantly where the remains of the men who had been aboard antidote. So that was in 1993, about three weeks ago he returned from his most recent trip to the Palau Islands in the middle of the Central Pacific. He goes every year. He spends four to six weeks. They often end up deep in the jungles for your sort of creeping through man grows, swamps, the roots of which were so thick that if you can make about and eight of the myelin hour youre doing pretty well. You have to have machetes and youre encountering some called poison tree. Its the nastiest poison ivy have ever seen. So to make this commitment out of some sort of abstract sense of duty in the duty then turns into the course of the book a kind of obsession. When hes home in california, hes calm and focused in finding out archival information about where american planes may have been down in the Pacific Islands and hes interviewing air men who survived these titles come in these air battles and trying to sort of match their memories to photographs and not and then he with this new information to the island and he scrambles around in the jungle any interviews tribal chiefs and elders and it is equipment underwater. Theres this constant constant level of commitment and sometimes outright risk for him. When youre underwater thursday search irreducible risk. When you are in the jungle he sold me about times he would get out there in the jungle. Sometimes he is on his own and realized as the metal on the ground is interfering companies and he has to guess which way is out. If you go the wrong way, you end up somewhere they are very unlikely to survive. You end up on some of the skewer ridgeline overlooking the water with the same jungle between you and the direction you had hoped to have gone. So for somebody to find themselves possess of this inexplicable urge to track down this information in return answers to the families who lost someone in the family is to continue to grieve because they have no in there. Its a very specific kind of lost that is done by a psychologist as ambiguous laws, similar to the loss of a pair of small small child might feel if the child doesnt come home and life gets passed on from generation to generation. At the very fundamental level, the motive was to bring a sword of justice to the man who vanished, but also bring answers to the families left behind. I found one of the most powerful parts of the story, the parallel between the courage and commitment that he exhibits in the field and then exhibit for whom he was searching. John, you must have really come to love this character you wrote about because you explored his life in great detail. Could you talk about where attraction to the story came from and what was useful, where did you find the most material . A question. They, mark. I got interested this and i think all great ideas when youre a writer take a hold of you and dont let you go. I will never forget vividly when i was 10 years old i read Eddie Rickenbacker friday the find circus which is his autobiography of the dogfights of world war i. I loved all the color of that and the excitement. I remember as a kid reading and it made when i was supposed to be in bed asleep with my flashlight and all of that. But as i got older, something really continue to resonate about this guy and it gave me kind of the vehicle to look at kerch and look at how speed affect did america at the turnofthecentury, how it really came on full burst onto the scene and how this guy was really creating new icons of hair down and macho and all of that. But one of the big problems i had with it as he is such a big hero that he comes. I felt sometimes in research that he was reaching out through the pages though he has been dead for 50 years, reaching out and grabbing me by the collar and say john, toughen up, young man. Toughen up. What are you made of . And you know, biographers in general have been bowled over as i was too about these exploits. They go on and on and on. Read the book. Its incredible. And he contributed to this hero status. He deflected a very, very carefully about who it was. He didnt have a whole lot of Close Friends and he really browbeat his ghostwriter so that the hero of Eddie Rickenbacker and his biography aspires he would willfully disregard things. His father was murdered in an altercation he provoked with an africanamerican labor. Went to trial. It is a terrible thing. And its autobiography he was a foreman on a can structure and in an accident happen. My big challenge was how do i peel away . I am all set to take a jackhammer and really get down behind it. How did i do that . He was in seventh grade dropout, so he didnt write very much of love, but he did become, he did take it as a businessman very well and he never did anything halfway. In 1965 he sat down with his autobiographer and they spent a year of oral interviews back in worth, question and answers about 7000 transcript pages. One of the library of congress. So i got the pm, got my son scanning and got these big note looks. I dont care who you are, but if you go back over your own story and have dispirited near at hand, if you go over it for 7000 pages, also pinup, contradictions begin to happen. This is this wonderful source good quetzal notated. Ive got indexed back and forth to say okay, what was this guy into wednesday . This more full dimensional picture of who he was as a survivor and he really looked on his legacy as part of his survival. He was beaten up by his dad terribly as a kid. He had a really hard go of it. And yet, he ended up a seventh grade dropout even ace of aces, doing its thing. What was the motivation . The fear of being anonymous. So i really felt that i was able in contrast to a lot of past biographers to get it to narrow it for guy was and what elevated him. And then just had a ball with getting to know the young man in world war i. There were letters, private collections, published letters, journals, hardscrabble little things. Their experiences. I felt after a while i was in their parities. Roosevelt, the son of Teddy Roosevelt would be at parties and these were young men. His parlor trick was that somebody could buy this unit and he would take a bottle, oldest had back in train the entire champagne bottle in one swallow. He was really keen to do it twice in one evening. These guys were kids. They were struggling with the stresses and strains of beaten out there doing this, but they were kids. He of course would die tragically in something his father never got over from the death of this really just lovely young man. Tr died six months after that happened. Really you get a sense of the environment, what these kids are going through, how they were coping with technology, war, all these things coming out to him. Its pretty remarkable that front. You a Different Task because you tell an historical story at the same time calling a contemporary one. I imagine your research was multifold. Can you talk about it . U. S. In terms of the architecture of writing a story that way where there are sort of two periods unfolding, each with its own mystery msn. The mystery from world war ii was this particular plane had been shot down. Another airman had seen it go down on september 1, 1944. And yet, nobody could figure out where it landed. The root port where different depending on where you look. The after action report pointed to this narrow channel between two of the islands in the group. But after the lawyer for numbers of the Registration Service went to track down the plane, they didnt find it there. There were reports that at least two, maybe three parachutes had, the plane during the crash. There was no sign of what happened to the guys on board and the more the military right roots he looked up, the more confusing it became because a lot of pithy beaten claims could have been true across the board. They contradicted each other in the minds of the family about whether some thing else was up. A lot of family members had come to believe that there is something suspicious going on. In a few cases they believed that their relatives, their fathers and husbands and brothers had actually survived for a period of time and they may have been helped cap to buy the japanese in the military u. S. Military had been relaxed to acknowledge that part of the story. There were other families at different kinds of questions about whether there have been a coverup for some kind of error there is a pilot change the last minute and nobody wanted to talk about why. So that whole historical piece of all diving deep into the archival record at the National Archives nearby in college park. But then there was also this modern story that an all it was passed in his personal journey to track down these answers in the legacy of the loss of the families. I became very given that. If you talk to families who have someone missing from two or four from the vietnam war, you will find that this grief persists in some cases grows until it has the life of the town. Its very powerful stuff. Early on in the reporting i went to west texas and met with a guy named tommy is god was one of the bombers of the b. 24 that everyone is looking for for so long. Tommy is a surge of classic picture of a west Texas Football coach. He is this big, strapping guy, eusebius of allstar himself at texas tech. Hes the sort of shaper of men out there. Coach taylor type of figure if you ever watch writing a play. He is known for being out on the field teaching his players about integrity and commitment and playing for your pain and things like that. I started talking to tommy about his dad was exteriors later he was crying within the first couple minutes. It was a very, very deeply personal thing for him. He felt his mothers life had been forever damaged. Hed grown up without a dad because he grown up with the uncertainty in the family suspicion that his father may have been alive for decades afterward. She never remarried. But she would never talk about it with him. There is a story this circulated that a stat head after parachuting off the plane made it back to the United States and remarried. Some locals locals said they had been out to california to visit him. So there was this very, very vibrant and substantial story that haunted the sky. The more of these families you talk to and maybe some in the audience are from families who have this part of history in there. This is a very common theme. You go to reunions are gathering of people connected to the mia issue in this phenomenon of wondering what really happened in wondering if theres any way the survived his ever present. So reporting on nights out to be very sent to this and seems to me like an important story to tell and one that i had heard enough about. When youre talking about a 73 from world war ii and 47,000 going into the pacific. Youre talking about a word that are roughly comparable to the combat casualties in vietnam. So we all know pretty well how damaging intermountain could vietnam war was an american life. But we hear a lot less about the mia issue from world war ii and i thought it was time to bring it forward and have a parity they are. I cant let the session ends without asking john to tell us just how one might leah was that Eddie Rickenbacker was never even allowed to be a pilot. He was a seventh grade dropout at midwestern racecar driver and trade to crash the party for the ivy league click. Its incredible. The one thing that doing research hit me across the face as he was a kid from a seventh grade mark said hi to quit school to support his family. Later on when he was a young man, and a sinner from a passing railroad locomotives hit him in the eye, caused a big dark spotted inside that really threw off his depth perception. He didnt tell anybody about it. But he was determined to be a flyer in the wizard egg deal car racer at that point, so he ended up driving over in world war i, did he manage to finagle his way over. He was such a great mechanic that he got himself assigned to be headed mechanics in the big airfield over there. Then he basically got airplanes out, took the more nobody could see them and he practiced on his own pair without many lessons at all. This was a time. This is a stunning tori where he goes out. Nobody you get airplanes flying was so new. When you go into a spin i describe in my book it is pretty much a tumble down there. The faa used are required to your license come your pilots license, they dont for the last 20 or 30 years because so many people died trying to crack things. This is when they knew what they spin was and was very clear what you have to do to get out of there. To the skies, the spammer something they they were staying away from. When they were in that zero, were finding it was a very useful thing. So addy went out there just to go out there through his plane plan out every field where nobody could see him. The first time he went out he couldnt do it. The next time he did it he figured out what to do with it. Fast forward now, we are flying wrench airplanes because we are late in the war. We dont have time to build airplanes. We have to buy french airplanes. The french give an airplane that is not a bad airplane, but it all has to worked out and it has one glitch in it. What you do throw it and come up with that, the material on the top and the top for right of the wing flaps off like a flag on thursday with this terrible spin. Eddy founders of defaulters going after him and its just this incredible thing when you tell the story and his recollections of it because he was going around like this. Im not sure theres a more disorienting situation to be in. You are plummeting. You go round and round in rounding ewers binning like this, but you are also spinning mini tour to a period in the middle of, somehow he thought of himself visiting his mother in columbus, ohio to say goodbye. Somehow he had us some clarity in the middle of this to do what you would expect to do, which you would kind of think about, which is to turn his vengeance back on and full throttle so he could get enough list. Most people would take you right into the earth and he just pulled out at the last minute. The next day hes back up doing it again. Just incredible. One thing that really amazed me about him is that he not only was pretty good, probably not even the best i let out their, but he became the squadron had in a lot of the 94th and he brought the squadron to be the best squadron in the whole war is just a matter of six weeks, the final kind of weeks of war when things run the line get the germans were pushing everything they had in their last gasp effort to win. He just barely fine the step from being a great fighter to being a commander of man in a very intense situation. Here was a seventh grade dropout to get it serviced to be a pilot you had to have graduated from college. These were ivy league lawyers. Instead, harvard, cornell, all of them. Here was this guy rough around the edges and this was the end of the meritocracy in britain and france. Here is the midwest guy. Ulysses s. Grant kind of thing. The midwest kind of guy showing the way forward. It is beginning just then. Tom wolfe talk about it much later. Right now, right here was this midwestern practical risk assessment. He wasnt doing it for glory. He wasnt doing it because he was just going to be the big fly boy, you know, the big playboy, fly boy. He was a pro. Not only was he showing us the way forward on the hes building new icons that we would be today in Business Leaders send explorers. It was a whole new relations ship to risk that is beginning to happen. Here was the guy who is making it up at you see davis and onthefly. He would later see this in lindbergh, too. It was an incredible amount of rice dust. This was the guy of course whose chairman name got him thrown in by Scotland Yard in the present. They tracked him down at one point, stripped off his clothes, peeled the shields up with issues to look for secret. Event and rubbed his whole body over with lemon juice to look for secret messages. I mean, this is staggeringly the hyper, you know, antigerman sentiment that was happening there. Throughout this stuff he managed to persevere and that is why i named the book enduring courage. Thanks, john. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about pat skinner. He just emerges as such a fascinating or in the boat. I wonder also sent this was his obsession for such a long period, what did he do afterward . Is he still looking for missing plane . Of the last month, pakistan and has found two more american aircraft in the Palau Islands. The group that is formed around him in clute a lot of other volunteers whose connection to the issue is not discernible at first. There are people who share with scanning a sense that somebody should be doing this. And i guess the belief that the American Military agency that is responsible for doing it for many complicated reasons cant do it, just cant get the job done. Theres too many guys out there, too many missing plane. The process of searching is too timeconsuming and too loose. And there are structural flaws with the agency, which some of you may have read about. As fenofibrate about it in the jpeg agency is being reconceived by defense secretary chuck hagel right now. So there is this made for people to come forward and get the job done privately is felt pretty strongly both within the military and was in the group passed canon has formed is now called fat prop and they go back every year and i would encourage people interested in this kind of work to look at these amazing photographs from the jungle and from underwater of aircraft that are some times almost perfectly preserved, especially in the water. The plane gets shot down in some way, but it hits the water most the attack thinks down under 60, 70, 80 feet of shallow island water. You can go back there today and slid down into the cop didnt get behind the oak and pretend to shoot down passing fish. It is just a stunning thing to see in the photos really do it justice on the website. Weve got about five minutes left and we would like to open up the floor for questions with their authors. If youre stuck to the microphone if you want to ask a question. Afternoon. Great stuff, gentlemen. Questions for both of you really. John, with the idea burgett rated and if so, military or commercial . Not that i know a. One of his final swan said you imagine here is a guy who is 12 and nobody is ever flown. Skip forward another 10 years enhanced fighting in the flood skies above. In Eastern Airlines he was not as a president he was not open to jets coming in. He thought that they were going to be technology was unproven and a number of things. He was that great advocate and that was one of his want on factually that god had moved out. What he said the most produced multiengine aircraft come is that fighter and bomber or just walmart . Fighter and bomber and commercial. It depends how you count because theres different variations they go by different names other than be 24. Most people estimate the total number produces 18 or 19,000 that the dramatically greater number than any other plane. The next one is the b17 thats about 30,000. Its a big difference. He found two other aircraft. Can you tell us what he found . I probably better leave that to pack, but the question in case anyone missed it was what the two other aircraft were. People are sensitive about revealing too much information with a first search make an identification because the feelings are still so fresh for the families and the concern is always that youll raise hopes that a particular aircraft has been located in particular remains may be identifiable. Ive been noticing although they put photographs of the planes, theyve been relied to give too much specifics about the model. So if you like aircraft, i bet youll know immediately what sort of family they are in. Another looks to be there. I probably better watch what i say and make sure i dont and on the wrong side of a careful issue. I have a bit of a technical question for you. I am a writer and i am writing a story about landing in the highest airfield in the world. I am having difficulty in describing this c130 plane. Though we know for one of the highest peaks and then dropping into the valley. The mountains on either side doing a spiral force and then starting time to press down. I am having difficulties how much a reader book adventures in it and how will you do in a way that will balance . Well, you know, that is a very good question. This is the job of the writer to kind of figure out who you are writing, what your audience is. I was writing for anybody who wanted to pick up the book. So i often end up reminding people about doing. Some people know when some people dont. You have to give the right amount of information in my estimation. Not too much, but enough to let you understand what was involved with that very, very nerveracking in terms of whether the technical skills, what are the capabilities of the airplane and also with the altitude is to landing, to what light air does. So i look for metaphors. I look for places of commonality that i can establish same to make something that can be extremely technical understandable to drive bridge to that. What happened, the dilemma there is i was lucky not research on the air lift coming over from the secular world or. I was afraid i might end up plagiarizing someone. [inaudible]. Its tricky. He met his question is for you, mr. Ross. With respect to getting out the marrow, how did you decide that you had something new to the day that other biographers didnt . Well, that is always the challenge of the biography and biographer. I think that also the challenge of the historian this is not the last word on rickenbacker sir leigh. Hes a very compelling character as they can keep that in idea about. I hope i am on the line and somebody else will pick up this book in 10 or 15 years write another book on the good these are enduring characters who need to be continually reexamined. In answer to your question why did i i felt that i had a real ability to get. There were some really worked on academic biographer what really got into some new ground. I felt that he really hadnt taken the next step, which is what do we do with all of this day but they will miss a moment Going Forward in very finicky, accurate detailed look. I felt he had of law are really hadnt taken that next to to say who was the sky, what was motivation . I found a lot of people have reported on. Theres no greek Youth Smoking gun, but the totality is something very fresh and they hope will stimulate new work brought him are your thoughts about this time. , especially at the centennial one. Thank you. Or i was. [applause]. To get inside the fight as you say, you fully intended yourself with the team, activists, lawyers and plaintiffs who challenged californias proposition eight which was of course the constitutional amendment that took away marriage rights for samesex couples in california. For starters im interested in how this came to pass. You say at the end of the book you got interested in that story because you interviewed ted olson and to report on his coming out in favor of marriage equality, which was, the story was published about three months after the lawsuit was filed. Im curious, did you make the first phone call to cover the story . Guest yes, i did. Actually i picked up the paper one day and i saw that ted olson had filed a lawsuit. I had known both men. I covered that account and i thought whatever the story is about ted olson, this conservative icon came to embrace this cause has got to be a fascinating story. I was in between investigative projects and i picked up the phone and called and said id love to do this story. It was funny because some of my editors at the New York Times said its not exactly investigainvestiga tive i do this deep dive and dedicated source. Im fascinated by this, but its like im the only person ted olson will talk to the New York Times host next we talk to you and you wrote the story. Been to Jamaica First call about writing the book . Guest i did. Host who did you call . Guest i called ahead of the American Foundation for equal rights which is the foundation that was formed to fund this lawsuit eventually, and ted, and i just said look, im just, i kind of, i always knew that i would know what the right book was right. Every journalist thinks they have a book in them. I always felt i would have to feel really passionate and just ill know it when a seat. I just knew it. I knew this was the book i wanted to write. I wanted to write a for so many reasons but mostly because this was to meet a Fascinating Group of people. During the course of reporting this story i of course got to know the four plaintiffs at the heart of this lawsuit and i just come dinner, was captivated. I want to find what would happen to them. It was, as you know, this was not, thisi
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